SOME JULY MUSINGS AND MEMORIES
Recently a longtime friend who edited a national magazine to which I contributed for many years and also did me a singular favor by turning his skilled editorial eye to a couple of my books shared a wonderful quotation with me. Turns out it is fairly well known, but somehow the wisdom it offers eluded me over the years. It comes from Africa, a region where oral history has immense importance, and simply suggests: “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” The wisdom of those words is gobsmackingly obvious, but sometimes we are all too prone to overlook the obvious.
I plead guilty on all counts in this regard, although in the court where readership of this newsletter forms the jury I will offer one thought that isn’t a defense but maybe rises to the level of explanation. That focuses on the fact that this monthly newsletter attempts, no matter how inadequately, to capture and share some of what I am daily ever more aware of; namely, that in ways beyond number I’ve enjoyed a privileged life. It certainly hasn’t been one of fortune or fame, but it has been a life hallmarked in goodly measure what my father once described as “marvelously misspent.” That came as a conclusion to a bit of commentary which found him shaking his head and saying “I can’t believe I raised a son who gets to go hunting and fishing all the time all over the country and world and actually gets paid to write about it.”
Daddy greatly oversimplified things and there has been a lot more grunt work and literary drudgery than there has gallivanting with fly rod or gun. Still, as my longtime friend and fellow laborer in the vineyards of outdoor communication, Jim Spencer, recently commented to me: “We’ve been mighty lucky; we were there for the latter part of the golden years of outdoor communication.” Incidentally, if you haven’t done so, make a point of acquiring Spencer’s most recent book, A Life Well Misspent (note how he chose, just like my father, to use the word “misspent” to describe the life of an outdoor communicator).
Mind you, it’s not (and never has been) a livelihood featuring all champagne and aromatic roses, leisurely travel, and good times in great hunting and fishing spots. Behind every successful sporting scribe there are endless hours at a computer (or before then, at least in my case, at a typewriter), lots of time spent organizing thoughts and trying to come up with ideas appealing to an editor, and the undeniable reality of low pay. Incredible as it may seem, pay rates on a per word basis, the only real way to measure the 2500-word features once popular in magazines of yesteryear against the 500-word on-line stuff that’s popular today, have actually dropped. I worked like the dickens in the 1980s and especially the 1990s to earn a livelihood as a writer, and I managed to do so in reasonable fashion. At least we didn’t starve and paid bills as they came due. Today, if I had the same financial needs to meet on a monthly basis, I don’t think I could do so.
That’s all really beside the point. If some of what I have written and continue to write has meaning, maybe plants a seed or two in the minds of readers that sprout, or if I manage in my all too often stumbling, fumbling way to contribute to appreciation of the world I have known, I’m blessed. While I’ve never been the sharpest of the sharp blades when it comes to turning what I know or have experienced into a livelihood, and while these monthly newsletters bring me nothing in the way of paying subscribers or income flow (some outdoor guys I know and greatly respect such as gun writers and hunters Richard Mann, Ron Spomer, and Craig Boddington have turned what I guess you would call blogs into money makers; the woman who makes this newsletter happen in terms of getting in to your computer through serving as my webmaster, Tipper Pressley, earns her keep through a blog and daily YouTube videos on the Appalachian lifestyle); and then there are the big bucks “influencers.”
Having gotten those musings out of the way, let’s turn to fond recollections. Longtime readers with keen memories will likely recall mention of one of my favorite writers, John Parris. While he never achieved the status of Thomas Wolfe, Olive Tilford Dargan, or Wilma Dykeman, other writers who called the western North Carolina mountains their homeland as Parris did, in my eyes he ranks above all of them. That’s because he was so masterful at capturing the folkways and character of mountain folks in a newspaper column he wrote three times a week for a whopping 42 years (do some quick ciphering and you’ll find that translates to between 6,000 and 7,000 columns). He called the column “Roaming the Mountains,” and that’s precisely what Parris did. He traveled throughout the high country seeking interesting personalities and enduring folkways for his story material.
I’ve got all of this well in the forefront of my mind right now for multiple reasons. For starters, Parris is the subject of a chapter in a manuscript profiling some three dozen mountain characters I’ve completed that is currently under consideration by a publisher. Also, I’ve been digging around in copyright information and browsing those columns with the possibility of a book or two along the lines of “The Lost Classics of John Parris” in mind. While scores of his newspaper pieces were later collected and anthologized in five books, these barely scratch the surface of what he wrote.
One of Parris’s favorite techniques, and it found him at his best, was to take a month or season of the year and capture its nature in a series of sentences or snippets along the line of “July is” or “The month of July brings.” I’ve adopted that style for this month’s offering, with what follows being my effort to depict some of what the month has meant, and in many cases continues to mean, to me.
*July is curling up on a cool porch with a good book after a summer storm has cleansed and cooled the air.
Courtesy of Don Casada
*It’s wading a trout stream as night gives way to dawn while casting in hopes of getting a wary brown trout to rise to a fly in the low light conditions.
*It’s fond and enduring memories of rubbing elbows with an old river rat (I later learned he had served a decade for murder in the state penitentiary) who was so dirty grime was visible on his bare ankles but who was also a catfishing wizard.
*July found me a fascinated kibitzer observing old men swapping knives and lies, playing checkers, or offering staunchly held opinions on everything from local politics to scandalous behavior by a womanizing local physician. Some were checker-playing wizards and almost every one of them had a lifetime of accumulated wisdom in mountain ways.
*It was savoring the shade of Loafer’s Glory, the town square arena where these old codgers held court, and suppressing laughter when one of them used an earthier term, “Dead Pecker Corner,” to describe the locale.
*July was Saturday afternoons at that self-same square listening to the fervent exhortations of street preachers universally known as Bible thumpers. Some, with their powerful voices and verbal depictions of hell-fired and damnation, could draw quite a crowd.
*The month was moving on, after a bit of impromptu entertainment from these sweaty-browed men whacking big Bibles as if the good book was a bass drum, to the nearby Gem Theatre. There, for the admission cost of one thin dime, a lad could enjoy a serial, a cartoon, and a cowboy movie featuring the likes of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Lash LaRue, Alan “Rocky” Lane, or Johnnie Mack Brown. Once in a while there would be a special treat in the form of a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan epic.
*July offered faces of religion beyond street preachers, with tent revivals, Vacation Bible School, and gospel singing. One outgrowth of this was a local gospel group that attained international renown, The Inspirations (Red Smiley part of the famed Reno and Smiley gospel duo, also had local roots).
*In my teen years July meant holding a full-time job working at the local golf course—mowing the fairways with reel-type gang mowers pulled by a tractor dating from the 1930s which had to be started by hand cranking, mowing the rough with a side blade, and dragging the sand greens (a contrast in terms, because they were brown, not green), and generally running things at the little nine-hole course.
Mostly though, “those memories that won’t leave me alone,” as the Statler Brothers put it in their wonderfully nostalgic song “Carry Me Back,” are about ordinary things which somehow, with the passage of time, have turned extraordinary.
Courtesy of Don Casada
*July witnessed the first really big trout I ever caught—I still have a grainy black-and-white picture of it Momma insisted on taking. For that as so many other simple but singularly meaningful things I owe her a lasting debt of gratitude.
*Years earlier the month was my first trout on a fly, which I ate with a special sort of “putting meat on the tale” sense of satisfaction that no trout before or since has ever provided.
*July was night fishing in the stream, Deep Creek, where I cut my angling teeth. This was always done after a heavy rain raised the creek level and left it muddy. I now know that night fishing for trout there was illegal (it never crossed our minds), although mostly we caught red horse, suckers, and redeyes, not trout.
*It was THE month for flirting with tourist girls spending a few days in the mountains, and it witnessed a whole bunch of one-week adolescent romances.
*July was taking perverse joy in giving a flatlander “Floridiot” (what Floridians were called, behind their back) directions to the Park which were inaccurate and would lead them to the dead end of what was known as the “New Road” and later became “The Road to Nowhere” because it was never finished. This was admittedly mean, but when folks asked questions like “Where do we see the bears?,” “Do they really make moonshine here?,” or “Are there wild Indians on the Cherokee Reservation?” the temptation to pull some city slickers’ strings was irresistible.
*It was double dating and watching a free movie that no drive-in theater ever matched–seeing the sun set, seemingly downhill, from Clingmans Dome.
*July was backpacking into a remote campsite in the Smokies and catching scores of trout every day while never seeing another soul except the buddies with whom I was camping.
*It was playing fast pitch softball on warm evenings under the lights and being warmed in a different way by thoughts of your girl friend sitting in the bleachers watching the game.
*July was feeling that a 15-cent milkshake and a 25-cent hamburger with all the trimmings were the finest fare imaginable.
*July Saturday nights mean going to square dances and kicking up one’s heels to classic tunes such as “Down Yonder” and “Under the Double Eagle.”
*It was the joy of looking at the new fall edition of the Sears & Roebuck catalog, which always showed up about mid-July, and picking out one or two items that Mom would buy as part of my wardrobe for the new school year.
*July was eating corn-on-the-cob to my heart’s content–that usually translated to a minimum of three ears of Hickory Cane or four of the smaller “sweet” corn.
*It was spending several days with my older cousins who lived all of six miles away, but to me it seemed like another world.
*July was endless carefree hours practicing marksmanship with a slingshot I had made (with some expert assistance from Grandpa Joe).
*The month was perfect for skipping rocks in the river in hotly contest competitions with other boys to see who could get the most skips.
*It was waiting until the cool of evening to ride my bike back and forth across a traffic counter hundreds of times. I have no idea whether a bike was sufficient to record on the clicker, but if so, the state transportation folks must have pondered mightily on how a little side road could have so much traffic.
*The first week or two of the month meant picking blackberries and enjoying the fruit of my labors in the form of goodness straight from nature’s rich larder (see recipes below).
*July brought another food memory in the form of the first ripe tomatoes (again, see recipes below). Then and now there are precious few things on the culinary front that can come close to the sheer joy of a luscious, juicy ripe Cherokee Purple fresh from the vine.
*The month saw my heart broken half a dozen times in those stumbling, sensitive times of teenage romance, only to heal miraculously a fortnight later when another cutie caught my eye.
*July was collecting baseball cards, movie star pictures on the lids of ice cream containers, and stamps (I’ve been a philatelist almost all my life, thanks to a stamp album given to me by an aunt).
*The month was enjoying an icy slice of watermelon with Grandpa Joe after a long, hot session of garden work, then listening to him chuckle at my efforts to become a master of seed spitting.
*July was riding truck inner tubes down a swift-flowing creek while scanning overhanging limbs for water snakes (not a problem) and hornets’ nests (a major problem if you disturbed one).
All these memories, and many more, course through my mind, and with increasing frequency, as I become ever longer in the tooth, sparser (and greyer) in the hackle, and broader in the beam. Still, as “Carry Me Back” from the Statler Brothers suggests, they “make me feel at home” and I’m glad to share them “while I’ve still got the time.” I suspect many of you have similar memories, whether they are ones which carry you back or those currently in the making. Either way, I hope you are as blessed as me in terms of having had Julys aplenty filled with wonder.
JIM’S DOIN’S
Recent weeks have, in large measure, found me sticking close to home. The heat of July has been withering, with the “real feel” most days reaching triple digits (as I write these words at a bit after 5:00 p.m. the real feel is 105 degrees with a heat advisory in effect) and making me long for cold trout streams for swimming and fishing from days gone by. I’ve pretty well stuck at home and in the house except in the early morning and evening. It’s a good time for a lot of reading and quite a bit of writing. Recent publications include my weekly columns for the Smoky Mountain Times; “A Good Time Was Had By All,” Columbia Metro, June, 2025, pp. 86-89; “The Glory of Grits,” Smoky Mountain Living, June/July, 2025, pp. 5-9; ”Frank Young: An Angler for the Ages,” “Sporting Classics Daily,” June 8, 2025; “The Outdoor Writing Life,” “Sporting Classics Daily,” May 30, 2025; “Mountain Wisdom and Ways: Blackberries,” Carolina Mountain Life, Summer, 2025, pp. 122-23. and ”The Genius of Gene Hill,” “Sporting Classics Daily,” July 13, 2025.
RECIPES
The height of the summer has always meant mighty fine eating, with both fare from nature and garden bounty coming into play in prominent fashion. Two toothsome, enduring favorites falling into those respective categories are blackberries and tomatoes, and the recipes below feature these two foodstuffs and some of the wide variety they offer.
ANNA LOU’S BLACKBERRY COBBLER
Named for my late mother, who used the recipe not only for blackberries but all sorts of fruit, this is a quick, simple, and immensely satisfying approach to baking a cobbler, and the good news is that it doesn’t involve the tedious work on making a crust. I baked one last night, and a big bowl, topped off with milk or ice cream, is tasty enough to bring tears of joy to a glass eye (yeah, I know, that is probably politically incorrect, but it’s a saying I heard throughout my boyhood and, besides, I don’t care a fig’s worth for political correctness).
1 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 stick (1/4 cup) butter
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2-4 cups of blackberries (use more or less according to how much crust you like)
Melt the stick of butter in a shallow, 9 x 13 inch baking pan, and then blend it with the milk and dry ingredients until thoroughly mixed. Pour into the baking pan and spread blackberries evenly. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown.
BLACKBERRY SAUCE
Fruit and berry sauces are often an overlooked aspect of the dessert equation, and this use for blackberries can bring delightful difference when served over a chocolate tart, cheesecake, or vanilla ice cream.
2 cups blackberries
½ to ¾ cup sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Mix all the ingredients well and refrigerate for an hour or more. Allow sauce to come to room temperature before serving.
BLACKBERRY DUMPLINGS
We normally think of dumplings (or at least I do) as something to got with a hearty chicken stew or other meat dish, but here’s an offering where they function as a dessert.
1 quart blackberries
1 cup of sugar (or to taste)
Enough water to make berries thin enough to cook dumplings
DUMPLINGS
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup milk
Place blackberries, sugar and water in saucepan and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, mix dumpling ingredients thoroughly and drop by tablespoons into boiling berries. Cook for 15 minutes or until dumplings are cooked through the center. Serve hot with cream.
BLACKBERRY SORBET
I’m no master of food terms, but in my view a sorbet falls somewhere between ice cream and sherbet. In other words, it’s a creamy, sweet, chilled dessert. With blackberries it’s also a synonym for deliciousness.
2 ½ cups boiling water
1 regular size tea bag
3 cups fresh blackberries
1 ¼ cups sugar
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 ½ lemons)
Pour boiling water over tea bag and steep for 10 minutes. Mix blackberries with sugar. Add tea to the berries; crush berries with the back of a large spoon to release juices. Cover and cool. Puree berry/tea mixture in food processor using a metal blade. Strain through a fine sieve. Add lemon juice and mix. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Place sorbet mixture in ice cream maker and process as you would ice cream. Freeze sorbet overnight to allow flavors to develop. Makes one quart (recipe ingredients can be doubled to make more).
TOMATO PIE
Tomatoes are normally thought of as a side dish, part of a salad, or maybe an ingredient in soup or stew, but in this offering they can be a meat-free main dish.
Pre-bake individual phyllo shells
Sauté a small onion with oil
Fresh basil
Slice tomatoes fairly thin and lay them atop paper towels. Salt the tops and let sit 10 minutes then pat dry.
For the topping, shred 2 cups of sharp cheddar (Cabot Seriously Sharp is a good choice). Mix with ¾ cup of real mayonnaise and the cheese, adding salt and pepper to taste (remember that the tomatoes have been salted and even though the patting will remove some of it a salty tang will remain).
Layer tomatoes, then onion and basil, then another tomato layer and spread topping to fill each phyllo shell to the top. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 or so minutes or until done.
OLD-TIME TOMATO SANDWICH
Including a recipe for a sandwich may seem an exercise in the obvious, but there are few things more satisfying. A fresh tomato sandwich made with a still warm tomato fresh from the garden is a mighty fine thing. The first ”real” tomato sandwich of the summer (and I ain’t talking about those cardboard-like imitations you buy in the grocery store) has always been an annual cause for celebration for me.
White light bread
Mayonnaise
Salt
Pepper
Garden fresh tomato slices
TOMATO GRAVY
2 cups chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons bacon drippings
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Water
Dash of sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
Add flour to hot bacon drippings and cook for 2-3 minutes while stirring steadily. Season to taste with salt and pepper as the mixture cooks. Stir in tomatoes and add dash of sugar. Cover over low heat until mixture thickens. Depending on how juicy the tomatoes are, water may need to be added to thin the gravy to the desired consistency. This recipe is a favorite summer breakfast item in many parts of the South, especially the Appalachians.
TIP: Canned tomatoes may also be used. A variation is to sauté dice onion in the bacon drippings before adding the tomatoes.