Painting of Delty by Paul Brett Johnson, an award-winning children's book author who passed away in 2011. Paul Brett Johnson was the author's brother.
“Whrrt, haw!” Uncle Marcus yells, spurring on his old mule Jet, who is tethered to the cane press by a long poplar pole. As with Sisyphus, Jet’s labor is never-ending. He plods a continuous circle, turning the grinding gears that gobble up the reedy stalks of sweet sorghum cane and render a fresh, foamy green juice that is collected in well-worn galvanized buckets. The juice is then poured into massive iron pots and heated over open wood fires. Once the juice commences to boil, the stirrers—womenfolk, their heads tied up with tattered kerchiefs—continually swirl the bubbling liquid with long wooden paddles, taking care to skim off any impurities that rise to the top.
Long and lanky, with a shock of white hair and clad in his trademark bib overalls, Uncle Marcus, much like Jet, makes a continuous circuit—from the men cutting the cane in the field, to those feeding the mill, and ultimately to the stirrers as they swelter in the pungent steam roiling from the seething cauldrons. The sorghum isn’t ready until Uncle Marcus says it’s ready. He adroitly judges its color, thickness, aroma and the way it clings to the paddle. Once the dark amber extract meets his approval, it is bottled in Mason jars and sold to the many eager buyers who are gathered at his farm at the mouth of Hollybush, a holler just a few miles from Pippa Passes in Knott County.
I have a vivid childhood memory that resurfaces every autumn just as the last of the crimson maple leaves swirl groundward, and the azure autumn sky casts its lengthening shadows. It is that time of year that the cane ripens, its showy tassels swaying in the cool fall breeze, their tendrils boasting a tawny purple. My father loaded us into his pickup, Mom and my sister squeezed inside the cab with him, while my brother and I bounced along in the bed. Together, we’d make our way from Mousie in Knott County over Caney Mountain to Uncle Marcus’ farm for the much-anticipated yearly stir-off. Cars and trucks were lined along the one-lane road for a mile or more.
The stir-off spanned several days, until the last reeds of cane were harvested. People of all ages gathered to share food and swap stories, and they’d leave with a few quarts of the much sought-after treacle. Often, just as the sun was setting over the mountain, Cousin Warren broke out his fiddle, and Uncle Marcus entertained by buck-dancing on a wooden platform to the tinny strains of “Cricket on the Hearth” or “The Irish Washerwoman.” We kids played tag or hide-and-seek in the newly harvested fields, and the menfolk sipped store-bought liquor from half-pint bottles cloaked in brown paper sacks. Many a young boy stole his first kiss cuddled up behind a sycamore tree.
In those days, I guess you would consider my family one of relative affluence, a dubious distinction given that we lived in one of the poorest counties in Eastern Kentucky. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty was slow reaching our little holler, but both of my parents had jobs. My mother was a schoolteacher, and my father a blue-collar worker. Our clothes were used and came from a Save the Children Federation outlet operated out of Ida Rice’s basement. Save the Children Federation was too much of a mouthful, so we just called it “Idie’s Store.” Our “new clothes,” which reeked of mothballs, were sold by the pound and bundled in brown paper tied with twine.
We were afforded the luxury of running a monthly credit at Campbell’s Grocery, and on paydays, when Dad settled our bill, Mr. Campbell rewarded him with a half-gallon of ice cream. This was a courtesy in return for being a loyal customer and keeping his account current. It was a savored extravagance. On those nights, each of us got a heaping bowl of the frozen treat smothered in Mom’s homemade gooey chocolate sauce.
We also had a hired girl, a slightly built buzz saw of a woman. Her name was spelled D-E-L-T-A and pronounced Delty. Delty, who never married, devoted more than 20 years to our family. More than hired help, she ran the household and was a surrogate parent to us kids, especially over that dark winter of 1964 when my 42-year-old father lay dying in a hospital some 150 miles away, our mother at his side. After Dad’s death, Mom and Delty sometimes jockeyed for position, but Mom—a formidably strong woman—gently but firmly asserted her authority. Though there were hurt feelings from time to time on both sides, their mutual respect and admiration sustained a lifelong friendship.
Delty had little formal education, having completed only the third grade. At 9, she was forced by her mother to quit school and help run the family homestead, a resentment that Delty carried throughout her life. Delty could only read and write at a rudimentary level, but she was one of the most resourceful people I have ever known. She was an artisan who created beautiful hand-stitched quilts and colorful afghans. She crocheted intricate doilies and booties and sock caps, and she could sew most any garment, with or without a pattern. Delty gardened, and she was the embodiment of country cooking. She could put a Sunday-worthy spread out with the greatest of ease and economy. Delty was a Renaissance woman.
One of Delty’s specialties was her gingerbread. Appalachian-style gingerbread is a unique confection, neither cookie nor cake, not too moist nor too dry, not so gingery that it overpowers the palate but far from bland. Gingerbread bakers had their own closely guarded recipes, and though the ingredients and proportions varied somewhat, the universal component was sorghum. Conveniently, stir-off season was in mid-October, just before election day. It was tradition for local gingerbread makers to, for a fee, hand out gingerbread at the polls while electioneering for their sponsoring candidate. Delty was much sought-after in this regard, and after coming to a suitable financial arrangement with an aspiring office holder, she baked batch after batch of gingerbread, individually wrapping each piece in milky wax paper. On election day morning, she and other bakers stationed themselves along the queue of voters and distributed their gingerbread along with the calling card of the candidate they supported.
The extra money Delty made from her election gingerbread was nice, but the real prize was bragging rights for being known as the best gingerbread baker in the county. By the mid-1970s, the aproned bakers regrettably had been replaced by hollow-eyed, out-of-work coal miners, surreptitiously handing out half-pints of cheap liquor, and election gingerbread had all but gone by the wayside.
After caring for our family for nearly a quarter-century, Delty returned home to look after her aging parents. Unbeknownst to anyone, my mother had been paying both the employee and employer portion into Delty’s Social Security for all the years she had been with us, something unheard of in those days, thus affording Delty a relatively comfortable retirement.
Over the ensuing years, my siblings and my mother and I all left the mountains, but we kept in touch with Delty. Mom never failed to send her a note with a check enclosed on her birthday and at Christmas, and in turn, every Christmas, we got a big parcel from Delty with a newsy letter, which had been transcribed by her niece. The parcel also contained crocheted tree ornaments and a bundle of gingerbread for each of us, neatly wrapped and tied with red-and-green ribbon.
It usually happens that you don’t realize that something was the last time until after it was the last time. Such was the case the year that Christmas came and went without a package from Delty. Sadly, dementia—the cruel usurper of cognition—deprived Delty of her former vibrance, and she lived out her days confined to a nursing home.
A few years ago, I was going through a box of whatnots that I had taken from our homeplace when Mother sold the house. There were a few old pictures, a tattered copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a few of Delty’s dress patterns, and there in the bottom, scrawled on a piece of brown paper in Delty’s labored pen, was her gingerbread recipe. Though scant on details, the essentials were there, and after a few trials, I’ve gotten pretty close to replicating her signature treat.
To borrow from Loretta Lynn, “a lot of things have changed since a way back then,” but every fall, in deference to Delty, I make a few batches of gingerbread. My sorghum now arrives via Amazon from “Something or Other Farms,” which is probably a commercial kitchen in an industrial complex somewhere. And though it falls short of the robust flavor and faint hint of scorch characteristic of Uncle Marcus’ sorghum, it suffices.
It’s just me and my sister now. Gone are Dad, Mom, my brother and Delty. My annual making of Delty’s gingerbread is an evocative ritual: a small act but a profoundly personal and significant acknowledgment of a heritage for which I am deeply grateful.