[with 3 poems by Melinda Thomsen]
How about you cream the butter and sugar while I chop the pecans? At 93 Mom does not need to be wielding the big chef’s knife. Last week I bought vanilla, nuts, butter, and a couple of new cookie sheets at Harris Teeter while shopping with Dad. This morning I pre-measured the sugar and flour into ziplocks before I left the house. This afternoon Mom woke up early from her nap, so excited to be baking cookies for Thanksgiving.
Whenever we visited Nana while I was growing up, we kids (and Dad, too) couldn’t wait to visit the little village of tins that would have sprung up like magic on her kitchen counter. Homemade fudge, humdingers, Moravian Christmas cookies. And there were always, there had to be, nutty fingers. When I got married she bequeathed me the recipe and that’s how I labeled the index card – Nana’s Nutty Fingers.
Nana’s only daughter – my Mom – hasn’t made nutty fingers since any of us can remember. Last night I printed a copy of the recipe and scribbled out my fraction calculations to double it. When I walk into Mom’s kitchen today, though, she already has the recipe laid out on the counter.
The original – centered on page 53 of What’s Cooking?, compiled by the Winston-Salem Woman’s Club in 1948, “Pecan Fingers” contributed by Ellen Cooke, alias Nana. It’s identical to the recipe we’ve used all these years as long as you realize that 4X sugar means granulated.
O Baby, in about an hour their home is smelling good, and all the laughs and stories we share during the making are even more delicious. Good job, Mom, high five. Dad pronounces these the best nutty fingers he’s ever tasted and the powdered sugar down his sweater affirms. When granddaughter Claire arrives from Maine for Thanksgiving, there just might be a couple left for her.
Maybe.
. . . . . . .
Sweet Potato Casserole
One poet says she waits to hear what
the words are trying to say. Meanwhile,
a documentary shows fifty pounds of yams,
gathered in one plastic basket, heaved up
to a migrant from Chihuahua, standing
in a school bus. The bus trudges through
the turned fields of North Carolina, a taxi
with an open top and wooden slats for sides
reaping filled baskets. Another poet hopes
the best wind finds me ready to wrestle it
to the page. As farm workers examine
and measure, sweet potatoes lift skyward.
Thousands of roots piled up in moving crates,
all hand gathered, are waiting for words.
Gently but quickly, these men harvest,
and I keep searching for nouns so small
but will swell in the mind to voice the labor
and sweat of my Thanksgiving dinner.
A friend tells me, if you think one person
can’t make a change, you’ve never been in bed
with a mosquito. Advice swirls like gnats
while I peel yams, whose discarded skins,
the width of fingers, almost rise as hands
to choke my verbs. Still, I dot mashed sweet
potatoes with mini marshmallows before
placing the heavy pan in a 375 degree oven.
Melinda Thomsen
. . . . . . .
Melinda Thomsen’s book Armature lives in the personal moments that create each day of our lives. The title refers to the skeletal framework a sculptor uses to support her clay model. She adds form and matter to shape the work into three dimensions. The book’s framework includes descriptions of four castings of Degas’ Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot; the poems throughout add shape and form through their close observation and grounded presence within the many places they dwell.
Armature, © 2021 Melinda Thomsen, Hermit Feathers Press, Clemmons, North Carolina
. . . . . . .
Old Tractor Equipment
Their armature emerges from
a forging of farm equipment:
rasps, chains, gears, and pipes.
Metal tractor parts fashioned
a horse whose neck
and ligaments are strong
enough to face the wind
with a mane of almost twenty
flat files billowing in the breeze.
We all move this way, right?
After years of pulling it
together in cut and paste jobs
of bad or non choices,
even if our hearts resemble
rusted tractor ball bearings,
we construct and forge ourselves
from a hodgepodge of muzzles
and flanks in to running mares,
stalky goats, or bold stallions.
Walk over to us, and see our
sprocket nut nostrils flare.
Look at these haunches
made of 20th century shovels
and lawnmower parts.
A trip of goats and a pigpen
of swine have propane
tank bellies, pulley hooks
for horns, and porcine
snouts are marked
by stainless steel forks.
Nearby, bric-a-brac horses
cast galloping shadows
as we roam and graze.
Melinda Thomsen
[Melinda notes: Jonathan Bowling is a sculptor based in Greenville, NC. His field of sculptures is on the corner of Dickinson and Atlantic Avenues.]
. . . . . . .
Whirligig Park in Wilson, NC
I come from a nearby
town whose herons
sport feathers of golf club
handles and clipper beaks
flash shadows on the walls.
But here, looking up at all
these odd parts forged
into metal marionettes
with no strings or motor,
I see thy leave it to wind.
A cloud-laden morning
moves in and fifty feet
above, a front propeller
turns and two farmers
quickly cut a metal log.
Their saw’s teeth drag across
the tree as if their first stroke,
and behind them, a dog sits
whose tail wags at each cut.
It seems the earth begs us
to twirl, even if our spirits
have been sapped to rust,
even if our most dead
selves dwell in squeaking.
Melinda Thomsen
[Besides Wilson’s Whirligig Park, Vollis Simpson’s kinetic art is also on permanent display at the North Carolina Museum of Art.]
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Postscript: My children and their kids have always called my Mom Grandmommy. My brother’s three girls, however, know their grandmother as Nana. Of course. The nutty finger legacy lives on.
. . . . . . .
V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 
Love Melinda Thomsen a fine poet and fellow Hermit Feathers Press author!
LikeLike
Yes! And see Bill Blackley’s comment re: Hermit Feathers. —B
LikeLike
Thank you for this deliciously nostalgic yet forward-looking post, Bill. And I took Thanksgiving company to the Whirligig Park yesterday. The young folks delighted in Vollis Simpson’s creations, giving me hope for the next generation’s respect for art and the making of new things from old.
LikeLike
Thanks for the comments, Rebecca. We love Simpson’s huge and ever-shifting installation at NCMA, can’t quit watching it move. –B
LikeLike
Oh, I helped my grandmother make nutty fingers for all sorts of occasions the year round. I’m going to make Nana’s for our family gathering! I hadn’t thought of them in years, so I’m grateful for Melinda’s warm reminder. I’ve been following the Simpson whirligigs for almost 60 years, well before he became known as an artist. Melinda’s poem speaks to all the senses and expresses how life depends on what you make out of it. Delightful poems, especially for the season. Thank you.
LikeLike
Thanks for joining the conversation, Becky. One more way we make this the season of sharing. I appreciate your comments. —B
LikeLike
Your Nana’s Nutty Finger recipe is the same as my family’s “Aunt Helen’s Mexican Wedding Cakes”… Thanksgiving provides the opportunity for a sacramental meal as we “do this in remembrance of” those who have gone before… Grandma Kay’s pie crust, Aunt Toddie’s Burnt Caramel, Aunt Beverly’s Chocolate Sheet Cake… its the person we remember, not so much the recipe!
LikeLike
So true, Jane, about the memories of people and places and events that adhere to the food we shared. Gustatory memory. I’m going to make a list . . . —B
LikeLike
These are lovely and optimistic poems. And I love the story of Nana’s cookies. She looks fabulous and wonderfully alive in these photos. Thanks for sharing.
LikeLike
Thanks so much, Debra. Yes, Mom and I had a ball making those cookies, me reminding her of all the times we ate them at Nana’s house. One of Nana’s last Christmases, when her dementia was pretty advanced, I made up the dough and took it to her rest home. She rolled out the fingers and we baked them in the home’s kitchen while she and all the staff couldn’t stop smiling and laughing. —B
LikeLike
I love seeing these smiling faces! Of course I cannot help searching your mom’s face for traces of my mother and her two sisters. The Nana’s Nutty Finger recipe is the same as my grandmother Riviere’s Sand Dab recipe – only the shape of the cookie is different. Just before I backed out of the driveway of the house my parents had lived in for 30 years for the last time, my Aunt Marjorie pulled up, handed me a tin of Sand Dabs with a few paper napkins on top. Ah, food and family. And Melinda’s splendid poems!
LikeLike
Sand Dabs, I love that, Cousin! Like Pecan Sandies. By the way do you say it “Pih-Kahn” or “Pee-Cann?” Option 2 if you’re also related to my Granddaddy Griffin who lived in the Sand Hills and shot the squirrels out of his trees with a pellet gun. Then we ate the squirrels with gravy and grits for breakfast. —B
LikeLike
Thanks Bill for taking us deeper each time you post. Was that Ellen Cooke of Elkin referenced in Tea Time: Pecan Fingers? I too love the faces over cookies:) and thanks for your introduction to Hermit Feathers Press. Next book order up:)
LikeLike
Hey, Bill. Ellen Cooke is my Mom’s mother, maiden name McBride. She grew up on a farm in eastern Yadkin county not too far from the river in a community they called West Bend (not sure how that’s situated compared to our current East Bend). Ellen secretly married my Grandfather, Grady or GC Cooke from Pinnacle NC, while he was an intern in Baltimore. Interns nor nurses could be married. They moved back to Winston-Salem where he practiced until about 1950 then moved to Morehead City due to failing health. He died in 1957 when I was four. —B
LikeLike
Thank you, Bill, for this wonderful post! I have printed out the recipe and am about to start making GF nutty fingers. Thank you also for posting my poems, and I love how your blog connects food making to everyone involved: makers, eaters, and gatherers. Well done my friend, take a bow! 🙂 xxoo Mel
LikeLike
My pleasure to have read your book and discovered so many connections and insights. Thank you for sharing yourself. —B
LikeLike
Love this story and photos AND the connection to Melinda’s poems. Recipes and whirligig art and poems come from “odd parts forged.” Like Jane Western in these comments, my grandmother (and mother) had a similar recipe called Mexican Wedding Cakes, which I’ve made every Christmas for decades. (Which leads me to mention that I think 4x is powdered sugar….but the pictures show that whatever went in to this batch made them irresistible!) Thanks for sharing the joy.
LikeLike
Thanks, Jeanne, and you made me look it up. I’m use to seeing “10x” on the confectioner’s sugar (powdered sugar) at Food Lion but 4x is also listed as confectioner’s, just less finely powdered. So now we’re going to have to make two batches and have a blind taste test. I’m sure Dad will volunteer to judge. — B
LikeLike