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safe keeping until needed. The smoke emitting from the smoke house
smelled so good, the aroma was so tantalizing

We also had a big box in the smoke house with sawdust in it, we would
store ice wrapped in newspaper for several days at a time in the
summer. The box was originally built for storing salt pork for safe
keeping, it was cool and somewhat dry. After we quit keeping much
salt pork the sawdust was changed and we began to keep ice there. We
had several poles lying on some joist in the smoke house to hang the
sausage and the meat while smoking. The smoke house was a frame
structure, with a cypress shingle roof, with a lot of Ivy growing on
outside. Even it did get a lot of sun in the Summer, it always
remained quite cool.

Usually the day before hog killing day, Papa would hitch the horse or
mule to the wagon and go gather dry wood, pinetops and beargrass
leaves. The big thing was to find dead whiteoak and hickory that was
dry enough to smolder and produce a good smoke for curing meat.
Sometime before the big day he would also go get a cup of pine resin.
We usually had a couple of the clay cups and would just swap them on
a "turpentine tree." The pine resin would be put into the scalding
water to help make the hair stick together for easier removal. The
pine tops would be spread on the smokehouse dirt floor to lay the
meat on to cool before it was further processed, seasoned and hung up
to smoke. Beargrass leaves look like the leaves of a yucca plant,
however they don’t grow the full stalk like the yucca does. It is
actually a member of the yucca family. They both have a sharp tip
waiting for someone to stick themselves. Hoping the weather would
stay cold, it was time to begin the several day task of killing and
dressing the hogs and preparing and curing the meat. The processed
hams, shoulders and sides (bacon) were hung on the poles with either
the beargrass leaves or "S" hooks made from galvanized wire. The wire
could and often rusted, the beargrass didn't rust but it was a bit of
a trick to tie it tight enough to hold the meat securely. The link
sausage was very loosely wrapped around the poles with the bottom of
the loop a foot or so below the pole, then it was ready to begin
smoking.

Properly prepared and cured meat would keep for several months
without worry of it spoiling. The best breakfast ever is a big plate
of grits, fried eggs and some home cured ham or sausage. The big
addition was when you made "red-eye" gravy to top your grits and
eggs, and naturally sop some with a big ole homemade(not out of the
can) biscuit. Well, real smoked sausage was mighty hard to beat. But,
with sausage there was no red eye gravy. We had even tried some of
the cold storage businesses, they would smoke your meat then keep it
in cold storage for you. That didn’t work too

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