Behind our new house on the street that ended in a circle was a thick stand of trees. On the other side of the trees were train tracks that ran through our side of town and trains ran on these tracks almost daily. One train ran to the cement plant up the hill and on the other side of Main Street. Alongside the tracks was a creek that had a constant flow of water. My friend and I would build dams in the creek to make a little pond that we would pretend was a big lake. We had little plastic boats that we would float on the water. It was our eight-year-old imaginations working at full capacity. Yes, he was my age and lived on my new street. He is the one with the older brother.
My friend and I would also walk the train tracks when the weather was nice. We would put pennies down on the rails to get them flattened by the train before it came. We would hear the whistle of the train, place the pennies down on the top of the steel rail, and then run into the woods to hide.
One day when we ran into the woods, we noticed that the bushes we passed just before getting to the tree line were covered in berries. They were black in color. And there were a lot of them. The line of these bushes was very long and thick. These bushes were on both sides of the tracks. We picked a few of the berries and took them home so my mom could tell us what they were. I don’t think I had ever seen berries like this before. My mom told us they looked like Black Berries and had us taste them. Wow! They were really, really good. She asked me and my friend if we would go back and get some more berries and handed us a paper grocery bag. And we did.
We took the bag with the black berries to my grandparents’ house that evening. My grandma looked in the bag and smiled. She took out some berries and tasted one. With her big smile she asked if I could bring her more and she would make a cobbler with them.
The next day me and my friend went down to the tracks with a paper grocery bag each and began to collect as many black berries as possible that we could pull from the bushes. The bags were getting heavy, and so too was our excitement of my grandma making fresh cobbler with them. My grandma knew how to cook and make really good pies, cakes, and cobblers. Of course, her cooking was well known in town. And it was based on that southern style homemade quality you only find in Western North Carolina that I wish I could duplicate today. How did my grandma do it?
So, I remember taking two paper grocery bags nearly full of fresh black berries to my grandma’s house the next day so she could make the cobbler. With that large bounty of black berries my grandma had me help her in the kitchen because we were going to make a lot of cobblers. I got to help make the filling. She made the biscuit topping because that was her secret dough recipe. To this day I do not know how to make that biscuit dough. And with her passing that recipe has been lost forever.
There were so many blackberries that together we made about six cobblers, and we still had some fresh berries left over to eat. Oh my, I remember these cobblers being oh so good. We shared the cobblers with my friend’s family and other neighbors. In Western North Carolina sharing food and baked goods was common. In a small town your neighbors are family, and everyone looks after family.
So, after we gorged ourselves with this amazing black berry cobbler, we sat outside in classic metal chairs of the time and watched the sun go down over the tree line. It was a wonderful day. And I knew my bath time and bedtime was near.
This memory spans several days. First, the discovery of the black berries in the bushes along the train tracks. Then to taste black berries for the first time to discover that amazing flavor. Then the quest to collect as many black berries as we could. Helping my grandma in the making of the cobbler. And finally, the devouring of this incredibly delicious desert.
I would wager that you too have memories of your mom’s and grandma’s cooking when you were a kid, and how the many smells in the kitchen captured your excitement for the upcoming feast. Or maybe not if there was that stuff you didn’t like. You know what I mean, vegetables. I know that when I was a kid that is how I would feel when my mom and grandma were in the kitchen making whatever we would be eating that day. But I did like the vegetables because we grew them. And I enjoyed the vegetables that I grew because they were mine.
Well, here’s to good childhood foodie memories…
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