Lauren Denton
When I was growing up, one of my very favorite places to go was my grandparents’ house. Mema and Papa, my mother’s parents, lived in a little wooden house just north of Mobile in a community called Semmes. Aside from regular trips there for countless holiday meals and plain old Sunday lunches, my brother and I often spent the night out there when my parents had somewhere to go or just because we wanted to.
Semmes may have been only about 20 minutes from my parents’ house, but to me and my brother, it was the country. Mema and Papa had an old well on their property—it was empty, but we loved to watch Papa lower and raise the bucket on the rope. They had a chicken coop, a bunch of trees to climb, and a big metal barrel where Papa burned their trash (no city garbage pickup, and yes, I know there were probably environmental concerns with this, but to a kid, burning a bag of trash was super cool). There were strawberry vines, bee hives, a tire swing and a well-worn walking path through the woods behind their yard. Papa was a woodworker and his garage (or “shop” as we called it) was full of saws, hammers, nails and cans of paint and turpentine. Best of all, Papa would let us pound nails and build whatever we wanted to out of wood scraps. And afterwards, there’d always be a reward in the kitchen — peach cobbler, or a simmering pot of butter beans, and always Mema waiting on the back porch, gliding back and forth on the porch swing with a glass of iced tea in hand, waiting to hear about our adventures.
It’s been eighteen years since I pulled out of the driveway of that house for the last time, but there are scents and sounds that can take me right back to their house nestled among the trees: a specific soapy scent that always reminds me of their hall bathroom, or a particular type of kitchen cabinet and the slight scraping sound it makes when it closes. If I hear the sound of “The Golden Girls” or the familiar intro to “Dallas”, I’m right back in their den, sitting in Mema’s chair with her as she watches her shows.
And then there’s the taste I ran into a few years ago on a walk through the neighborhood. I’d always seen a particular vine climbing along the top of a metal fence along the side of the road and I thought it looked familiar, but I never stopped to investigate. But one day last summer when the sun happened to be shining just right, I noticed all the full green and golden-hued globes hanging from the vine, and I realized what they were. Mema and Papa had a scuppernong arbor growing next to the driveway of their house, and I used to stand under it with a huge bucket to collect them, though I’d eat as many as I’d save. That day, as an adult standing at the side of the road, I pulled one off and popped it in my mouth. I hadn’t eaten one in so many years, but my mouth still knew what to do.
I grabbed a few extra and brought them home for the girls. Sela mistakenly called them “skipper-dongs” and the name has mostly stuck. I showed them how to bite them gently, spit out the seeds, then get all the sweetness out of the skin before spitting it out. They were a little grossed out by the goo in the center (and really, I get it), but they got the hang of it, and afterwards, we were all on the hunt for the particular leaves and vines that signal nature’s sweet treats. We’ve found another vine of them growing wild, so I’ll make sure to take a bag with me to grab a few on my morning walks.
There’s not much around anymore that sends us back to a slower, simpler time. We can find it, but it usually requires more intentionality than it did a few decades ago. Those quiet, easy days at my grandparents’ house were so formative for me, I want as much of that for my kids as I can scrounge up — a walk on a path through the woods, time spent somewhere they can explore, the taste of a sun-warmed “skipper-dong” on a hot, late-summer afternoon.
When I’m not writing about my family and our various shenanigans, I write novels and go to the grocery store. My next novel, “A Place To Land,” releases Oct. 4. You can reach me by email at Lauren@LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks or Facebook ~LaurenKDentonAuthor.
