My mother had five brothers and one sister. Adding children to all these uncles and aunt, I had 10 cousins and my brother and sister as playmates growing up and visiting in Montgomery County. Her house seemed really big. It only consisted of four rooms, a 
living/bedroom, dining room, kitchen, two small undersized ante rooms and a small screened-in back porch. One of the undersized rooms held all her handmade quilts, folded and stacked on a child-sized bed. The other room is where she stored her bounty from her garden and the fruit trees and bushes growing around her house.
I so delight in telling my children and grandchildren about my growing up with that unforgettable, extraordinary little woman with the never-cut hair and her petite stature. There were several of my cousins very close in age to me, so we always enjoyed the Sundays we all gathered to eat her feasts of her home-made fare and that amazing chocolate cake she always had in her little pie safe in the corner of her dining room. There were many out of the ordinary places to explore, not just the little rooms at the back of her house ,but all around the space in her yard. There was the storage shed and smoke house just a few feet from her front porch. I certainly wish I had been clever enough at that youthful age to have held onto some of the old things - items and gadgets that had been put away in that old tool shed. We all were astonished by my granddaddy’s smokehouse and how he cured meat for the season. I wish I could reproduce that taste now.
When they first homesteaded the old place, there was no deep well. But there was an ever-flowing spring down the hill in front of their house, and I imagine it is still running over the moss-covered rocks of the bottom with that cold clear water. My grandmother lugged many buckets of the spring water before the well was dug. There was an old persimmon tree leaning in toward the running water that had been there for ages just barely holding on by its roots. I loved those little yellow/orange fruits when they would ripen, but they could surely draw my mouth into a scowl before they were ready. Growing along the banks of the stream were several sassafras trees and shrubs and this is where she harvested her roots and bark to make her sassafras tea. I have been on the receiving end of this “home-made cocktail” many times when I was puny.
Sometimes I become so homesick for that little woman with the never-cut hair, flour sack dresses and her bibbed aprons that my desire is almost tangible. Oh, how I wish I could just go back one more time and visit for a spell.
If we had a cold, belly-ache, headache, allergies, indigestion or any malady while around my grandmother, we were drinking sassafras tea, the cure-all medicinal wonder.
This is how she made it:
She used the roots of the sassafras tree. She would dig down and get the roots, they grow close to the ground, and wash them many times to get all the dirt off the tender roots. Boil them in clear water until the water turns brownish-red, the darker, the stronger, then simmer to desired potency. She never strained hers, the sediment just held onto the bottom of the cup. Sweeten with sugar or honey. I grew up believing this would cure anything from toothache to gout to any kind of inflammation.
