[Jess]

Originally Posted by Sweet

Where I'm from...
'Lil Gramma' would be makin' me grits for breakfast, with butter and brown sugar. And before noon, we would walk down to the Mennonite Farmers Market known as Dutch Foods...but on the way,we would stop at the HUGE Woodmen of the World barn to get open pit BBQ chicken. (...that we could smell from the house when they started grilling at the crack of dawn. It makes your mouth water!! and you can't wait till they start selling at 10am.) It's a good thing we would walk to town, because if we'd use the car, we'd get behind a dozen or so horse-n-buggies with Mennonite or Brethren families all headed to Dutch Foods or IGA.

At the market, Lil Gramma would get us some homemade, fresh outa the oven, soft wheat rolls with butter and honey, a bag of her horehound candies and my butterscotch, 2 bottles of homemade root beer or cream soda and some green tomatoes to fry up later for dinner.

On our way home, we'd stop by our Dunkard Brethren church...a very small, simple, plain, red brick "salt box" of a building.... to sweep and clean up before Sunday Service. We would then sit in the little handmade wooden kids chairs in the School room and delightfully dig into our BBQ chicken and other treats (that chicken was SO tender it would fall off the bones and the smokie flavor was all the way through), while she told me the story about how her husband built this church with his own hands, how the pews, hardwood floor and other furniture were all handmade by him and the other Deacons. That church felt like home as much as her wonderful, warm, inviting home did.

Before we left, we'd place out all the hymnal books and wind up the old antique "Regulator" clock...just about then, old Brother Uplinger and his wife would pull up in his military-retired 1945 Dodge WC 52 that had "farm tags"....we would shimmy into the back and I'd snuggle close to Lil Gramma as we'd putt putt up the hill to the Dayton Autumn Festival, where we'd get some pumpkin bread for that night's dessert.

I would give anything to be able to spend a day like that again with Lil Gramma.

To this day, that BBQ chicken is my FAVORITE.

WOW, Sweet, Thank you for the visual! What a great area it sounds like and what rich warm memories!

I love the quiet of the Mennonite/ Amish/ Dunkard areas. The "peace" is almost palpable. We have that sort of calm in the foothills here. Nothing quite like a slow drive on a crisp sunny morning to lift your spirits and allow the worlds troubles to melt away.

Thanks again!