A Tribute to Pop-Pop

Our Pop-Pop passed away on November 19th, after a long, hard struggle with more problems than I care to name.  Even though he was in and out of the hospital since early October, none of us believed that his time was up.  He left a wife, a mother, three children, seven grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren, all of whom loved him dearly.  We miss him, already.

Pop-Pop was a quiet man with a wicked wit that bubbled to the surface at the most unexpected times.  When my husband and I announced that we were expecting our first child (and his first grandchild), his response was to look at my husband and say, "Ain't that just like a woman?  You just want to poke a little fun at them, and they take you seriously."  But when that child was born, before leaving the hospital, he leaned over my bed, kissed my cheek, and said, "Thank you for my grandson."

He was crazy about all of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and delighted in acting as their accomplice in mischief.  When our boys got a go-kart, he put the blade on the tractor and scraped a dirt track all the way around the front field so they'd have a safe place to ride at top speed.  He taught his 3-year-old great-granddaughter how to drive his Rascal scooter, and let her take it up the long driveway to get his newspaper.  He teased them, and argued with them, and good-naturedly endured their jokes about his age and his turtle-paced gait. 

He let the kids tinker in the shop with him, and ride the tractor with him.  He let the girls stick bows on his bald spot at Christmas, and wrote a letter nearly every day to a home-sick granddaughter who went away to Army boot camp. 

His great-grandchildren remember him for the candy he always had stashed in his shirt pocket or in a bowl high on a kitchen shelf.  While the family was gathered at his house after his death, one of them, a six-year-old girl, led me out to the workshop and asked, "Has he got any Tootsie Rolls in here?"  The next day, I caught the 4-year old boy in the shop, climbing onto the workbench and peering into plastic coffee cans, looking for the one that held the stash. 

Pop-Pop and I had a system:  I'd bring the dull hoes to the shop and deposit them in a barrel; he'd sharpen them and put them in another barrel in the gardening shed.  My favorite hoe was almost always ready to be used when I was ready to use it.  He kept my ragged old tillers running, and always took time to fill up a small gas can with a gas/oil mixture that wouldn't make their motors smoke the way they did when I did the mixing. 

After his funeral, the pall-bearers - mostly grandsons - loaded into Pop-Pop's old red-and-white Ford pickup truck and followed the hearse to the cemetery.  They piled out of it, and sang "I'll Fly Away" in the rain at his graveside.  He would've loved it.

Sweet Potato Casserole Recipe

This stuff is lip-smackin' good.

Basic recipe:

3 c. mashed sweet potatoes (takes about 3 big ones) *
1/3 c. milk **
2 eggs
1 c. sugar ***
1 t. vanilla
1 stick of butter
pinch of salt
cinnamon, if you like it, however much you like ****

Mix above ingredients well with mixer or by hand.  Pour into large casserole dish. 

Topping:

1 c. brown sugar
2/3 stick butter
1 c. chopped pecans
1/3 c. flour

Melt butter.  Mix flour, sugar, and nuts.  Pour melted butter over mixture.  Mix well, and spread over potatoes.  Bake 25 minutes at 350 degrees.  Serve hot or cold.

* Do yourself a favor:  boil the sweet potatoes and THEN peel them.  It much easier than doing it the other way around.  ;)

** Half & Half makes it richer.

*** I only had 1/3 c. of sugar in the canister, so I supplemented with light brown sugar and some cane syrup.  Whatever works, eh?

**** The recipe in this church cookbook does not call for cinnamon, but we like it.   Taste the potatoes before you add it, though; they're really good without it.