Faith, Family, and Fried Pies

Lorine Beaty

(September 19, 1927-June 3, 2016)

My family always went to church; many of the social activities were in the church family. The little churches back then in the country, the parents would take a quilt into the church and make a pallet for their younger ones on the floor beneath the bench which they were sitting. One time, Mother and Daddy thought they woke one of my sisters up and assumed she went to the wagon. Without checking, we headed home and did not realize until we arrived home that she was not with us!

Some of my earliest memories are of a two-room house with, of course, a dog run in the middle. Sleeping arrangements with a family of six children and my mother and daddy were quite interesting. Sometimes we were fortunate enough to have a featherbed, but more often, it was corn shucks in a mattress.

One of the foods that stands out most in my memories were my mother's fried pies—dried fruit wrapped in a pastry circle fried in butter. I still can remember that taste, recipe included.