| What I Learned At The Neshoba County Fair |
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Aug. 19, 1999 – Several have asked what I learned at the Neshoba County Fair this year, that I haven’t told. Quite a few things, most of which I will never tell, even if I remember them. Two others, however, were recipes, which seem to be the rage in many of the cabins. Mine were not so exotic. In the first case, as Mrs. Mildred Estes, next door neighbor between us and the racetrack, told me she had discovered how to rid their cabin of roaches. Roaches, like many such vermin are a problem at the fair, but I have never seen a fly or a mosquito. Roaches, spiders and carpenter ants are a different matter. The Esteses, who lives in cabin 17 at the fair, reside in Metairie, LA, the rest of the year. She said to use a cup of boric acid, add Crisco to thicken, and sugar to attract the roaches and flour to make the mixture workable so it can be made into quarter size balls to be used inside and out. She cautioned to keep the mixture away from pets and children. •I also learned a recipe for making banana pudding by helping Jo Ann fix a major bowl full at the Neshoba County Fair. She admitted she had gotten the recipe from Joice Maddox of Bruce who had used it one time when she was preparing meals for the Bruce Rotary Club. What you do is take a gallon can of vanilla pudding and mix it with a can of sweetened condensed milk. Then you peel and cut five to six bananas into bite size slices, and stir them into the pudding and milk mix. A very large bowl is then layered with most of a box of vanilla wafers. The rest of the wafers are crushed and most mixed in with the bananas et al. The remainder of the wafers are then sprinkled over the top of a large container of cool whip you spread over the top of the pudding. •So when it came time to get ready for the Denley reunion in Coffeeville on the first Saturday day in August — which we usually miss due to the Fair — Jo Ann said she would make cornbread salad and another dish with small butter beans and shoe-peg corn and I could make the banana pudding. I shopped for both of us and with the help of almost everyone in the store managed to come home with everything. She baked the cornbread, which was the base for the dressing that would include chopped tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and sweet pickles, all of which I chopped except the pickles. Then I began the banana pudding. The night before I mixed the pudding and the canned milk and put it in the refrigerator until the next morning. It all went well until I decided to cover the bowl for the trip. I stuck a wooden stirring spoon in the center of the pudding and used it as a saran wrap tent pole, allowing the dish to be completely covered with no cool whip sticking to the wrap. The banana pudding was a hit. I told them all it was a secret recipe, and they carried it away by the bowlfuls. The reunion was fine, like the only one I have been able to attend in years. Only three of the original 11 children are now living and some of us 35 first cousins are not doing so well. I always enjoy visiting with all, especially Malcolm Denley, a pediatrician in Alexandria, LA. He was there with his wife and two of his four children and their families. The young ladies, one of whom is a pediatrician, also, and the other an interior designer, I had not met before. Cousin Tim Denley of Washington passed around copies of the home place east of Coffeeville on what is now Hwy. 330. The last big curve coming out of Coffeeville toward Bruce goes through what we used to call the “flat field” that was on the south side of the place that cornered in downtown Skuna Valley. He recalled a family legend about the dog trot house, which had a sloped porch across the front. Everyday, so it was told, a hen would get in the cool spot between the two roofs and lay an egg. Then she would cackle. Mama Denley would then run out to the end of the porch with her apron extended and catch the egg as it rolled off the roof and before it hit the ground. Tim is too young to be able to vouch for the story, but when Cousin Robert Speir of Jackson said he had seen it, I knew it had to be true. |
