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

7th Grade at Nankipooh School

"7th grade at Nankipooh School"

 

Well after a long hot Nankipooh summer, we were looking forward to getting back to school and starting the seventh grade, which at Nankipooh was like being seniors at high school, and we were looking forward to the beginning of football season, since we figured we had a pretty good team.  Well right off the bat three unusual things happened.  First we found out that the new seventh grade teacher was a man, and there had not been a man teaching at Nankipooh before.  The second unusual thing was that this new teacher did not drive a regular car like everybody else.  He did not drive a Ford or a Chevy, but instead he had a funny looking little foreign car called a Simca, and the only foreign car any of us had ever seen was a Volkswagon.  So right off the bat we were a little suspicious of this "new guy".  Finally, there was a new kid in our class, and he rode a motorcycle to school.  We never knew his name, but he was three years older than the rest of us, and when he said "just call me Rocky", we did just that because we were all pretty scared of him.

It seems also, that Mr. Richardson, the new seventh grade teacher, as well as Nellie Smith, the principal were kinda scared of him as well.  It seems that Rocky was just going to school for a few months until he turned sixteen, so that he could drop out of school, and get a job down at the textile mill.  Mr. Richardson never said much to him at all.  Rocky would just sit at his desk and stare down at the floor, and pretend that he was the commentator at a stock car race, and he was pretty good at it to, cause I would listen to him a lot when he would be saying things like, "Its Fireball Roberts in the lead coming down the back straightaway, with Junior Johnson and Richard Petty racing for second right behind him".  I enjoyed it so much, that I am still a stock car fan today.  After about four months Rocky was gone, and we never saw him or heard from him again.

We also learned pretty quick that Mr. Richardson, who we liked to call "Doberman" from the character on the "Sergeant Bilko" TV show, in addition to not disciplining Rocky,  wasn't much of a teacher either.  It seems that he liked history and geography, but wasn't much on math and English.  In fact we studied English so little, that when I got to junior high school, the teachers could not understand why I knew so little about grammar and sentence structure, until I told them that we really didn't have English class at Nankipooh.  The truth is I was not a very good student either.

As a matter of fact, I got into so much trouble, that by the middle of the year "Doberman" had me pull my desk right up against his desk in the middle row, where he could whack me with a yardstick whenever he thought I needed it. The front desk in the middle row used to belong to Carolyn, who was the best student in our class, but after he made me take the front desk, she had to sit in the one behind me.  One day when he got really mad with me, he picked up a blackboard eraser from where he was standing up at the blackboard, and threw it at me as hard as he could.  Well I ducked and that eraser hit Carolyn right in the eye.  I believe "Doberman" got in a lot of trouble over that one.

I wasn't the only one who got into trouble, it seems like most of the boys in the seventh grade class got into trouble.  One time when "Doberman' left the room for a while most of us went and hid in the closet at the back of the room, so that when he came back, it looked like half the class was gone.  It was so difficult for them to figure out who was to blame for these things, that toward the end of the year it got to be pretty routine to hear Nellie Smith get on the PA system and say, "all of the seventh grade boys come down to the Principal's office. One time when we were all crowded into her office she told us that we all were going to get a whipping unless someone confessed to being the ring leader on that particular day.  I don't remember if anyone confessed, but I do remember the feel of that yardstick on my backside.  While I was at Nankipooh, I don't remember those big old heavy yardsticks being used for anything but whippings.

On the bright side of things, we had a pretty good football team and softball team that year, in fact we won the league championship for football that year. Our little touch football league included Double Churches, Britt David, and a few our schools in the surrounding area.  At the end of the regular season we were tied with Double Churches for first place, and it was decided that there would be a playoff game.  For some reason or other, that game kept getting postponed, and was finally scheduled for a week in January after we got back to school from the Christmas Holiday.  We played the game at Nankipooh, and as I remember it was about thirty degrees that day.  Well us Southern Boys always played in our canvass sneakers, but we believed we could run faster bare-footed, so we played the game without shoes.  We won the game, and the championship, but my feet were so cold that I thought my toes were gonna fall off!  The bad thing was that we were supposed to get a trophy, but we were told that because the game was played so long after the season that there would be no trophy, but we were still mighty proud, cause after all, Double Churches was sorta our arch rival, and they knew that we had whipped them.

Funny, but that football game was one of the few fond memories that I have of Mr. Richardson, who was a better coach than he was a teacher.  Six months later we would be leaving Nankipooh School and moving out into a bigger world, but we took a lot of fond memories with us.  Of course one of my favorite memories was the look on Doberman's faced when I ducked, and that eraser hit Carolyn right in the eye.

NBB

6th Grade at Nankipooh School

"6th grade at Nankipooh School"

After a wonderful year with Miss Ledford in the fifth grade, things took a real turn for the worse when I started the sixth grade, with the strictest teacher at Nankipooh, Mrs. Leonora Powell, who was in some ways more scarey than Nellie Smith the Principal.  I don't recall Mrs. Powell ever whipping anybody, but she sure sent a bunch of kids down to Mrs. Smith's office to get their whipping. A lot of the boys in our class called her "Old Lady Powell".

I was a member of the School Safety Patrol back then, and as we called it back then, I was a Patrol Boy.  Me and Carney were in charge of the street crossing in front of the school, which was the Fortson Road, a Muscogee County main thoroughfare headed north out of Columbus on its way past Nankipooh toward Fortson, Georgia.

 

One day when I was "on patrol" by myself, two boys crossed the road north of my crossing, where there was no cross-walk, which was strictly against the rules.  I raced up to them, and after a brief struggle, I was able to "collar" them and haul them back to the school. There I brought them before the Vice Principal, "Old Lady" Powell, who was in charge since the principal had gone home for the day.  After learning that I had used un-due force in apprehending the two suspects, she released them and took my Patrol Boy's badge from me.  The next day I was arraigned before Mrs. Smith who told me that she was going to return my badge, but that I had been up for promotion to sergeant, and under the circumstances, and also to appease "Old Lady" Powell, the promotion would be given to someone else.

 

Now when she heard that my badge had been returned, "Old Lady" Powell was outraged, and declared that as extra punishment, I would not be allowed to appear on the local TV station the following week, where our sixth grade class was scheduled to preform a demonstration of square dancing.  Now this was quite a blow to me, since the class had been rehearsing for this big event for more than six months.  After that, my career in law enforcement was never the same.  I was bitter because everyone in the sixth grade was on TV except me, and I never made officer in the Safety Patrol either.  Who knows, if I had made sergeant in the sixth grade, I might have been promoted to lieutenant, or maybe even captain in the seventh grade.

I can tell you one thing for sure, I was sure glad to get out of the sixth grade at the end of the school year, and I was hoping that maybe Mrs. Powell would be gone before the next year started, but of course, she was still there, so I had to spend a lot of time trying to stay out of her way.  Looking back on it after all of these years, I suppose Mrs. Powell was really a pretty good teacher, but I don't think anybody would think that she was kind-hearted, especially the boys.  I know one thing though, I ain't never cared much for square dancing ever since the sixth grade.

NBB

5th Grade at Nankipooh School

"5th grade at Nankipooh School" The summer between the 4th and 5th grades was great.  I had some new friends to play with, and we spent countless hours running through the woods around Nankipooh,  playing Cowboys and Indians, or Army.  Just about every Wednesday Grandpa took me fishing with him.  He had a man come in on Wednesday and run his store for him in the afternoon, and we went fishing at The Blackmon's place out on the Whitesville Road. The Blackmons were cousins of ours, and they had a fabulous place.  It was a fishing paradise, because they had three lakes, and the fish were always biting in at least one of them.  So when it came time to go back to school, I was not that thrilled about the idea. That all changed after I started school in the 5th grade.  First I learned that I had a chance to play softball on the Nankipooh Softball Team, but even more important than that, I met my first true love.  She was a goddess, just about the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.  It was her first year at Nankipooh, and she was straight out of college from Tennessee, and she was the new 5th grade teacher at Nankipooh, Linda Ledford.  I still am in love with her, even though I was only ten years old at the time. I had never bothered to comb my hair except when I went to church on Sunday, and most of the time my mother combed it for me, cause after all, who cares about your hair when you are ten years old.  Well after that first week in Miss Ledford's class, I asked my mother to get me some hair tonic, and she brought home a bottle of Vasoline Hair Oil.  The next morning I put about half that bottle on my head, and was slicked down better than a greased pig, except for a cowlick in the back, which stood straight up no matter how much oil I poured on it. I guess I looked a lot like Alphalfa from the old Spanky and Our Gang TV show.  When I showed up at school, I didn't think the kids would ever stop laughing.  I'm not sure what effect it had on Miss Ledford, but she didn't laugh, and was always kind to me, even though I don't think she ever knew what a crush I had on her. The good thing about all this, was that because I didn't want to disappoint her, I got all A's for the whole year, even one for good conduct and behavior, which never happened again, ever.  In fact for the rest of my life as a student, I rarely ever got any A's at all, but I got lots of bad marks for behavior.  The other really good thing about the fifth grade was that I started playing softball, football, and basketball for Nankipooh School, which continued for the whole time I was there.  When I look back on things, I guess that 1957 was just about the best year ever.  On top of meeting Miss Ledford, I got to take an airplane flight to St. Louis, where we went to the baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Milwaukee Braves, which featured Stan Musial and Hank Aaron playing against each other  I got an autographed picture o "Stan the Man" when we had dinner at his restaurant, and Hank and the Braves went on to win the world series that year.  While at the airport, I had a chance to meet my favorite TV cowboy, James Arness , who played Matt Dillion on "Gunsmoke".  To cap off that wonderful year, I got to go to the Georgia - Auburn football game, which was played in Columbus in those days.  Auburn won the game, and went on to become the 1957 National Champions.  I became a n Auburn fan right then, much to the dismay of my mother who went to Georgia. I also fell in love with automobiles that year, because the folks at Chevrolet produced the 1957 Belair Convertible, one of the prettiest cars ever made and still in great demand today.  But, despite all of these terrific things happening to me in 1957, the best of all was going to school at Nankipooh in the fifth grade with Linda Ledford as my teacher!  NBB

The Nankipooh School Series: 4th Grade at Nankipooh

"4th grade at Nankipooh School" By the time I started the fourth grade at Nankipooh School, I had become a shore enough "Southern Boy" who knew how to fish the small creeks around Nankipooh and run barefooted through the woods all summer long.  When we started school that first day in 1956, I had a pleasant surprise when I found out that Mrs. Revelle, my friend from the third grade, had also been promoted, and was now the teacher of the fourth grade, so things were really looking up for this "Napa Cowboy" turned "Nankipooh Southern Boy".   It looked like it was going to be a great year for me at Nankipooh, and, I wasn't the new kid at school anymore either, since there were a couple of new boys in my class. Then things took a turn for the worse, when I discovered two things which I did not know about.  One was the trouble little girls can get little boys into, and the second was Elvis Presley. Mrs. Revelle had a morning devotional in her class every morning, and the kids took turns being in charge.  When it was my turn, I brought to school a 45rpm record which had the Lord's Prayer on one side and the 23rd Psalm on the other side.  Mrs. Revelle was really pleased, and asked me to put the record on for the kids to hear, and meanwhile she ducked out to go down to the cafeteria to get an apple for her morning snack  That's when the trouble started.  We had a red-haired, freckle-faced little girl in our class, and she was as cute as a brand new puppy, so when she asked me to put on a record she had brought from home, I could not say no. Turned out that the record was Elvis Presley singing "You ain't nothing but a hound-dog" and the kids loved it.  In fact they all went a little crazy, and before you could say "swivel hips", they were up and dancing, and I was like the disc jockey on WDAK "Big Johnny Reb" radio playing rock and roll, and rocking the house down.  That's about when Mrs. Revelle stepped back into the room with a look of total disappointment for me on her face.  I was sent to sit in the hall by myself, and I never told her that the record was not mine, so I knew I had messed things up with my favorite teacher, not to mention the little red haired girl, after she discovered that I had put a big old scratch down the middle of that record which made it jump every time, right between hound and dog. To make matters worse, about the time I sat down out there in the hallway, along comes Ms. Nellie Smith, the school principal, who looked at me in disgust and asked what I was doing sitting out there in the hall.  When I told her, she told me I might as well come on down to her office and get my whipping, which she was really good at, I might add.  She used a one quarter inch thick, hardwood yardstick, and when she swung it, it made a cracking sound on your behind, that sounded like Mighty Casey at the bat. Now I learned three important things from all of this.  One you can trust cute little girls to get you into trouble, but you can't trust them to get you out of it.  The second thing I learned, is that it is probably best to not mix religion with rock and roll.  And, the third thing I learned, was that I didn't want Nellie Smith hitting anymore homeruns off of me.  NBB

Thanksgiving and the Old Hen

The Nankipooh Enquirer

"Thanksgiving and the Old Hen" When you grow up on a farm, there is a lot you learn about growing crops and taking care of live stock.  Most any farmer, no matter what kind of crop he raises, has a milk cow or two, and usually a few hogs, and of course a henhouse full of chickens.  That's kinda the way it was down at the old farm in Nankipooh when I was a young-un.  Part of my job was milking the cow, and gathering the eggs.  Course most of the time Grandma Biggers took care of those things, but I was the backup, when I wasn't totin in firewood, and totin out the ashes. We had a couple of dozen chickens, but the queen of the henhouse was Old Hen, who was pretty much past her egg laying days, but was still the queen of the roost.  Old Hen took her status pretty seriously too, and she didn't take nothing off nobody, or no critter neither.  Even our dog and our cat was scared of her, cause she'd come right for you, if you crossed her path with the wrong look in your eyes.  I am reminded of one winter during this time that it got so cold in Nankipooh that almost everything froze over during the night, when it went down to about seven or eight degrees, which was about the coldest morning I can remember in Nankipooh. Well, I got up that morning and was worried about my dog cause he was outside, and even though he had a dog house full of pine straw, it was mighty cold.  I went outside to check on him when the sun came up, and there he was all snuggled up in the pine straw, and right next to him was our cat, and I'll be darned, but in between the two of them, warm as toast, was Old Hen.  Now, I ain't seen nothing like that before or since.  Imagine that, a dog, a cat, and a chicken all huddled up together trying to stay warm.  It seems to me that if the three of them could get through a cold winter night together, then them Skunks and Polecats up in DC could get along together a little better than they do, just to get the country through some of these cold winter nights. A couple of years later, we were all sitting down together at the Biggers farm for our big Thanksgiving dinner, and as usual I could hardly wait, because I always did love Grandma's turkey and dressing, along with all the trimmings.  Well this year the turkey seemed a might small, and I said something about it, and Grandpa said, "Well times have been a little hard lately, so this year we are having chicken instead of turkey."  Well it was a little disappointing, but I understood, and besides, I like roasted chicken too.  About then Grandpa starts to carve up the bird, and he seems to be having some trouble, and then he says, "I'm afraid this old bird is going to be pretty tough!"  And then it hit me! "You ain't fixing to eat Old Hen are You?", I said.  Grandpa says, "You just be quite and eat your dinner."  "I ain't eating Old Hen", I said, and I got up and run out of the dining room without eating a bite of that Thanksgiving Dinner. When I look back on it, that was about the worst Thanksgiving that I can remember, but it taught me something about life.  You see, Old Hen wasn't much good at being a chicken anymore.  She couldn't lay eggs anymore, and she was too mean to be a good friend, and she was too tough to eat, but I still loved her.  Sometimes the best things in life ain't all young and pretty, or bright and shinny, but Old Hen had character, and I not only loved her, but I had a lot of respect for her too.  You know, I have lived long enough on this old earth, to have found a few people like that along the way, and I am a richer man for seeing them for what they are, and I like to call them my friend. "Now that's the way I see it, and you can tell'em I said so."         Bascomb Biggers