Talking Southern No. 88 : Syrup

     We covered in a fairly recent column how unhappy it makes your compiler to hear this word pronounced “SEER-up” rather than “SIR-up,” which is how he learned to say it, and how he will say it till the day he dies.   But today, we’re not talking about how to say it, we’re talking about the real thing, as well as some cheap, shoddy imitations thereof.

     In your compiler’s world, there are four basic kinds of syrup.  These are ribbon cane, sorghum cane, maple, and store-bought.   Your compiler will address these four types in reverse order.

     Store-bought syrup may be good for the masses, but to your compiler, it is sickeningly sweet and artificial tasting.  To his taste, it’s thin, runny, over-sweet slop, and doesn’t deserve to have an image of Lincoln’s birthplace on its label.  For Heaven’s sake, it is imitation maple syrup made with corn, and if your compiler wanted corn syrup, he’d eat Karo, which is a brand sometimes used in cooking.

      Real maple syrup, when done right, is naturally harvested and is of long provenance in Northern climes.  While your compiler likes maple syrup pretty well, he feels about it as he feels about beautiful horizons – horizons without a red clay stripe running along the base of them are somebody else’s horizons, and maple syrup is somebody else’s syrup.

      Sorghum syrup, while Southern, is thick and pungent, with a “bite,” for lack of a better term.  It tends to be popular in the northern regions of Georgia – in fact, Blairsville had a Sorghum Festival every October for decades, until recent years – but most middle-Georgia and probably most South Georgia palates prefer the fourth kind we will mention.  (Your compiler’s paternal grandfather lived most of his life in Brooks, but was born and reared in the hills of northeast Georgia.  He loved sorghum syrup till he died, but no one else in the family much cared for it.)

      That fourth kind is ribbon cane syrup (ribbon cane is sometimes called sugar cane.)  One really has to hunt for this, but for Fayette and Coweta folks it’s rather easy to come by, fortunately.  The Sams family in Fayette has an old, mechanized family syrup mill set up on the grounds of Inman Farm Heritage Days, and make syrup every late summer and fall there, and have ribbon cane syrup for sale.  Also, Williams’s Store along Georgia Hwy. 85 in Haralson, near the Coweta-Meriwether line, carries the Sams syrup for sale.   It’s called “Elvira Brand” and it’s delicious.  (Speaking of Williams’s Store in Haralson, your compiler goes there a couple of times per month to get a couple of pounds of their Rooster Pepper sausage, which is so good it’ll make you slap your grandma away from the table, but your compiler digresses.)

     Ribbon cane syrup, to your compiler’s palate, tastes like syrup should – a  tad thicker than either maple or store-bought, but not nearly as thick as sorghum.   Your compiler remembers loving it from the first time his paternal grandfather took him to see the syrup mill of Mr. Howell Hardy (1897-1977) in Brooks when he was a young boy.   Seeing how the workers stuffed arms-full of ribbon cane into the pummeling rollers, seeing how those rollers were powered by a pole-tethered mule walking in endless circles, seeing how the cane juice was channeled into cooking pans – all this fascinated your compiler with the process, and he developed a love of ribbon cane syrup at an early age.

      Ribbon cane – God’s gift to the syrup world!  And if you’re going to eat it, please pronounce it like the good Lord intended – “SIR-up.”