{"id":815,"date":"2022-10-20T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T16:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=815"},"modified":"2022-10-20T13:42:17","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T17:42:17","slug":"the-night-the-maters-blew-up-in-georgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=815","title":{"rendered":"THE NIGHT THE \u2018MATERS BLEW UP IN GEORGIA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hardworking though she was, Mama canned little from the big garden we grew every year. The houses we rented back in the fifties almost always had garden spots.\u00a0\u00a0Mama had no pressure canner, but neither did most of our country relatives.\u00a0\u00a0They simply boiled the filled jars in the wash pot for a couple of hours.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAren\u2019t you afraid the food will still have germs in it?\u201d I asked my mother\u2019s mother one day.\u00a0\u00a0She laughed.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cHoney, if they was as many germs as they claim, we\u2019d all be dead!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pessimist that she was, my mother probably thought there were\u00a0more\u00a0germs than they claimed.\u00a0\u00a0Anyway, she only ever canned a few green beans that she knew we\u2019d eat within the next couple of weeks\u2014or less.\u00a0\u00a0But all our country relatives canned and at any family gathering the women liked to brag about their current tallies of vegetables canned for winter. Aunt Thelma was particularly aggressive about this and one year she got Mama\u2019s dander up by saying, \u201cI can\u2019t believe you don\u2019t put up some of your garden, Nell.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it happened, we had a bumper crop of beautiful tomatoes that year.\u00a0\u00a0Mama kept looking at them the following week, and saying things like,\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBoy! It would sure burn Thelma if I beat her on tomatoes this year.\u201d Then she was saying, \u201cThey say tomatoes keep better than other canned stuff, being they got a lot of acid in \u2018em.\u00a0\u00a0I keep hearing people claim you don\u2019t have to have a canner for\u00a0them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Finally, she said to Daddy, \u201cGeorge, get me some canning jars. I\u2019m putting up tomatoes. I\u2019m gonna show thelma a thing or two.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mama filled 72 jars of those beautiful tomatoes. We lined them up against the walls of the kitchen and just stood back and admired them. Even Daddy was impressed enough to pat\u00a0\u00a0Mama on the shoulder. \u201cGuess that\u2019ll show Thelma!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daddy\u2019s compliments were few and far between, so I guess Mama didn\u2019t know how to deal with them.\u00a0\u00a0She shrugged off the praise.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ll see how they eat.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day she wrote Thelma a postcard,\u00a0\u00a0casually saying at the end, \u201cWell, the garden is doing good.\u00a0\u00a0Particular the tomatoes.\u00a0\u00a0So far I\u2019ve put up 72 qts.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0After the postman had picked up the card, Mama said, \u201cI wish I\u2019d invited Thelma and Bob to come and spend the day.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As things turned out, it was probably a good thing she didn\u2019t. A couple weeks later an explosion jolted us all awake in the middle of the night.\u00a0\u00a0Daddy hadn\u2019t gotten over his army training days when he heard explosions and gunfire every day. He bellowed, \u201cWhat in the hellfire is that!\u201d Then we heard him running for the kitchen.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mama didn\u2019t answer.\u00a0\u00a0Maybe she already suspected what had happened.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A blast of cursing erupted in the kitchen. \u201cSomething cut my foot!\u201d Daddy yelled.\u201c Then came a second and a third explosion. \u201cGood Lord a-mighty!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t move, George,\u201d said Mama, pulling the light chain in the front bedroom and putting on her shoes.\u00a0\u00a0All four of us kids were at the kitchen door when Mama pulled the chain on the kitchen light.\u00a0\u00a0There was Daddy in his underwear and undershirt, surrounded with red liquid and glittering shards of glass.\u00a0\u00a0Red was dripping from the walls. Some was dripping from Daddy too.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mama was crying.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMy tomatoes are blowing up\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m\u00a0<\/em>about to blow up,\u201d Daddy yelled. \u201cI\u2019m over here bleeding to death, and you\u2019re blubbering over tomatoes. Get me a rag.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several months later at a family gathering, Thelma asked Mama how her supply of tomatoes was holding out.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s when Daddy redeemed himself for a lot of past sins. \u201cThey\u00a0been\u00a0gone,\u201d he said, winking at Mama. \u201cKids couldn\u2019t get enough of \u2018em. I told the Old Lady not to fool with putting \u2018em up no more.\u00a0\u00a0They didn\u2019t even last \u2019til cold weather!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon. Hardworking though she … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}