Savoring Spring Tonics
When it comes to a traditional mountain rite of spring from yesteryear, it’s tempting to claim, decades after the fact, that I was the victim of child abuse. If so, however, child abuse was once near-universal in my highland homeland.
This particular spring tradition involved an annual “tonic,” with the underlying premise being that after a long, hard winter everyone’s plumbing needed a thorough cleansing—a sort of internal “pick me up.” The restorative came in numerous forms including sassafras tea, a variety of wild greens, and the remedy which reigned supreme in my family, sulfur and molasses.
Every year during my boyhood, as frogs began to peep on warm afternoons, buds on maples swelled and showed red, and bluets, bloodroot, dogwood, and other early spring wildflowers burst into bloom, the subject of spring tonics entered adult conversation. Although my mother was a firm believer in cleansing the inner body, not to mention every crevice, cranny, and corner of the house, the leading voice calling for action in the administration of spring tonics was that of Grandma Minnie. With moderating weather brought the first hints of escaping winter’s doldrums and the dreaded mollygrubs associated with cabin fever, she would pronounce: “It’s about time for everyone to take a spring tonic.”
At some juncture Grandpa Joe would add his pithy commentary to the spring tonic groundswell. I didn’t really mind Grandpa Joe’s opining on the subject, since he staunchly maintained the finest of spring tonics came in the form of sassafras tea, or better still, various wild vegetables—poke salad, dandelion and creasy greens, water cress, ramps, greenbrier tips, dock, lamb’s quarters, fiddlehead ferns, and the like. “Eat a big bait of any of them spring greens,” he reckoned, “and they will loosen you up and set you free.” Once I realized he meant that most wild vegetables are not only filled with vitamins but function as a powerful purgative, I fully understood the picture. Since I was quite fond of the various wild greens popular in the Smokies and regularly consumed by mountain folks (and remain so until this day), I was all for spring tonics as Grandpa defined them, never mind aftershocks as predictable as preparation for a colonoscopy. Then too, although my preferences leaned towards vegetative tonics, plenty of honey and a bit of lemon juice made “sass” tea palatable
In addition to taste, another reason for being partial to Grandpa’s thoughts on tonics was that the process of gathering the raw materials, whether wandering around in fields and woods grubbing up sassafras sprouts or gathering poke and other green delicacies from nature’s rich larder, suited me to a “T.” Gathering poke salad brought me the first earned “cash money” of my boyhood, and a ritual of spring I cherished throughout my youth involved celebrating the opening of trout season with a backcountry feast of fried fish accompanied by a salad of branch lettuce and raw ramps.
On the other hand, the female side of the family spring tonic equation vexed me to no end. It involved noxious nostrums sternly administered and carefully observed for proper after-effects, and discussions leading up to the actual event were about as troubling as the terrible taste. Indeed, to my way of thinking everything Grandma and Momma had in mind was unpleasant. While undeniably effective, the tonics smelled bad, tasted worse, and were administered under considerable duress.
I’d already had more than a fill of cod liver oil during winter, because throughout my early childhood you took a capsule of it daily at school during the cold weather months whether you wanted to or not. Yet the foul taste of the fishy oil, never fully disguised by the gelatinous capsule containing it, was a mere child’s play in comparison to foulness of the key ingredient in Grandma’s favorite spring tonic—powdered sulfur. Since I loved blackstrap molasses, a nectar-like gift from the culinary gods, the first time I was on the receiving end of a hefty two-tablespoon dose of sulfur and molasses I thought I was in for a treat. Talk about disillusionment. You simply can’t employ enough sweetening to hide the noxious taste of a big dose of sulfur.
Once the first mixture of sulfur and molasses was in my mouth, realization immediately dawned I’d been hoodwinked, hornswoggled, bamboozled, and in general led down a fool’s path by two determined females. From that point forward until I “outgrew” the dictates of wily female family members, I dreaded the annual administration of spring tonic worse than a vaccination, (and as a kid I had mortal fear of inoculations whether administered in the arm or posterior).
Although such was decidedly not the case in my family, there were always some who thought the ideal way to render spring tonics innocuous or even downright pleasant was to accompany them with a good slug of peartin’ juice. Not too long prior to his arrest and subsequent suicide, I had the opportunity to discuss such matters with the late Popcorn Sutton. Popcorn was a genuine mountain character and lifelong producer, purveyor, and partaker of corn squeezins. His studied opinion was that “a body needs some properly made likker, along with a mess of trout and bait of ramps and branch lettuce,” to get into spring in proper fashion. I’m not about to defend his musings on medicinal approaches connected with changing seasons, but there’s no denying his prescription is one that has long enjoyed a considerable following.
Bitter draughts and bootleg liquor aside, the story underlying spring tonics is one typifying the practicality of hardy mountain folks and the manner in which a close connection with the good earth formed an integral part of their lifestyle. In old days, especially before the advent of freezers and even widespread reliance on canning, mountain diet during winter months was long on starches (cornbread, biscuits, and potatoes), salted meat, and dried foods such as fruit and leather britches. It was decidedly short on fresh vegetables and fruits, other than winter squashes and turnips, and thus lacking in a number of important vitamins.
Mountain folks didn’t talk about balanced diet, but they did discuss blood thinners, purging the body after winter, and come spring had an understandable craving for fresh victuals. That’s why the first greens of spring were so prized, and they were indeed a tonic to the body as well as a dietary approach that uplifted the spirits. After all, how can anyone resist the beauty of a warm spring day, the loveliness of a world gradually turning green once more, and the appeal of the mountains glowing with flowers as the good earth reawakens? To me, that’s the ultimate spring tonic. As former politician Zell Miller wrote in the title of a fine book, these practices are Purt Nigh Gone. Yet to recall them is to relish, even revere, such traditions.
Picking a poke of poke (for those with limited mountain vocabularies, “poke” is high country talk for a paper bag as well as the name of a wild vegetable) was commonplace in yesteryear. It was among the first edibles to herald ever-returning spring, and big bait of poke salad, often topped with slices of boiled eggs, was standard fare for the season.
It took some effort to gather poke, although the “weed” was plentiful. Dead, forlorn stalks from the previous year standing at field edges, along fence rows, on road banks, or in cow pastures told you where to look. It was just a matter of timing and gumption, and for a few weeks it was a “cut and come again” vegetable.
After being cooked and drained three times, poke salad is ready for the table. The multiple sessions of bringing it to a boil and then draining are necessary because of the wild vegetable’s exceptionally high level of vitamin A. Once ready, a mess of poke makes a mighty tasty dish similar to spinach or turnip greens.
Trout, Ramps, and Branch Lettuce Feasts
The opening day of trout season in North Carolina was once a time for spring celebration as sportsmen shook off the mollygrubs, greeted a new season, and hopefully caught a mess of trout. The fishing part of the equation remains strongly in place, so much so that on opening day on some hatchery-supported waters it almost seems that you need to carry your own rock if you want a place to stand. On the other hand, a type of feast once commonplace on the trout opener seems increasingly to belong to a world we have lost. This experience in pure culinary delight involved trout, wild greens known as branch lettuce (saxifrage), and ramps.
A number of mountain towns still hold ramp festivals, and the pungent wild vegetable, a singularly odiferous member of the leek family, has become all the rage in hoity-toity recipes and upscale restaurants. Ramps are delicious when pan-fried, steamed, or scrambled with eggs, but you can bet chefs in such high-brow establishments don’t serve ramps raw. In that form they come with an after-effect that redefines halitosis, makes garlic seem meek as a lamb, and renders mouthwash completely useless. So much is that the case that during my youth anyone who came to school after having eaten ramps was forthwith sent home for three days. You simply couldn’t stay in the same room with such souls.
Fortunately, if everyone in a group of campers or a party of fishermen eats raw ramps, no one is bothered. Believe me, in such situations you will eat them, like it or not, in self defense, because once you enjoy a “bait” of the delicacy you can no longer smell the after-effects produced by other whom have consumed it. By happy coincidence, right about the time trout season opens in hatchery-supported streams, ramps are putting out new growth, signaling that the slender tubers are ready to be eaten, and branch lettuce is greening up as well. Until you’ve eaten pan-fried trout dressed up in cornbread dinner jackets and fried to mouth-watering perfection, with a side dish of a hearty salad of branch lettuce and ramps “kilt” (wilted) by hot bacon grease, yours has been a life of culinary deprivation. Merely thinking of such a feast is enough to put my salivary glands into involuntary overdrive, and no five-star Parisian restaurant can match such fare.