Granny taught me many things

I was starting to show my age. My hair was beginning to turn white, my skin was so wrinkled and the old brown spots were looking more like “old age spots” than ever. We had just celebrated my 86th birthday when I went to see my doctor in her big, modern office. I asked her to burn off one of those old age spots on my hand because it kept getting caught in the thread while I was quilting.

“Oh we don’t do it like that any longer,” she said. “We freeze them off now.” When I told her my Granny showed me how to make an ointment that would have taken it off, she insisted I write it down for her. So after I got home and rested up from my big outing to the doctor’s office, I wrote her a letter.

Dear Doctor,

Grandma was about fifty years old and I was a barefooted ten year old. It was a hot day and we walked miles through the woods that she knew like the back of her hand. She wandered all over those woods all year gathering herbs for medicine, plants for food or just hunting for the old open-range milk cow. Sometimes she was only telling me the old legends that had been taught to her.

Not until a short time before she died did she tell us that as a child she had taken council vows to never admit that she was Indian – that way they avoided going to the reservations.

That hot day seventy-five years ago, Grandma would let only me go with her. She carried an axe, big knife, bread in her apron pocket and bandages in case we got hurt. I carried a big burlap sack and a hoe.

“Now I want you to always remember what we are doing today. We will gather nine things – three S’s, three B’s and three P’s.  First we peel away the outside bark on this pine tree and get a piled up double handful of the inner bark and start filling your ‘toe sack’.

Now we do the same with that black oak tree and do the same to a persimmon tree after while. Remember I showed you when them sumac bushes had white berries and I told you they was like poison ivy. We want the kind with red berries on down the hill. Chop up a little pile of twigs of them like the piles of bark.

“There’s the persimmon tree. After that we can drink from the spring, get black haw roots there and go to the old house place where yellow sorrel grows and dig poke roots, too.”

We had rubbed crushed pennyroyal on us so we had no ticks or chiggers; we saw no snakes and had no injuries. I was tired when we carried water from the well and washed the sack full of stuff.

We covered it with water in the huge iron kettle and boiled it over a campfire. Grandma stirred it often until the water was brown. She dipped out the bark and stuff, strained the water into a big kettle and put it on the old-time wood burner cook stove. She added a piled up handful of lard explaining that it was supposed to be bear grease. Then it was boiled and boiled until all the water was gone.

It was the blackest, worse stinking ointment one could imagine.

Grandma said it was to be put on skin sores covered with a bandage. If it caused no pain, it was not a cancer. If it hurt, leave the bandage on for three days and the cancer would come out with the bandage, roots and all and would leave no scar.

I saw the one from Grandma’s face. It looked like a big black spider with legs hanging.

Now, my good doctor, we can’t go on someone’s land and gather three S’s, three B’s and three P’s. We don’t have a big enough kettle! So you can just freeze or burn off my brown spots.


See you next time I come to your office.  Love Polly

People don't believe me when I tell them about such things. But I can remember. Granny started teaching me remedies when I was four years old. She taught me many things.

Kidney Stones: Chamollie Tea

Flush Kidneys: Watermelon seeds

Diarrhea: Inner bark of white oak tea, not too much or it will constipate (lock bowels!)

Snake Bite: Quickly cut up chicken and place on bite and then apply onion poultices

Pin Worms: (Caused by walking bare feet where animals have been) febrifuge tea also stomach or tape worms that look like earthworms (fish worms) Add one teaspoon of sugar with three drops turpentine. If febrifuge weed is not available use Mimosa leaves tea.

Antiseptic for wounds: Wine or whiskey, tobacco. Tobacco will also stop bleeding.

Menstrual pain: Ginger tea of Mountain Ditting Tea

Sore throat: Honey with a bit of whiskey or golden seal

Chest cold: Onion poultice or warm wool cloth soaked in mixture of camphor, turpentine, kerosene and grease. Reheat cloth and repeat on chest.

Pink eye: Poultice of scraped raw potato, for babies eyes use drops of mother’s breast milk.

Stone bruise on bare foot: Raw bacon or warm greasy pancake

Athlete’s foot or other sore foot: Mullen leaves

Constipation: Diet of fruit and green salad (fresh or cooked)

Warts: Cover with juice of milkweed for 9 days (they may be gone in fewer than 9 days)

Mosquitoes: Crushed marigolds, penny royal, fleabane, pale bergamot

Poison Ivy: Bloodroot (red pucoon) in vinegar, or Jewelweed

Birth Control: Wild sweet potato

Nerves: Catnip tea

Blood: Sassafras tea (never burn sassafras, it is sacred)

Brain ailments: Ginseng

Stomach trouble: Golden seal

Wounds: Comfrey leaves and alcohol

Sick babies: Catnip tea

Trench foot: Mullen, a green fuzzy leaf to put inside your shoe