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