Carole Hunt interview with Grace Earnest

The John Burrison Georgia Folklore Archive recordings contains unedited versions of all interviews. Some material may contain descriptions of violence, offensive language, or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a particular period or place. There are instances of racist language and description, particularly in regards to African Americans. These items are presented as part of the historical record. This project is a repository for the stories, accounts, and memories of those who chose to share their experiences for educational purposes. The viewpoints expressed in this project do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the Atlanta History Center or any of its officers, agents, employees, or volunteers. The Atlanta History Center makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any information contained in the interviews and expressly disclaims any liability therefore. If you believe you are the copyright holder of any of the content published in this collection and do not want it publicly available, please contact the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center at 404-814-4040 or reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. This recording begins with W. E. Grace Earnest describing the foods her family cooked and ate growing up in Chamblee, Georgia. Specifically she remembers preparing, cooking, and preserving types of pork, such as souse, ham, and bacon. Then at 7:18 Earnest recalls making sausage and their casings, then eating pork brains and tenderloin for breakfast. She states that the backbone is the best tasting part of the pig. At 12:36, Earnest remembers preparing potatoes to make custards, potato pudding, and potato biscuits. Then she describes baking custard pies, deep dish pies, and sweet potato pies. At 19:17 she recalls dairy products they made, including butter and cottage cheese. The interview ends with Earnest describing vegetables they cooked, including cabbage kraut, dried peas, and hominy. Grace Earnest (1896-1974) was born in Decatur, Georgia, at her fathers workplace, the Mynatt Dairy Farm. Her parents were David Crenshaw Clack (1874-1942) and Etta Jane Clack (1876-1957). They later moved to Chamblee to live on her grandmothers farm. In 1912 she married William Earnest (1890-1963), and they had five children: Alvin William (1914-1976), Ira Calvin (1916-1988), Gertrude (1917-1989), Ella Ruth (1919-2005), and Willie Grace (1922-2003). She worked as a seamstress in Atlanta and died in Monroe, Georgia. CtcA-!i./..a... 'E ' +1v-.sr ~R. 401 > f-i, . .,OJ \'173 Rt. 1 Jsckson G0or~i2 HS. r,,.1 lJ' T.81,e snsc'1.8.1 ~c-J.5.d9.J fot)dEi~ DBJt.V' foods .sr:1_d tynes o:f D8.. rt1 es and she hnd only my mother es her on1y chi gs I all T/i:i., th ors?s a n1.at nr om~thi~r on ton of it, the ~rease 01,t of 1.t ans set someth1~~ on thBt Pnd J.et jt stay uressed overni We just set it in the rnnm wherP ther~ it Rnd slice it. Oh, 1t ve cood. YOli eat l t? It was better co]_d t f'Jxed thenL Sometime.s 11.re put vlnepar on ttlern and m.ade C. Hunt Mrs. E. C. Hunt How did. you :')reserve a ham? Hovr d:ld yo-u r>Pt' :1 t. 11n to keen? We alw'lys rubbed 1n salt. We cnt the 'h:-:-'1'.-r .rn t:1.nd cut the henns out and 1aid them in t1:1e smolfe house Tt.Jhe:re it was coo1 on a tab1e R.nd let them eoo1 thor011e;hly. We rubbed sa.. Jt on them and ru.bbed them fu11 of tv1e salt~ How long did yo~ J.et them cool? We let them cool overnic;ht, And the next day you rubbed the sa1 t on them and let them thoroll.o;hly salt, let the salt ~o in them. My daddy, he packed them ,8.way I think c1bout two or three weeks and then he took thern out and :,,m.shed them i.n a t1Jb of v,rrtrm water, He wa.shed th em and d:r:i:ed them re-3_1 c;ood. Then he made htm .9 1Jaste wi__ th syrun, sor;:,;uhm syrn_p and flour, and sugar, brown sugar. He rubbed them there hams allover and I think he nut some suices of some kind on them~ BLJ. t he rubbed thD.t ham ~111 over with the paste he made. Tl1en he took brown oauer and l1e pasted it all on them so he 133_.sted them olurnb uo w1th l t. He smoked them hams. Now, if I'm not mista},en he sxnolrnd the hams before he oasted them U7J, He nut them in tJ-ie smoke house and built a little fire of hickory wood down in some kind of container and he smoked thembefore he oasted them uu. 1'hem he Dasted them hams and sealed them uo and hung them in the smoke house - hung them to a rac.k in the smoke house. Ancl they was the best meat and the hams we buy now don't taste lil,e them. C, H1Jnt Mrs. E. C. Bunt Mrs. E,, C. Hunt C. Hunt Mrs. E~ C. lllmt How a.bout bacon? He fixed some of his bacon like that. the bacon he took it out of his salt box after it took the salt and washed it all of and drt ed it e-aref,1lly. Then he nae-ked it bae-k in the meat box. We had a meat bo~x: \AJhere we kent our baeon~ Well now, what was a meat box? It was just a homemade box and it had a lit to it and we made lots of sausage. How do".' you make 8ausa;,;e? Sausage, we made lots of it and canned it. We fried it good and done and nut :l t in quart fruit jars and sealed it un~ We nou:red enough .,~:rea.se over it to where lt 1;1rould cover the ton and then we sealed :i.t. T'hen we t1J rned that j8,T bottorn-slde-1Jp where - turned it up where the srease would all .o;o down into t'ie lid and that h elned it seal. And them sausage would be just delicious way in the summertlme0 How di .. d you ,;o about maki.mr the sausq;e from the start? What Darts of the hop; did you ;,:rind? WelJ we n;round a lot of the scrans~ Sometimes 1,qe would .o:rind un Dart of the shm1lder. The sc.rans we would trim of the shoulders and hams and shane the:rn uv and we ?;round all of that and then r,,re sea.soned 1.t r"'rtth salt andneorier and sa.. o .:e and 1,rorked J. t al.l un to.~ether you 11:nov;r.. WelJ 1 we don't have no sa.u sage l101",\l', @ Did you have sausa~e in the casin~s like we buy at t}1e store? Mrs. E. C. Hunt Mrs. E. C~ Hunt Mrs. E. C. Hunt Mrs. F:. C. Hunt C. Hunt Mrs. E. T-1Te did have some s1.:tasage tn the casing .. What did you use for the casi.nc,s. We used the casini,;s ... was the hog entrails that we had cleaned. How did you clean them? You ,soaked them in salt water for so many days and washed thew-,every day for nine days and .just keot cleaning them you know and then we filled them with sausage and they were good and they were smoked like the hams and we hung them on racks, on sticks across the smoke house. We hurlQ; them up there and.smoked them too. That was smoked sausage and they were very ,o:oocL But we loved the canned sausa,o:e. They keot away - But didn't the grease i,;et ranc1d. No. It didnt get rancid? No it didn't. They were very good. What about other parts of the ham - Did y'all put up pork brains. Did y'all ever fix those7 Oh, we eat the nork brains. My father loved Dork brains with e,ggs. He loved them for breakfast. He ',just saved them out you know. There's just a good handfull in a hogs head and he c11t that hog's head onen to get out the brai.ns and we just saved them. We just eat them right along now and you nut themin some r;rease and scrambled some eggs in them and they was good for breakfast when yov wanted themfor breakfast. We also has somethin,r else out of the hoo: that was real good. We called it the tenderloin. It was a piece of rea1 -5- C. Hunt Mrs. E. solid lean right next to the backbone of the hog. And it come out a long stri D ,just Dure solid lean meat and we sliced that and Oh, it was so good for breakfast. But now they don't have tenderloin in the stores because that is Dart of the Dork choo. 'rhey cut through that backbone and cut cut through that and that's the lean in the nork chop now. But we didn't dress our ho,o; like they do now and we had the tenderloint. 'rhen we had backbones. And that was real, real p;ood me.aty backbones. You could just nut you on a not full of them good backbones and cook them and I thought that was the best Dart of the ho.o; was that backbone. When I come home fron school and I had a bia; Dot of backbones cooked and had some good old baked DOtatoes. My mohter would bake a big stove of baked potatoes. We had a bi,o; range stove that had a blg oven and we'd ,o;et us some of them baked Dotatoes and have some of that backbone gravy to put over them and I' 11 tell you that was good~ Did you use the natural Dork gravy? We had just the nork r,;ravy out of them backbones. You DUt that over your baked ootatos or some corn bread. Now, that's r,;ood with corn bread. We always had corn bread with out sunner. We had ,good hot corn bread for supper when we come home from school. I always looked forward to what a P;ood hot sunner we'd have when we got home. We didn't Fet home fromschool until about dark nearly. We had a long wayr to walk and we'd r,;et home nearly dark and that good supper was waiting. notr1.toe ed sweet potatoes and t].11.. it whll p. t He tn""" t c. Hunt Did you have custard pies? C. Hunt How do you do tho:::'" 'le dried apples. We dh.ed a lot of apples in the summer ;.,_,',!.,-,, -1 8. h n vnn u ~ ~ of butter to make sweet It Wh0n the milk would 1.abher leather britches - of sri.l. t you C, ffnrrt DVt 8~8.rt of sal_t 3n Jt sometim~s v011 h~ve t0 r~ kraut don't te.ste J:ikn what yr:n1. buy ln vp T)eas? T.,Je had mo,st dried ueas. We a hqve canned peas. WP c,, Runt you cook the Hu11t collards f0~ the winter time? i.t mi t freeze. Sc~etimes we woul.d tRkP n nJJ.a~a anf of 4. t tnrt w0shin~ it all the time and you would 1:e.:ro.:s sun nosed tc A PDF transcript exists for this recording. Please contact an archivist for access. Professor John Burrison founded the Atlanta Folklore Archive Project in 1967 at Georgia State University. He trained undergraduates and graduate students enrolled in his folklore curriculum to conduct oral history interviews. Students interviewed men, women, and children of various demographics in Georgia and across the southeast on crafts, storytelling, music, religion, rural life, and traditions. As archivists, we acknowledge our role as stewards of information, which places us in a position to choose how individuals and organizations are represented and described in our archives. We are not neutral, and bias is reflected in our descriptions, which may not convey the racist or offensive aspects of collection materials accurately. Archivists make mistakes and might use poor judgment. We often re-use language used by the former owners and creators, which provides context but also includes bias and prejudices of the time it was created. Additionally, our work to use reparative language where Library of Congress subject terms are inaccurate and obsolete is ongoing. Kenan Research Center welcomes feedback and questions regarding our archival descriptions. If you encounter harmful, offensive, or insensitive terminology or description please let us know by emailing reference@atlantahistorycenter.com. Your comments are essential to our work to create inclusive and thoughtful description.