“Bless Your Little Pea Pickin’ Heart” was a line popularized by the country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford. If you have never heard of him or the phrase, then you are much younger than I am.
The other afternoon I picked a mess* of peas and was sitting under a shade tree shelling a few just for the fun of it. It was one of those blistering Alabama summer evenings. I was hot and sweating when it dawned on me**, “I have air-conditioning.” So, I retreated to the house.
[*mess – Appalachian dialect for an uncertain quantity of something usually to eat; probably enough for one meal] [**dawned on me – Appalachian dialect for a sudden thought or idea.]
Being an ole Southern boy, I have a lot of memories of pea pickin’ and pea shellin’. Daddy always had a pea patch. Peas were a staple crop for Southern folks going back centuries. There were certain varieties such a black-eyed peas, crowders, pinkeye purple hull, and even a whippoorwill variety. My favorite is the crowder pea. That’s what I was shellin’ under the shade tree.
Peas kept a lot of people from starving. They are easy to raise. Botanically, they are a legume which means they can fixate nitrogen from the air into the soil. So, they obtain their own nitrogen fertilizer and leave a deposit in the soil for the next crop. I know God designed the pea for poor folks so they could eat and fertilize their garden at the same time.
I remember pea shellin’ time when I was a kid. We would have several wash tubs overflowing with peas. The mounds of peas looked like that mountain Jesus talked about where a little faith could cast it into the sea. Coming out of the Great Depression, it was once survival for my mother and daddy. Now it was a ritual of life that they kept alive.
Jesus said if you had a mustard seed of faith, you could say unto the mountain and it would be cast into the sea. I never found the mustard seed but learned that if you just kept shellin’, eventually the wash tub of pea pods would be a few dishpans of pretty peas. Peas taught me patience and perseverance. Jesus taught me to have faith.
The funniest story related to the pea shellin’ was told by my oldest brother, Van, who was seventeen years older than me. We had a beautiful water oak shade tree in our front yard where the big pea shellin’ usually happened. The story goes that my grandmother Alice, who we called Mama Whitt, was in on the pea shellin’ on this particular day.
Mama Whitt was quite spunky and every bit the pioneer woman. She was a Godly woman but tough as a pine knot. The road in front of our house was then dirt. Just up the road was a country store, and people still walked a-ways* back then.
[*a-ways – Appalachian dialect in this context, an quantified relative long distance.]
While the shellin’ and conversation (gossip) was going on; up the road came a lady our family knew well. She had been widowed within a year or so. Her deceased husband was about twenty years older than her. She had faithfully taken care of him in his dying years. Since a widow, she had started seeing a man who was about ten years younger than her.
Mama Whitt could not resist trying to straighten out her love life. She left the peas and started meddling. She called her by name and told her, “Listen here, that young man you are a-fixin* to marry will get all your money.” Just so you know, the woman did not have a lot of money, just a little the old man left her. Being raised dirt-poor, Mama Whitt considered any amount of money worth protecting.
[* a-fixin – Appalachian dialect meaning about to do something; this dialect often adds a prefix of “a” to many verbs pronounced as “uh.” An example, “They were just a-hollerin’ and a-carryin’ on down by the creek.]
The lady listened, then she had her say, “Listen here Alice Whitt, I’ve been married to an old man and I’m a-fixin’ to marry me a young man. Let me tell you one thang Alice, it’ll be worth every nickel!” Then she turned on her heels and proceeded up the road to the country store to get her a can of snuff or something. Mama Whitt went back to a-shellin’ peas. The widow married that young man and they lived happily ever after.
Bless her little pea pickin’ heart! You never know what will happen when you are shellin’ peas!
Yours on the Journey,
Harry L. Whitt
Pathway Journey 