Pick Me A Mess of Butter Beans

I’m fixing to pick me a mess of butter beans.
But how much is a mess? Well, if you’re from the south you know a mess can be a varying amount, and the exact quantity of peas, butter beans, corn, okra, tomatoes, squash, or greens needed to make up a mess depends on several variables.

If you’re fixing to pick a mess of something, then you usually have a hint about what size the mess needs to be by the number of folks partaking, and your knowledge of their eating habits.

Of course you would know about how much a mess needed to be if it was just for the immediate family, but you would have to do some thinking if company came.

Also, mood plays a part into how much a mess needs to be—sometimes people are real hungry and sometimes they’re not. But I didn’t have to worry about that when my momma told me who was coming for supper.

It was Uncle Elmer, Aunt Leona and my four cousins, all of whom were always real hungry. So when I headed off to the garden I didn’t have to do any deciphering. I just took big containers with me.

Cousin Elroy weighed in at close to 300 pounds. Then there were his three sisters, April, May and June. They weren’t as large as Elroy, but between the three of them they could eat several messes of most anything that grew during the months they were named after.

Okra was the girl’s favorite so I cut what we call “a big old mess” to make sure we accommodated them.

A mess of something doesn’t have to be food. I’ve had a mess of the blues before, and tonight at dinner, there was a mess of relatives eating all the messes of food I had gathered from the garden.

I knew I had picked, pulled, cut and gathered a proper mess of everything when Cousin Elroy paused to loosen his belt, and the monthly girls giggled as they passed their plates for another helping of everything.

The food turned out to be a sufficient mess of everything, but I knew I had a mess of relatives that I wasn’t fixing to brag about.