Granny Bowen was an old lady when I knew her. For many years, she had lived with my grandmother and grandfather, the three of them sharing home and living responsibilities. There was an orchard, a vegetable garden, a pen for hogs, a barn for dairy goats which were milked twice daily, a chicken coop filled with Rhode Island Red hens, and a great big mean rooster. Granny did a lot of sitting and rocking! She loved the Chinaberry umbrella trees that shaded the big back yard where she sat for hours watching my brother and me play. She would often say nothing for long periods of time, and I know now that she was probably remembering those days in Appalachia when she lived on the French Broad River with her brothers and sisters. As with most folks in those days, her family lived off the land. If the land didn’t produce it, they didn’t eat it. Her brothers hunted the woods for game to feed the family. Sometimes it was squirrel, or rabbit, or opossum; sometimes it was quail or mourning dove, or duck. If they were really fortunate, they would come home with deer or wild turkey. Sometimes there was not enough meat to go around for thirteen siblings, and it had to be extended with whatever was in the root cellar: potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes. There were always dried peas and “leather britches”(dried green beans) that could be added.
My brother and I were great-grandchildren of Granny Bowen; not her only ones, but two of many. My mother was an only child and her grand-daughter. Since Granny lived next door to us with my grandmother, we were a close family. Mother was a working mother when no one else I knew had a mother who worked at “public works”. That was o.k. with us though, because we got to stay with my grandparents and Granny while Mother and Daddy worked in the textile mill. Our childhood was not deprived by any stretch of the imagination. There were always fun thing to do, and both of our “grandmothers” could tell fantastic tales that just happened to be true.
When Granny was in her later years, she often reminisced about her younger days. One day she was talking to my daddy and told him that she would love to have some ‘possum again, prepared just the way her mother did it when she was a youngster at home with her brothers and sisters. Daddy told her that he would do his best to find her a good specimen. He talked to one of the mountain men who worked for him in the mill and told him he’d give him five dollars if he’d find him a big fat ‘possum. It was about a week when he brought to work a hissing, snorting, and generally disagreeable animal.
Daddy brought the ‘possum home to Granny. He had built a wire cage for her to hold the animal. She wouldn’t think of eating the meat without feeding him for a long while so she would know exactly what he had eaten. (It seems that ‘possums aren’t too particular about what they consume.) So the cleansing process started. Every day, twice a day, Granny fed the ‘possum good, wholesome rations. Every day, he looked up at her with those soulful eyes, knowing for sure he had found a friend. He finally stopped hissing and snorting and just “smiled” up at her twice a day when she fed him.
After Granny had wintered and summered and wintered the ‘possum, the time arrived for eating. Daddy butchered him for her and presented the clean white meat to her for preparation. Granny seemed excited at first; she raved on and on about how good her dinner was going to be. None of us had any intention of eating any of that ‘possum. After a while we could tell that Granny might be having second thoughts about it too, but she continued the preparation just the way her mother had done. When she had finished her cooking, Granny sat down to eat her ‘possum and sweet potatoes. But she couldn’t eat a bite. She said that every time she started to take a bite, she saw that ole “possum looking up at her from that pen. She threw away every bit of it.
That was the last time I ever heard Granny mention ‘possum.
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