Farmers not owning more than fifteen or twenty negro slaves generally had all the cooking for white and black done at the same time. I have often heard farmers say since the war, and laugh over it, that they had really eaten no good cabbage, turnips, or collard-greens since slavery times. It used to be necessary to cook so much bacon for the slaves that vegetables and “greens” of any variety were well seasoned. During the war when bacon was very scarce, it often happened that the white household would deny themselves meat to eat, so as to give it to the slaves, as they had to toil in the field.
If a negro was sick, a doctor, who was already paid, was called in all haste, as planters used to engage a doctor by the year, at so much for each slave whether large or small.
One negro boy called “Jim,” about eighteen years of age, was quite sick of a fever one fall. His master and mistress had him brought from the “quarter” over to the dwelling-yard and placed in the cook’s cabin, so that he might be given close attention. One or the other watched him day and night (for he was a very valuable boy) and gave the medicine. One Saturday during his illness his master had to go to the city for some purpose, and he asked me to help his wife and daughter care for Jim that day, saying, as he stepped into his buggy, “Now be careful of Jim, and see to it that he lacks for nothing; if he dies, I’ve lost one thousand dollars, good as gold.” It was nothing uncommon then for able-bodied young negro men to be valued at from one thousand to eighteen hundred dollars. If Jim be living to-day, I know he has not forgotten our giving him his medicine and gruel at the regular hours, heating hot bricks and placing them at his feet as the doctor ordered, nor how I burned my fingers muffling the hot bricks.
Very often the sick negroes would be brought right into their masters’ houses, so as to be more closely watched.
Then there were the annual barbecues that each and all planters gave without fail to their slaves when the crops had all been laid by, which semi-holiday weeks embraced the last of July and the first of August. I remember in particular one barbecue roast that I witnessed one night in company with the household. The “pits” were some little distance from the mansion, and were half filled with red-hot coals of oak and hickory wood, over which the flesh of whole dressed beef, mutton, and shoats were slowly roasting, lying on a grate made of split staves of oak or hickory wood. A goodly-sized vessel, containing vinegar, butter, salt, pulverized sage, pepper, and thyme, all mingled together with a “swab,” stood in close proximity to the barbecuing meat. Every now and then the roasting flesh would be turned over with long oak sticks sharpened smoothly to a point at one end, which answered the place of forks; deep and long incisions would be made in the barbecuing meat, and with the swab a good basting of the mixed condiments from the bowl would be spread over; the process of turning the roasting flesh over the glowing red coals and basting with the seasoning continued till the meat was thought to be thoroughly done. It would sometimes be far beyond the hour of midnight before the barbecuing meat was removed from the “pits,” and I yet think that such barbecued meats cannot be surpassed by any other sort of cooked or roasted meats. When cold and sliced, it was certainly delicious. A night barbecuing was a weird scene. Blazing pine-torches heaped on the rude stands improvised for the occasion threw a ruddy glow out over the dark forest, giving an uncanny aspect to the long thick moss swaying sylphlike in the night breeze. Some of the negroes would be tending the roasting flesh; some with the swab, basting with the seasoning; some laughing loud enough to wake the sleeping echoes; some lazily stretched out on the ground thinking of to-morrow’s feast. Now and then some one would “pat Juba,” as they called it, while the dim light of the moon and stars peeping through the heavy foliage, together with the savory smoke rising from the pits, enhanced the strangeness of the fête.