Old-fashioned cane syrup

When I was coming along we didn’t have much, but we had everything we needed. Times were hard but times were good. Now days seems folks have about everything, most of which they don’t need. Times are still kinda hard but not always so good.

I grew up in a rural community. Families grew or made the necessities. Everything was organic. Chickens fertilized the garden, folks raised livestock, and had hog killings. Families worked together on the farm. A good book about those days is “Kids Don’t Have Backs” by Tom Pelham, the late secretary of the Florida Department of Community Affairs.

One of the staples was cane syrup. What fetched this to my recollection is I get a Christmas gift of cane syrup every year from my friend Ben, the finest mayor Lake Park, Georgia, ever had, and inventor of the “Super Cooker” grill.  Yes, the one you see in almost every bank’s parking lot. He’s shipped them all over the world to military bases, etc. Augie Busch is even the proud owner of one and I have one. Wood Duck keeps mine in his shed since I don’t have a place for it. He might put a whole wild hog on it from time to time.

My Daddy and Mr. Roy put up cane syrup. His farm was on the banks of the Alapaha River so he had a label “Alapaha River Farms Old Fashion Cane Syrup” with a rooster on it. When we were kids we would chew a plug of sugar cane while the grinding was going on. Mighty tasty!

So, this is how it worked. A long pole was attached to the grinder with a mule tied at the end. The mule would walk around in a circle to operate the grinder. The sap would go in a vat with a furnace and the juice would be cooked down to just the right consistency. It was a community event and always much anticipated.

Now, as I remember things, Daddy ran the cane grinder with the power take off from his tractor because his mule named April had died. April was born on April 1 and was quite famous as she was a movie star. A movie originally named “Like a Crow on a June Bug” but later changed to “Sixteen,” starring Mercedes McCambridge and Ford Rainey, was filmed in Lake Park in 1972. The opening scene is a family riding to town down a dirt road in a Hoover wagon being pulled by a mule. Yep, it was April and Daddy’s Hoover wagon. It’s a pretty good movie with scenes in a carnival featuring a burlesque show. Now, it was summer time, and the makeup tended to run a little bit on the prominent features of the dancers. To remedy this, some local kids were hired to fan these ladies’ features between cuts. A friend of mine allowed “That was the best summer job I ever had!”

The cane syrup Ben gets each year is made in Echols County, Georgia, where some fine folks live. Echols County is the smallest of the 159 counties in Georgia. Statenville, unincorporated, is the county seat. I was in the banking business for a time and Ferman Staten was one of my good customers. He came to see me one day to do a little business and while I was filling out the paperwork I asked, “Mr. Staten, do you know the zip code of Statenville?” To which he replied, “Yep, sure do, I own the post office.” And he did. He was the low bidder on a government contact to build the post office and lease it back. Of course, he had to build it to specifications including a flag pole. Ferman thought the manufactured poles he could order were too expensive so he went to the local lumber yard and got a wooden pole. Of course, the pole needed a ball on top so he got a toilet float, attached it and painted the whole thing silver. I would love to ride through Statenville headed to Fargo, Georgia, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp and look up and see that toilet float. As time has gone by I guess the pole deteriorated and like a lot of things these days the toilet float is gone.

I almost forgot to tell y’all about the Papa Mole, Mama Mole and little Baby Mole burrowin’ along one day and pretty soon they burrowed up on a fella cookin’ some syrup. The Papa Mole says, “I believe I smell some cane syrup.” To which the Mama Mole says, “No, I believe that’s sorghum syrup.” The little Baby Moles says, “All I smell is molasses.”

By the way Mr. Roy told me the best way to eat cane syrup. He said, “Gill, get you a cathead biscuit hot right out of the oven, put some butter on it, pour cane syrup all over it. On the first bite make a half moon and on the second bite make a total eclipse.”

Your friend,

Capt. Gill