My second Mother, Vergie Mae Winn Stith, grew up in Cullman, Alabama, a little town with a population of 2,130 in 1910. When she was a young girl, she told me her mother would send her to buy vegetables from a neighbor, two German sisters who had a big garden.
[My first mother died of colon cancer in June 1947, when I was five. Dad remarried 20 months later, on Feb. 24, 1949. Vergie Winn, that was her maiden name, was his third wife, or fourth, I’m not sure. She was a 48-year old widow with no children. My second Mother told me that her previous husband, Leonard Gunn, was killed when a horse he was trying to hitch up kicked him in the head. He died in 1935.]
Anyway, all the vegetables were beautiful, Mother told me, especially the lettuce.
One day Mother said she asked the German sisters how they grew such beautiful lettuce, what was their secret?
“Oh, vee pour zee chamber pot on zem,” one of the sisters said.
Postscript: The two sisters lost a good customer that day.
Coming Monday: BB Battles