Biscuits & Firecrackers
True Stories from the Cotton Country
by
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The rhythm of the fans made a sound “as of a rushing mighty wind,” and it filled the little house of prayer where we were sitting. Barely a breath of humid air puffed in through the open windows. I smelled Murphy’s Oil Soap wafting from the heated pews and bare plank floors. Next was layered the smell of perspiring humans who had cleaned up after the work day. Finally, came the marvelous fragrance of my Allelu. She smelled like warm biscuits and honeysuckle. When I told her, she laughed, “That’s my perfume, Eau de Self Risin’.”
I saw ancient black grandfathers, holding their curly gray heads in their hands as they sat rocking and praying. I remember seeing children who were my size, but with eyes that bore through me, unsurprised by anything that had ever, or would ever happen. But the glue that held that community of worshippers together, it seems to me now, was its women. Like Allelu, they had a certain way of being that seemed part holy woman, part snapping turtle. They were mamas, and aunties, and grandmammas with skin the colors of chocolate, or coffee, or caramel. Despite the heat, these women were decked out in their finery. Some wore white gloves, most wore ornate hats with decorative trim and feathers. They talked over one another and laughed from the depth of their souls.
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About the Book
This collection of essays addresses humor and pathos in the Cotton Country of northern Alabama and Tennessee in the 1950s and ’60s. After World War II, the G.I. Bill and the emergence of the new South brought Darnell’s Depression-era parents from the soil to the boardrooms and strip malls. From holidays, to classrooms, to fields, these children of the Greatest Generation flourished in an evolving culture that arose to change the face of Dixie forever.
About the Author
ROBERT N. DARNELL, the author of Biscuits and Firecrackers, was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1950. He grew up in Florence and then Decatur, Alabama. His essays have been published in several literary journals and magazines. He was a doctor of chiropractic, a certified acupuncturist, and he also held an MFA from Spalding University and a PhD in clinical pastoral counseling. As ordained clergy, he and his wife, Constance, have been instrumental in starting churches and home fellowships in many locations around the United States. They reared their two adult children in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, beginning in 1997. Dr. Darnell passed away in 2015, with the goal of finishing this collection of stories unmet. They were completed with a final edit by Constance, who has authored many magazine articles as well as Songs for Martha.