As I continue going through boxes at home, many things catch my eye. I found an article written years ago that made me recall a scary experience — something that came about with families who used coal oil lamps. If you are under 60, you probably cannot imagine such.
At our Enterprise School there were brothers J.T. and Edward Smith, who was a grade or two ahead of me. Their young cousin, a girl just my age, was living with them and was attending, too. She and I became good friends and soon were visiting back and forth.
Our family always passed where they lived when we were going to town.
Then there was Jake and Alice Smith’s house. There were at least seven or eight steps leading up to the wide front porch.There were cape jasmine and sweet olive bushes in the yard.
The litle cousin Rose asked me to spend the night with them. We walked the mile or so after school to their house. As darkness approached, Alice lit a lamp or maybe even two.
Lots of people kept some of their regular-use lamps on the water house shelf, if it was on the back porch. That was convenient to kitchen and sleeping areas. Alice removed the fragile, easy-to-break, lamp chimney and laid it aside, then turned up the cotton wick that continued down into the coal oil. She struck a match and touched it to the wick, causing the flame to burn. Then she replaced the chimney, which was held in place by four metal, bending, prong-like pieces.
If the flame was too high or too low, she turned the little wheel to adjust the wick just right. Too high would cause a yellow fire and smoke the chimney; too low, she might snuff out the fire.
Sometimes a little breeze would cause the flame to become larger and someone would “turn the lamp down.”
Once, Alice was adjusting the wick lower into its mechanism and she accidentaly turned a bit too much.
She saw what she had done, and at that moment one of the boys hollered, “It’s in the oil!”
The burning wick had been turned down into the coal oil chamber. We all knew what would happen next. I had seen the same thing at my home several times, and it was always a tense happening.
Thank goodness, we were on the back porch, which was not far from the ground level.
Alice steadied the lamp, with that small, flickering flame dancing on top of the oil. She removed the chimney and laid it aside, then threw the heavy glass lamp out in the yard. It landed on the grass, as she expected it to do, and did not break. We youngsters breathed a sigh of relief.
She did exactly the right thing. The flame soon used the oxygen in the air-tight chamber and gradually became smaller and smaller and went out. Rose and I watched — from a distance, rest assured.
That memory came to mind, as it had many times when we passed the Smith house on the way to town.
The story that I read, while laughing, is about Edward and me at school and one of my most embarrasing moments ever. Maybe I can reprint it, after all these years.
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Several people have requested my Mama’s tea cake recipe. The holidays are coming and this is a good time for us to make a double measure of these delicious and always fresh cookies. I can just see my mother, sitting in a low straight chair with its rawhide seat, as she creamed butter and sugar together in the heavy earthen crock, using a wooden spoon that had lost it oval shape with years of use.
Hers were baked in a wood stove, probably moderate heat, determined by quickly thrusting her hand into the oven. This is her recipe, though she probably did not use measuring cups and spoons like we do.
Mama’s Tea Cakes
3/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
11/4 cups sugar
2 tablespoons rich milk or cream
1 cup pecans, finely chopped
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour, or a bit more
2 teaspoons baking powder
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Add part of dry ingredients, then milk, remainder of dry ingredients and flavoring. Stir in pecans. Add a bit more milk if too stiff.
Roll portions of dough thinly on floured cloth. Cut in rounds and place on cookie sheets. Bake until lightly brown around edges. Remove quickly to a torn paper sack to cool, for they crispen quickly.
(Today we would use vegetable shortening or margarine and probably use no-stick spray on the cookie sheets. And, surely, we would not use a brown paper grocery sack to cool them on.)
If you use a cookie press to squeeze out the dough, omit pecans. Pieces can be pressed on, if you choose. My favorite pattern is the flat, ridged one. I would squeeze out the entire length of the sheet, holding the press diagonally, then sprinkle and decorate cross-ways and bake. As soon as pan is done, cut the still-soft cookies crossways about three inches in size. Then quickly remove them before they cool.
You can “fancy” them up so easily. Melt chocolate and touch the ends in, then dip in chopped pecans or coconut. Vary your flavorings.
Make a batch, and if you have a little butter, be sure to use some. Then you will know how good they used to taste when I was a little girl.
