I am, at the moment, on a mountaintop in Utah, getting away from the petty cares, the constant, wearying annoyances of the daily round.

 

The leaky faucets of our lives.

 

They will be waiting for me, of course, upon my return to South Georgia. I will hear their slow, incessant dripping as I walk in the door and make yet another attempt to fix them. Some of them, at least. Still it is good to lay aside the wrenches, pack a suitcase that does not contain a day planner or panty hose, and do nothing at all for a week.

At the retreat center that I discovered in a glossy, eye-catching ad in my favorite women’s magazine and decided to try right away, I am soothed by a cloudless blue southwestern sky, cedar-scented fresh air, and early-morning meditations (where a candle is lit). The rest of the day—marked off into serene, orderly sections by the ringing of a brass bell—is devoted to classes in yoga and breathing. It is essential to study the breath, I am told, in order to find a calm center amidst confusion, a place within where all is well.

 

I am uncertain about this but do not dwell upon the nagging doubt at present, when the delightful ringing bell is summoning me to the table.

Joining my fellow sojourners on the garden terrace that is our dining room, I am treated to a restoring, enlightening vegetarian cuisine, the relevance of which is more immediately apparent than that of my class in breathing. Even breakfast is an eye-popping affair, especially when compared to the bowl of cold cereal that I hastily consume before dashing out the door on my way to work or the bagel that I nibble on at my desk when I am running late and cannot find time for the cereal.

 

This week, however, I awake to a tempting variety of freshly baked, whole-grain breads (rich, moist, fragrant breads unlike any I have ever had before) and a large steaming pot filled with a mixture of uncertain derivation—uncertain at least to me. Alongside these offerings there are many interesting containers of fruity, nutty, creamy things that can be spread on a thick slice of toasted bread or heaped upon a healthful, tasty serving from the steaming pot.

 

Accompanying each dish there is a small white card meticulously lettered in black. I admit to no one that without these neat, informative cards I would have little, if any, idea of what I am eating.

With the possible exception of jam, I haven’t recognized a thing.

But on this fine mountain morning, the fourth or fifth day of my Utah sojourn, the contents of the steaming pot look wonderfully familiar. The small white card confirms my suspicions and my fondest hopes. It says grits.

 

I fill my bowl a little too full but do not care. . . .

“What are you putting on your grits?” I am asked by a woman from Phoenix.

“Not all that much,” I tell her, trying to strike a casual note, for I am quite aware that this is the first time I have known anything about the intriguing, and generally delicious, Utah cuisine that is set before me three times a day with the ringing of the brass bell.

 

I am, accordingly, more than willing to rise to this unexpected occasion and, as the only Southerner at the retreat, explain what it is that I am putting on my grits.

 

“Some salt and pepper, of course,” I say.

“And a little butter.

 

“In the South we usually put a little butter on our grits.”

I have found a small portion of this at the back of the table, behind the containers of the non-dairy spreads that are the more generally favored, more enthusiastically endorsed choices. I add a pat of butter to my heaping bowl, but I do not explain that I would happily plop a fried egg on too, were a fried egg available.

 

A fried egg—I cannot help but note, cannot stop myself from thinking—would certainly taste good in the early cool.

 

Feeling a little guilty about this errant fancy (it is the first time this week that I have longed for my customary, unenlightened South Georgia fare), I look about me and notice what the others are spooning onto their bowls of grits: ground flax seed, granola, rice milk, almond butter.

 

Vanilla soy.

 

Although I am consuming quite a number of extraordinary things during my stay on my Utah mountaintop, although I am liking these new dishes quite well (for the most part), I have not yet managed to like vanilla soy. In fact, I have not yet managed to taste it, although it has been highly recommended. . . .

With a sigh that I hope is inaudible, or nearly, I sit down at the table in the presence of the unthinkable.

 

Grits with vanilla soy.

A California man is downing the concoction with no visible signs of distress, although I think he would certainly have preferred cheese grits: a rich, golden, and only slightly greasy dish that is prepared by stirring grated cheese into the pot of grits at the end of the cooking process. But I do not mention cheese grits either. Breathing a deep, calming breath (in the hopes that it just might work), I tell about the thick slices of fried grits that my mother used to make.

Her mother had made them, too, in the old days on the farm when nobody had heard of a grocery store and the bounty of the summer days had to be put away for the hard, unyielding months of winter. It required more work than we today can easily imagine.

When the peaches were picked, they were peeled, sliced, and spread out on sheets on the roof of the chicken house to dry in the sun. The children were assigned shifts on the roof to fan the flies away. After the fruit had dried, it was packed into flour sacks and stored in the storm pit, along with the many jars of peas and beans, pear preserves, and plum jelly that had also been put away for the year to come.

 

The sweet potatoes were stored outside, in a potato bank, which was a hole in the ground six or eight feet wide and about a foot deep. The floor of the potato bank was lined with pine bark. The potatoes were piled on top in a mound and covered with pine straw, then some more pine bark, and a final layer of dirt. After the corn was gathered, it was shucked, shelled, and ground into corn meal (finely ground corn) and grits (coarsely ground corn) at the mill.

When all of these things had been done and the late fall days were frosty and cold at last, it would be hog-killing time. The hams were smoked with hickory wood. The sausage was ground, then seasoned with red pepper and sage. Since there was no refrigeration, the sausage patties were partially cooked and stored in layers of grease in large stoneware crocks. The lard (which would be used for the year’s cooking) was rendered from the fat of the butchered hogs.

 

It was enough to last until the summer came again, but not a mouthful of these precious provisions could be wasted.

Not a mouthful ever was.

 

After a hearty breakfast on the farm, the leftover grits were poured into a heavy glass container. My mother had inherited such a dish and continued to use it long after the appearance of Tupperware.

An “ice box dish” Mama always called it, setting it upon a shelf in our refrigerator.

In the ice box dish, the grits became a firm white rectangle. The next morning they were turned out of the dish onto a strip of waxed paper, cut into thick slices, and fried in butter.

We put molasses on them.

“Real” molasses, the only kind of syrup my father would allow in the door of our suburban home.

Every November my father would set out in search of “real” molasses. He would track it down at a farmer’s market or a stand at the side of a country road that nobody traveled much anymore. As the years passed by, he would have to go further and further down that road, but he always managed to find the small, authentic tin that he was searching for.

 

For Dad, “real” molasses was sugar cane molasses, which his father made in the fall at the place we call today the “Old Farm.”

According to Dad, “real” molasses was always on the table at the Old Farm. “Real” molasses was taken to school in a shoe-polish bottle to go with the sausage biscuits and baked sweet potatoes that the children had for lunch each day. “Real” molasses was also a key ingredient in the family’s favorite “Tom Rusty,” a cornmeal cake that was baked in an iron skillet.

The country folks—backed up by Dad for all the days of his life—contended that “real” molasses was pure and healthful. It had a single ingredient—sugar cane juice—and was unrefined, retaining all of its essential nutrients. In fact, if you listened to the country folks on the subject of “real” molasses, you would end up thinking that it was practically a vitamin.

It also made for some very good stories. My father, who told a lot of tales, always liked to remember cane-grinding day on the farm.

The work began many weeks in advance. The wood was gathered for the roaring fire over which the syrup would be cooked. The sugar cane was cut, loaded into the wagon, and hauled to the cane mill. On cane-grinding day, early in the morning, the mule was hitched to the pole that turned the heavy grinders. It would complain vociferously about the hitching process, for it knew that it was going to be a long, tiring day in which no one would consider the feelings of the mule.

 

The mule was right.

 

For hour after hour, it was walked around in circles as the stalks of cane were fed through the grinders and the sugary juice poured into the waiting juice barrel. The juice was then transferred to a boiling pan that was set over the fire. It took until the evening for the syrup to be cooked down into a thick, rich perfection, but this was one time that nobody minded the day’s unrelenting labor.

 

As they worked, they would enjoy a cool, refreshing glass of cane juice. And they knew that in the morning, when the family sat down at the breakfast table, there would be delicious, nutritious, newly made molasses to pour on their crusty buttered biscuits.

At one cane-grinding, however, Dad and his brothers had something other than molasses on their minds.

When their father turned his back on his work, they took the sugary froth (the skimmings) off the boiling syrup. While Pa Purvis was making molasses, the boys made persimmon beer in a barrel that they had stashed out in the woods near the Upper Pond. They invited their friends to a fish fry (and beer party) the following Saturday night.

The ingredients for the beer were persimmons, corn, cane chews (the pieces of cane that had already been ground to get the sugar out), and the skimmings from the molasses. The boys added yeast to the mixture they had stirred up in the barrel and left the beer to ferment, returning to the farm with high expectations for its absolute, Saturday-night success.

 

But it was not to be.

 

While foraging in the woods, the hogs (which had been turned out of their pen to fatten themselves up) found the barrel of beer, dumped it out, and had themselves a topnotch evening, canceling the boys’ plans for their own big event. Heading out to the Upper Pond on Saturday night, Dad and his brothers came upon them staggering drunkenly about.

The story of the Saturday-night-partying hogs was one of my father’s favorite tales about his young years on the farm; he told about it every time he brought home his sought after, prized tin of “real” sugar cane molasses.

Fried grits and molasses would also taste good on this crisp Utah morning, but I let the disquieting thought go right away, just as I have learned to do in my class in breathing. As it departs, I find it suddenly and inexplicably possible to send along a few other things that have been clogging up my core in recent years.

 

The sun is rising above the mountain tops. Three deer are nosing their way to the edge of the terrace where we are having our breakfast.

This is a peaceful, hopeful place.

Even the bathhouse is extraordinary. For the first time in my life, I have a mountain view as I am brushing my teeth.

I am centered, present, grateful, and content (and breathing much more consciously now) as I help myself to another bowl of delicious, lightly buttered Utah grits.