History Books

I remember growing up having books lent to us by the school, throughout high school, for the year. While I don’t recall the publishers offhand a mere guess would suffice.

That said, they were old and worn. We never learned modern history or reading.

What concerns me the most now, is that I believe when I went to grade school there were different history textbooks for the north and south, and don’t know about the wild west back then.

We learned about HOMES, which are the Great Lakes of Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. My husband, why grew up in Texas, spent much time on the Civil War, or as his father calls it, “the war of Northern Aggression.”

We probably spent one class period per year on the Civil War. It was over and we had to know dates and battles but that was it. In the South, it’s in the psyche as we live and breathe.

To lighter things, in the South if one was wealthy when sugar was in short supply and there was no refrigeration, having sugared iced tea on the porch was an honor. Now sugar is in everything even though Emeril says Southern cornbread has only salt, no sugar.

Coming from the North, our coleslaw has no sugar. Our iced tea has no sugar unless we choose to add it, and I never understood “sweet tea” before tasting it.

That’s just how we all grew up. I wonder if our old history books had something to do with it. I can tell you something, these ladies make killer desserts. OK, another, that it was torture for me to find something to bring to the family reunion that wouldn’t offend any of the ladies I hadn’t yet met 11 years ago when all my husband said was “family that flies in doesn’t need to bring anything.”

Lesson One: I brought two things for the kitchen table for noshing between the feast and the leftover feast (this can be a 12-hour affair). It was a success and I gave one recipe to a new bride in the family before she joined it so she’d have success the next year.

Lesson Two: don’t ever listen to your husband! Now my mother-in-law and I have three-day cooking extravaganzas for that annual event. The guys go out and fix fences, corral cattle or split wood.

As all these Lincoln books and movies enter the public space it is important to remember our history. My father-in-law is a Civil War maven and so we took him east to Saratoga and Ticonderoga and through the Green Mountains a few years ago. I’ve a haunting photo of him at the Saratoga battlefield.

We can only tell the truth as we know it, taught by our families and our teachers. Today I believe north and south are still separated but if I can sip sweet tea, we can do anything. Cheers! Happy Monday. Dee