Her Jelly Was Jammin'

By Mike Osborne

Got a little story for y'all.

Small town southern Arkansas was a tough place to be in 1930. Depression-era living was anything but easy, even in summertime. The working class family my father was born into struggled hard to make ends meet. He was the fifth of six children. Christmas was of the "hard candy and an orange in the stocking" variety — maybe a pair of shoes if they were lucky. His dad was a mule-skinner at an oil refinery who died early, and his mom, my grandmother, was one of the best cooks I have ever known.

At age sixteen, about the time the first World War began, she left her hardscrabble family farm to marry in the town of El Dorado. A rich man named H.L. Hunt had bought the near worthless property she had called home and had promptly struck oil. My grandfather toiled in Hunt's refinery for a dollar a day and counted himself lucky — he had a job and lots of hungry bellies to fill. Many others did not and could not.

The town is surrounded still by thick stands of southern pine, hardwoods still flourish in the bottomlands of creeks and rivers, and there, in the muddy stomping grounds of a now ancient childhood, a great treasure resides. Late in the spring, when the muggy heat grows too close to stand next to, a certain bright red berry proclaims itself from the branches of the mayhaw tree, and the picker, a small barefooted boy who is my father, knows that a sweet treat will be his reward for vigilance and a keen persistent eye.

Armed with knowledge passed down from grandmothers before, my grandmother had mastered the art of making mayhaw jelly. Her concoction, which caught and bent the light the way rubies do, was an ephemeral combination of sweet, tart, and plum-like fruitiness. But there was still a wildness to the stuff. A freshly baked biscuit slathered with butter and capped with a mound of the translucent magic was as close to heaven as a kid could get in those troubled times, and it was practically free.

Eventually times improved, wars came and went, and even though she could afford store-bought, my grandmother persisted in the practice of jelly making. I too recall the pleasures of warm biscuits and mayhaw jelly from my days as a boy. Every time I visited her I would bring home a jar or two, ostensibly to share with my siblings, but I preferred to hoard. Somehow it tasted sweeter in secret.

My dad just had a birthday party — his eightieth (see previous post for more details). My grown daghter, who lives with her husband on a west Texas farm, brought gifts of plum jelly, freshly canned in her own kitchen. Across the table my father and I exchanged knowing glances of recognition. In color and taste her jelly reminded us of mayhaws, of times both good and bad, the fragrance of pines and earth and streams and kitchens, of two boyhoods firmly anchored in the distant past, and of the love of a mother and grandmother many years in the grave.

Now, share some memories of your old family recipes. As we say in the bidness, Chow!

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