Mom’s Cornbread

The following poem by Rance McDuffee was found in the Wayne County archives.  The date is not known, but the sentiment could ring true for many past generations.  

My Mom could bake the best cornbread

That a hungry boy was ever fed;

She never used a cookin’ book;

She didn’t have the time to look

For any fancy recipe

That tells you to the nth degree,

How much to use of this and that

So everything will come out pat.

When she began to make a batch

Of bread, no cook on earth could match.

My, my how many times I can

Remember seein’ that old pan

Go in to do its daily chore

Behind that big old oven door!

And, when it came back out of there,

A sweetness always filled the air,

That made a hungry country boy

Jump up and down and dance with joy.

I’m just afraid that now a lad

Can’t have the kind of Mom I had

To keep his soul and body fed

On good old country-style cornbread.

The mothers now have lost the art:

They wouldn’t know just where to start

To cook, unless they took a look

In some big fancy cookin’ book;

Or took a box of ready-mix

Where all you have to do to fix

A pan of bread, or bake a cake

Is wet it up and let it bake,

I’ll take the good old-fashioned way

That mother used in her hey-day;

God bless her, keep her, may we see

Her kind live on eternally.