It is 10:50 on a workday morning and I’m sitting in my living room, in my pajamas, eagerly anticipating what has become a significant high point of my day: the first bite.
It is everything I knew it would be—crunchy, buttery, flavorful,
perfect. Two thin slices of salt-rising
bread, toasted, buttered, and slathered with guava jam. Comfort food at its finest.
I’m eating breakfast in my PJs at 10:50 on a workday morning because
the Atlanta History Center is closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 crisis. I am, thankfully, working from home. The world as we knew it has ceased to
exist. A virus that started as the butt
of various beer jokes halfway around the world rapidly gained momentum over the
course of just a few weeks. It morphed
into an alarming threat for anyone who traveled internationally and finally
exploded into our sheltered, privileged, American world as a healthcare
nightmare, bringing political chaos, shelter-in-place directives, and empty
grocery store shelves with it.
That same COVID-19 crisis is, indirectly, the reason why toasted and
guava-jammed salt-rising bread is now a significant high point of my days.
Let me back up a bit. Back
before the earth cooled, when I was a wee tyke, summers typically included a visit
to the home of my maternal grandparents (known affectionately as Colonel and
Dardy) in Fallston, Maryland. It was
paradise for me, a city girl raised in a mid-century modern ranch house in “the
Valley,” just northwest of Los Angeles.
Set on fifteen acres of pine forests, fruit orchards, gardens, and
chicken and pigeon coops, their home was filled with tasteful antiques and
knick-knacks gathered from the places they lived while Colonel served in the
Army. But it was the two of them who
made it magical. Gifted storytellers who
possessed wicked senses of humor, they were just fun people to be around. And the food.
Oh, my goodness, the food. My
grandfather made peach ice cream from the fruit in his orchard. We feasted on squab (young pigeons) for
dinner. Ritz crackers with home-made ham
salad for lunch. Vegetables of every
kind, straight out of my grandmother’s garden.
And salt-rising bread. I thought
everybody ate salt-rising bread for breakfast.
We had it in Fallston every summer, but we could also get it at Van de
Kamp’s bakeries in Southern California.
It wasn’t until after my grandparents passed away and the Van de Kamp’s
chain folded that I realized—NOBODY knew what salt-rising bread was. Nobody had
even heard of it. One night last year,
whilst feeling particularly nostalgic, I managed to find a single bakery online
someplace in the east that carried it.
It’s apparently an Appalachian specialty. Ah, well, I thought—maybe
someday I’ll order some and see if it’s the same.
Fast forward about forty years from my last piece of salt-rising bread
to last month. As luck would have it, I
was planning a research trip to West Virginia just as the situation in Wuhan
began dominating the headlines. I am
researching Colonel’s family and their history is inextricably connected with
eastern West Virginia. West Virginia
University, in Morgantown, holds in its archives the personal papers of my
third great-grandfather, Logan Osborne, on a single reel of microfilm. I simply had to see it.
I watched with growing alarm as the headlines grew more threatening
with every passing day. Sometimes with
every passing hour. It seemed like the
world—certainly my world—was closing in on me.
I watched helplessly as Kuwait shut its borders, effectively trapping
Annike and her family there. Canada
closed its borders, effectively trapping Megan and her family there. I watched helplessly as the airline industry began
to implode, seriously threatening Benjamin’s livelihood. I watched helplessly as institutions and
businesses everywhere began restricting their hours, then closing their
doors. Jacey closed her studio. Bryan worked his last day at Coke downtown
and shifted to working from home.
To ignore my growing conviction that AHC would soon follow suit—and
that ultimately it would become impossible to travel--I found myself surfing
the internet in the wee hours one morning, looking for places to eat in
Morgantown. I was determined to take
that one last trip while I still could and, hopefully, unplug from work for
just one day so that I could face what I knew was coming. One of the most recommended places to eat in
the area was Rising Creek Bakery. Rising
Creek Bakery… Where had I heard that
name before?
Glory be—it was the place I had found online that still makes salt-rising
bread.
I took the trip. It was utterly
perfect, apart from the texts and calls from work that occasionally
intruded. AHC was, indeed, closing and
there were questions to be answered and decisions to be made.
But I got my salt-rising bread, by golly. And the first bite was everything I hoped it
would be. If I closed my eyes, I could
see Dardy in her kitchen with the ever-present jar of guava jelly—a favorite of
hers from their years living in Hawaii.
I got to view the microfilm, too—a gold mine of family history.
So now, as I work from home cataloguing our wonderful veterans’ oral
history interviews, I get to listen to stories of resilience and community from
those who experienced far more lasting horrors than even this deadly virus. They survived. And then they thrived. And that is comforting.
And each morning I have those two thin slices of toast with guava jam
and I can still see Dardy in her kitchen.
And I think of Colonel’s Appalachian heritage. They endured war and hunger and fear and death
and disease and heartbreak. They
survived. And then they thrived. And that is comforting too.
My stash of salt-rising bread won’t last much longer. I worry that Rising Creek Bakery may not
survive the COVID-19 plague. It is,
after all, a small business that many would consider “non-essential.”
But it is essential to me. I
click over to their website and am enormously relieved that although they are
closed to the public, they are still shipping their products online. I place my order—unsliced loaves are $5.85 each,
and another $10.85 to ship.
A bargain, for me at least, at twice the price.
Dardy and Colonel at their Fallston home, circa 1968
Dardy, in her favorite chair, circa 1968
Almost Heaven, West Virginia--actually, just a few miles over the border in Pennsylvania. It's worth the trip. Either online now, or in person post-plague:
1 comment:
Sitting in the chair, she sure looks like your Mom!š
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