Smiley Anders for Oct. 14, 2009

• Published: Oct 14, 2009 - Page: 1B

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At a First Presbyterian Church event (yes, I go places other than The Pastime …) my cousin Bettye Richard told me a story about our grandmother, Mae Anders, that I hadn’t heard before:

Grandma Anders lived on a gravel road outside Gloster, Miss. Her house was at the end of the mail route, so the mail carrier turned around and went back when he got there.

Grandma didn’t leave her home often, but when she did she would leave some biscuits in her mailbox.

The carrier, before he made his turn, would take biscuits out of the mailbox and feed her dogs with them.

Evidently they had agreed beforehand on how many biscuits were required each day she was away.

One of Grandma’s huge fluffy cathead biscuits, cooked for many years on a wood stove before she got a gas stove, was enough for even a sizable dog.

On cold fall mornings I would cut open a hot biscuit, pour on the thick sweet cream she kept in a metal pan on the kitchen table, then cover the biscuit with homemade molasses.

After all these years, I still remember those flavors.

Thanks for the memory, Cousin Bettye.

Top cat
Going from dogs to cats …
At first I wondered why a reader told me that her granddaughter, a sophomore at LSU, had named her adopted kitten Ella Sue.

Then I said the name quickly, and finally got it …

Thank you, Ray
Carol Knight says our seminar on WLCS, the great AM rock station, “brought back memories of my working there in the ’60s.

“We had a great group of DJs. Everything was ‘hands-on’ in those days, with no computers to rely on. If you went into the control room, you’d best be quiet!