How Hoecakes Were First Cooked by Frank Shortt

How Hoecakes were first cooked by Frank Shortt

We shore was hungry about noon

After picking cotton all morn

Good thing Marthyfilched some corn meal

To sate our appetites back then.

She’d mix the meal in a crock pot

Kneading it slow and thoroughly.

I’d build a small fire with some twigs

Placing the hoe blade on the fire.

After the blade got good and hot

Martha poured the meal onto it

It didn’t take long for cooking

The best bread you ever did eat.

“Four-thirty came early. There was not enough daylight to get dressed by. Marthy always kept a little grease candle to help us put our shoes on the right feet. We kept our rough, homespun clothing over an old ladder-back hickory chair for easy finding. Then we used the chair for sitting to get dressed. Soon as we were dressed, we moved outside the cabin, fell in line, and marched over to the black cauldron wherin was cooked corn-meal mush. We relished corn-meal mush because that was all we had to eat. Sometimes Marse Tanner would give us a treat of cooked dried apples. This was to keep us regular, he said.”

Life on the plantation was simple. It was the same routine every morning. Get up, get dressed, march to chow, then march single-file to work in the fields. On Sunday morning the slaves were allowed to attend the little log church provided by the plantation owner, if he happened to have religious persuasions. If he did not, one of the slaves who had ‘got religion’ held a short service for the other slaves where singing and dancing in the Spirit was practiced. This gave the slaves a welcome relief from the heat and toil of the fields of cotton, corn, sugar cane, and potatoes. Anything was a welcome relief from the drudgery of work.

“My Marthy was a jewel. She’s the only woman I know who could mother children, run the house, work all day in the fields like a man, and then go home to wash clothes for her brood in the irrigation ditches, rinsing them in the same cauldron of hot water she used for cooking for all the others. Heat kills all kinds of germs, we are told.”

The slaves were marched to the fields, single file, while being watched over by overseers, a type of trustee, one of their own who had gained favor with the plantation owner. The sad part was that if any slave refused to work or tried to run away, these overseers were given the brunt of the situation. There were many infractions of the rules that were looked over by these ‘overseers’. Why should he cause himself any undue punishment by the ‘Marse’? Take for instance the following narration:

“Old Marse did not provide near enough food for us to work on all day so we found inventive ways to get more nourishment. My Marthy would hide stone-ground cornmeal inside her apron in a small crock pot. The overseer knew she was doing it because he enjoyed the end product as much as any of us. Other men and women would do the same thing without being caught. We all tried to make the overseer look real good and always invented ways to find favor with him. He became a leader of all the men, at work or at the slave quarters.”

“Along about noon, or a little after, small fires of twigs and dried cotton stalks would suddenly burst into flame. These dry twigs did not give off much, if any, smoke. Then hoe blades were cleaned to a shiny cast and placed over these flames. Meanwhile, Marthy would knead some of the cornmeal, enough for her family and the overseer, as he favored Marthy’s cooking, then she would pour enough on the blade to make a delicious ‘hoecake’. This was how ‘hoecakes’ came into being.”

I cannot swear that this story is true. It was gathered from several sources pertaining to plantation life. Some freed slaves, after being afforded an education, became statesmen, college founders, professors, inventors, and spokesmen for others not so fortunate. Thank God, the practice of open slavery is forbidden by most civilized countries throughout the world. I am sure that other forms of slavery are upheld, even under the name of religion. It is a terrible thing to be under the yoke of anyone, especially someone who preaches love and forgiveness then incites others to loot and burn when the occasion arises. The inciter of these practices would never put themselves in the line of fire or lift a hand to stop such evil practices.

Slavery, in one form or another, still abounds. When will men ever become aware of this? Will we all have to succumb to heating our cornmeal in secret on the blade of a hoe?