Sweet Tater Time
By Bill Shepard
They are here, folks! The cooler days and nights have arrived. I’ll bet I speak for a lot of folk when I say, I’m glad! I suspect that before the warm weather returns, we will all be ready for it. That is the good thing about living where the seasons are pronounced. I’m ready to smell some wood smoke as it spirals through the chimney and sorta hangs low over the housetops.
Here in the upstate, we are in need of rain. We have had one of the driest summers on record, certainly the driest I have experienced! Just the other day I saw on TV where a group was meeting to pray for rain. God doesn’t have a way to drive us to our knees.
This is sweet potato weather. When I was a boy we didn’t say potato, mill village folk called them “taters!” Even the folk that knew better called them taters.
Things are different now than when I was a boy. Farmers in that time long ago would not think of harvesting their crop of sweet taters until a killing frost came and burned the vines black! Nowadays folk start gathering potatoes as early as September. Recently my sister who lives in Darlington called to tell me she had seen folk in the field gathering sweet taters. I asked, “Have you seen frost on the housetops yet?”
I have memories for how sweet Darlington grown sweet taters are. I* have said that no place on earth are sweet taters sweeter than those grown in Darlington County! I stand by that statement!
When I was a boy, I can remember seeing local farmers in their fields and with a mule and plow they would be plowing their taters from the good earth. I even helped them at times and at the end of the day the farmers would pay me taters instead of money!
The farmers would often bring wagonloads of taters to the village to sell. One could buy a bushel basket filled to the top for fifty cents! I was always glad when sweet tater time arrived! There was nothing that could draw me to mama’s kitchen like the aroma from sweet taters baking in the oven! If I were outside the house and up the street playing when I got a whiff of sweet taters baking I would head for home. Mama would sometimes say, “I knew when you smelled the taters backing you’d come home.” Mama would start a fire in the large wood burning stove that stood in the corner of our small kitchen, put a pan of sweet taters in the oven, and mouths would begin to water! So good! We had baked taters, tater bread, and pies galore! Mama could prepare sweet taters in a lot of different ways. My favorite way was baked! I don’t know why, but it seemed that they were sweeter than the ones I buy in the store today! When mama baked taters the juicy syrup would ooze from the inside out and form a crust on the outside. On a cold wintry day, there was nothing that could warm me from the inside out like a big hot sweet tater!
I’ve told the following story many times, and here it is again:
There were no lunchrooms in public schools when I was a boy. That was true at St. John’s Grammar School in Darlington. Mama prepared a lunch for me to take to school. She would put a biscuit filled with homemade jam in a brown paper bag and I would be off to school. I bet you have already guessed what comes next! Yes, during sweet tater season my brown paper back often contained one of Mama’s freshly baked sweet taters. That was true one day when I was in second grade. One morning, the aroma from that tater got control of me. When the teacher would turn her back, I would pinch off a piece of my tater and put it in my mouth. I was unaware that my teacher knew what was happening. I had heard that teachers have eyes in the back of their head; I was about to be convinced that it was true!
Having waited as long as she could, my teacher looked at me and spoke, “Willie if you can’t wait until recess to eat that tater (she actually said “tater”) then take it outside and eat it! When you have finished, you may return to the classroom.”
That is what I did! I never forgot the experience, or the teacher!”
Note: Many years after moving to Florida, I would return to Darlington during the summer months for a visit. My wife and I would visit St. John’s and walk about the campus and reminisce over our childhood years. One year while visiting, school being out, some carpenters were inside the room where I have written about. I stepped inside and sat in a seat. When I recalled the story, I began to laugh – one of the men asked what was so funny. I told him the story you have just read.
Mr. Shepard is a native of Darlington, S.C., and a current resident of Piedmont, S.C. He is the author of “Mill Town Boy” and “Bruised”. He has been sharing his tales of growing up in Darlington for decades, and we are delighted to share them each week. His mailing address for cards and letters is: Bill Shepard 324 Sunny Lane, Piedmont, S.C., 29673.