July 11, 2002

During the Depression years of the thirties and into the next decade, ranch wives were identified by their baking skills. "Miss Myrtle," they'd say, "can shore bake cornbread, but her biscuits would sink a trotline to the bottom of the creek." Or, "I'll swear, 'Miss Ruby' makes the lightest biscuits, but when we were helping shear out there, the hound dogs wouldn't eat her cornbread."

Note, too, that another quirk was calling married women "Miss so and so." Likely the reason was to be formal without being too formal and to use "Miss" to avoid the slightest reference to the women's ages. Both ideas are suppositions, as the ones of us following the shearing and marking crews were young and plenty dumb, yet knew enough to be polished diplomats at the kitchen tables. For an extra break at the bread plate, we'd called the cooks "Her Highness."

Mother used specials pans and crocks to make bread. She said the first batch of yeast bread she made became such a dismal failure, she buried the dough in the back yard. As the day warmed, the dough rose through the dirt cover to reveal her shame not five steps away from where the cowboys washed their hands at a faucet.

Part of her equipment was an old silver spoon. Her grandmother had worn the scoop in half, stirring dough and batter for three meals every day back in Kentucky. My stepfather further utilized the spoon as a symbol to prove how hard our ancestors had to work. His nephew stayed at the ranch in the summer. We were more interested in a walking cane his grandfather brought from Oklahoma that concealed a long thin sword in the stem than we were a worn silver bread spoon. We knew about Oklahoma. One halfblood gunman had camped on the Middle Concho from the Territory a little before our time, but close enough for us to know that we needed a sword more than a bread spoon.

A ranch on Dove Creek was the first outfit to serve store-bought bread for breakfast, or it was the first one I knew to do so. Was a blessing, too, as the foreman got us up so early in the morning and kept us in the pasture so late, the kerosene fumes from burning lamps in the darkness flavored the food. The bread was so precious, the lady kept the wrapper sealed too tight for it to become contaminated.

For old times' sakes, I reassembled Mother's baking pans and measuring cups. The worn spoon and the walking cane were lost a long time ago. However, I found the white crock mixing bowl and the blackened barrel lid she used to cook cornbread. Just as I heated the bacon grease, it hit how I ought to be wearing a spoon down making bread like ol' Granny did to leave the grandchildren.

Started whipping the corn meal and eggs and buttermilk so furiously the stroke became a frantic beat of metal against glass. As the batter turned to a yellow mush, a horned-tailed grasshopper jumped from the shelf and hit right at the moment I made a powerful swirl of the spoon. Before I stopped, I pulverized the hopper into bits too small to separate from the brown specks in the corn meal.

All the grasshopper left in one piece was his hooked tail. I went outside and caught another grasshopper the same size. Estimated he'd make two teaspoons of chopped grasshopper meat, excluding the horn tail I'd extracted in one piece. Mother's recipe is the one on the corn meal sack. A footnote reminded me that if bacon or cracklings are added to the recipe, the prescribed sugar and the salt have to be reduced. I wasn't up to tasting the captured grasshopper raw to see if he tasted sweet or salty, so I just cut the sugar and salt the same proportion to allow for the two teaspoons of chopped grasshopper.

Cooked, the cornbread tasted of roasted almonds. Only comment by a guest was how she liked ranch food, as the flavor always seems to be "a wild one." I kept my mouth shut. Only person I ever saw eating grasshoppers was a fisherman camped on Lake Travis who deep-fried a batch once at a beer fest. He claimed fried grasshopper tasted like fried cricket and a little like popcorn. I guess I need to add that when a fisherman starts eating his bait, it's a good sign he needs to change hobbies.

Those ol' ranch gals deserved more title than "Miss" for being up so early and staying up so late cooking for roundups. Work was hard enough for everybody to have a good appetite. Wish Mother was around to laugh at the grasshopper-flavored cornbread ...

July 11, 2002