Blog Archives

Dirty Dishes

7/27/2017

If you wanted to visit with Mother, you had to do it in the kitchen

(Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blog is written by her children, Ben Windham and Dilcy Windham Hilley.)

Though it’s not at all the season to talk about this, I’ve been thinking lately about my mother and her New Year’s Day party.

Every January 1st for at least 25 years, Mother opened her modest Selma home to anyone who wanted to come eat black-eyed peas and cornbread. (It is, of course, widely recognized that you must eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day in order to have good luck throughout the coming year.) People came in droves every year, lots of local friends and friends from all around the Southeast. Strangers came too, some, I believe, just to see what sort of person would invite the world to “Pea Eatin’,” as it came to be called.

Mother cooked peas and baked cornbread from dawn until around 1:00 in the afternoon when she figured that was enough. Her head was forever in the oven checking the doneness of the cornbread. If you wanted to visit with her, you had to do it in the kitchen.

She was particular about how she served her guests. Paper plates and plastic wear were out of the question. Mother had a rather large stash of mismatched, small china plates for the occasion, and we’d spend New Year’s Eve polishing silverware. Two of her closest friends were the kitchen helpers, hand washing the utensils to keep them in rotation, but it was too hard to keep up with plates too.

Mother’s solution was for me to be the dirty dishes runner. My job was to gather plates up as the guests finished their good luck peas, take them to my brother’s room, and put them under the bed! It was a clever and efficient means of keeping the kitchen free of clutter. And so like my mother.

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A Brave Traveler

7/12/2017

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Photo by Ed Hall

(Unless otherwise noted, the Kathryn Tucker Windham blog is written by her children, Ben Windham and Dilcy Windham Hilley.)

I’ve just returned from a trip to Greece, the second time I’ve visited that amazing country.

My first visit was in 1963 when Mother decided it was a good time to take her three children to Europe. To finance the trip, she had saved my daddy’s life insurance money for seven years after he died. She said Daddy had wanted to take us all on a big family vacation once we got old enough to appreciate it, but he didn’t live that long.

The Windham family were the only guests on a freighter leaving the Mobile port to deliver blankets to the Greek army. We had small double cabins but spent very little time in them. The sea was our playground.

It was a magnificent summer spent in Greece, Italy and Turkey. I look back and marvel that my mother had the courage in that day and age not only to travel to Europe but also to take along three children.

As I looked at the Acropolis now being carefully restructured, I remembered clambering all over it as a 10-year-old. It’s off limits now. Tourists like me did too much damage to the structure. But Athens now has the impressive Acropolis Museum, preserving the ancient statuary and artifacts from weather and pollution.

It was a very different visit this time. I searched for the charming little Athens hotel we stayed in in 1963 but found no sign of it. I suppose it’s long gone. But my memories of that magical summer are still intact. I think Mother would like that.

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Photo Courtesy of Ted Tucker

"Some people are important to intellectuals, journalists, or politicians, but Kathryn Tucker Windham is probably the only person I know in Alabama who is important to everybody."

–Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Auburn University.