Sop Up Some Syrup

I’m fixing to sop up some syrup.

There used to be an event in the south, just about when cold weather set in, called syrup making time.

The blue ribbon sugar cane had been harvested and the stalks were stacked adjacent to the cane mill, and early on a frosty morning folks would gather for the grinding and the cooking.

Sugar cane was both a blessing and a curse to the south. The blessing was it provided us with a sweet, brown syrup to consume, sell and trade. The curse was the brutal labor it took to grow and harvest it.

Back in 1948, I was one of the first on the scene when the grinding began. There was a special aroma that filled the air as the fires heated up the syrup pans. It was a warm, sweet smell with the promise of syrup and biscuits on all the cold mornings to come.

I used to feed the stalks of sugar cane into the steel rollers set inside a wooden frame while an old mule with a long pole attached to his collar walked in endless circles around the mill.

The juice from the stalks would come trickling out of a spout below the rollers into a bucket beneath the spout..
I’ve tasted the juice from a lot of sweet things, even in some exotic lands, but the taste of the juice from sugar cane is still the best thing I ever put in my mouth.

There was always a gourd dipper hanging from a nail in the wooden frame of the mill, and the best part of syrup making was that you could step up to the spout dispensing cane juice, get yourself a dipper full and drink the sweet, milky juice without having to chew the pulp.

Sometimes you could get yourself a bodacious belly ache from doing that, but the taste was worth taking that chance.

After a long, hard day of grinding and cooking, just before it got dark, the finished product was poured into shiny tin syrup buckets and the lids were tapped shut with a rubber hammer.

I’m fixing to get me a biscuit.

“This week’s I’m Fixin’ To is dedicated to Ms. Pat Bullard and all of her friends in Town Village in Birmingham who read it each week.”