Scoop Biggers: "Grandma's Homemade Apple Turnovers"

"Grandma's Homemade Apple Turnovers" My Grandma made the best apple turnovers in all of Nankipooh, and for that matter, Muscogee County and the whole dad gummed state as well!  Now as the old-time famous actor Walter Brennen used to say, "no brag, just fact".  Bessie Lee Livingston was born in 1887 in Nankipooh, Georgia in her father's house on the Livingston farm located on the east side of the road which traveled north from Columbus to Hamilton, and beyond to Atlanta.  Known as the Hamilton Road, it closely followed the tracks of the Central of Georgia Railroad between Columbus and Atlanta. To the south of the Livingston farm was the Adams farm, and on the west side of the road, were the farms belonging to the Moon and the Biggers families.  Most of these properties dated back to the period before the Civil War, and a couple were established around the time of the beginning of Columbus in1824.  Bessie Lee was born two years after the birth of a son across the road at the Biggers farm, whose father, Bascom Biggers, named James Norman.  Eighteen years later, these two babies would become man and wife.  Bascomb liked the name James ,since his father's name was James Joseph Walton Biggers.  As a matter of fact, Bascomb liked the name James so much, that he later named his fourth son James Walton Biggers, who would be the last and youngest of his children. Nankipooh was about five miles north of Columbus, which was a little bit of a ride in a wagon pulled by a team of mules, so it is understandable that if was its own little community. The Livingstons and the Biggers knew each other quite well with four boys and four girls at the Biggers farm, and four girls and three boys at the Livingston farm across the road.  It was no surprise when twenty year old Norman, and eighteen year old Bessie Lee were married in 1905.  They would be married for nearly seventy years. Farm life was hard in those days, and farm families had to do most things for themselves, which including raising crops for sale, as well as for food for their own table.  The Bigger's farm in addition to the field crops, also had a peach tree, several plum trees, a pear tree, a fig tree, several pecan trees, and my most favorite, two apple trees.  Those were my favorite because closely tied to those apple trees were my Grandma's homemade apple turnovers.  Grandma baked her turnovers in the oven and they came out soft and slightly browned, and had the sweet of smell brown sugar and cinnamon. One fall we began to notice that we weren't getting as many apples as usual, and couldn't figure out why, until one day Grandpa Biggers walked out on the back porch and saw three young boys up in one of the apple trees stuffing their pockets full of apples.  He went back in the house and got his shotgun, and came out again and stepped out into the backyard.  The apple trees were about fifty yards away from the house and the boys saw him coming, and started scrambling down out of the tree.  He hollered at them and they began to running, so he fired two shots up in the air, and they are probably still running yet.  And, you know what?  We always had plenty of apples after that, and I had plenty of Grandma's apple turnovers. Scoop Biggers

Scoop Biggers: "Drag Racing in Nankipooh"

Drag Racing in Nankipooh
  

A lot of time was spent around Nankipooh in the old days pulling Cokes and swapping yarns.  For those of you who don't know what pulling Cokes is, it is a little gambling game involving coke machines and the old green glass Coke bottles.  Two guys pull a couple of Cokes out of the machine and whoever has a bottle from the farthest away Coke bottling plant wins, and the other guy has to pay for his Coke.  We spent a lot of hot summer days doing this and telling stories, some of which were true.

Now one story my cousin Norman Biggers used to tell, was about the big drag race between Kenney and Mickey up on the old Smith Road off of the Fortson Road, a couple of miles north of the Nankipooh school.  Mickey was driving his '55 Chevy and Kenney was driving his dad's '64 Impala.  Carney was riding with Kenney and Norman was in the '55 with Mickey.  They all went up on the old Smith Road and had a couple of races with the Impala coming out on top.  There was something a little strange about the '55 though.  The gas pedal didn't work because there was a problem with the linkage to the carburetor, so Mickey had drilled a hole through the dashboard and run a steel cable into the inside of the car and wrapped it around a pair of pliers which accelerated the car when he pulled back on the pliers.

As they were headed back toward Nankipooh they were driving pretty fast with the Impala in front of the '55 and Mickey was driving right on their bumper.  Just as they crested a small hill, a flat bed truck was pulling out onto the road from the right side and Kenney locked down the brakes on the '64 and Mickey couldn't stop in time, so it looked like he and Norman were going to crash into the back of the Impala.  Then just at the last second Mickey swung the '55 hard to the left and into a two foot deep ditch on the other side of the road, and when he got past the '64 he went to pull back on the road and there was a car coming right at them.  It was an old black 1950 Chevrolet, and the driver was Norman's Great Aunt Helen Rogers, who looked like she was having a heart attack when she saw the green and white '55 coming right at her.  Mickey just stayed in the ditch with his left hand on the steering wheel and his right hand pulling back hard on that pair of pliers, right on past Aunt Helen and back on the road.

Now Norman swears that this is a true story, and that he was so scared, that he saw God that day, and thought he was a goner for sure.  Of course you can't believe all the yarns told around the Coke box down at the Biggers Grocery.  Just like the one that Grandpa Biggers told about him and his fishing buddy Boudreaux...well that had better be saved for another day.

Scoop Biggers