Rude Beggars

Good eats.

When I was a girl and we lived in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, we had a neighbor, Mrs. May (referred to as ‘Miz Widder May’ by locals), whose mentally retarded adult daughter lived with her in a cabin a few miles away. Her daughter, Ruby, would wander down the lanes, through the fields and woods, across the ‘hollers’, on ‘haintins,’ or visits.

Mrs. May wasn’t a widow. Her husband had left her with the infant Ruby nearly forty years previous when their child was diagnosed as retarded. Ruby had had a stroke when she was in her late thirties, and her speech was slow and slurred. (The unkind teenage boys my cousins hung around with called her “Mush-mouth.” My aunt told her boys that if she ever heard them call Ruby that name, she would skin their backsides and rub them down with salt.)

Ruby visited us one spring afternoon, carrying an apron full of mushrooms she had collected at one of the sycamore sinkholes near their farm. She also had a couple of softball-sized purple vegetables with her. Ruby called the mushrooms dog-peckers, a name which sent my brothers into gales of laughter and made my mother blush almost as deep a color as the purple softballs. (The mushrooms turned out to be morels, which another neighbor, Aunt Dessie, showed me how to cook, since Mama had never seen them before.)

Mama asked Ruby about the purple softballs.

“Shaysroobegguzz.”

Mama asked Ruby to repeat what she said, but more slowly.

“Daze…rude…begg-guzz.”

“Rude beggars?” More howls of laughter from my brothers. Mama shot them a look that would have stopped a train in its tracks. Brothers decided there was something urgent they needed to see outside and ran from the room…and from Mama.

“Cloznuf,” Ruby answered, grinning at my mother’s confusion. I’m certain Ruby left our cabin feeling sorry for the children who lived there, having a mother who couldn’t hear right.

Of course, you realize the purple softballs were rutabagas, or Swedes; also called yellow turnips. Mama didn’t know about those, either. She knew turnips, of course, and thought Ruby’s gift might be unusually large, dark purple turnips, so she told my aunt later. She laughed at herself for misunderstanding Ruby. So, from that day on, the purple softballs were rude beggars.

When I was ‘haintin’ the grocery a few days ago, looking for cheap eats, I picked up a rude beggar, a head of cabbage, a couple of leeks and some carrots, determined to make something tasty with them. I turned them, and a few more ingredients, into soup on New Year’s.

I made so much of it, I’ll be eating it for at least a week. It was better today than it was yesterday, as most soups tend to be, getting better as they age.

Naturally, I’ve named it Rude Beggar soup.

(c)2010 Martha McLemore