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Saturday I got the Heritage out early and ran northeast on 31E, up through Gallatin and Westmoreland toward the Kentucky line, with no plan past finding a road I had not been on. Fog was lying in the creek bottoms and the first of the sumac had gone red along the fence rows. Up around Lafayette the land starts rolling hard and the farms get smaller, and every third mailbox has a hand painted sign under it for eggs or honey or firewood.
One of those signs said SORGHUM MAKING TODAY, with an arrow down a gravel lane. I have never once in my life seen sorghum made, so I eased the Heritage down that gravel at about a walking pace and parked her by a shed where a dozen pickups already were.
They had a cane press going behind the shed, an old green iron thing run off a belt from a tractor, and two boys feeding cane stalks into it while the juice ran out the bottom into a barrel, pale green like creek water. Past that was the pan, a long shallow copper tray maybe twelve foot over a wood fire in a brick firebox, with baffles in it so the juice works its way from one end to the other. An older fella in overalls stood over it with a skimmer on a long handle, another fella fed the fire, and neither one of them said much to the other, because they had plainly been doing this together for forty years.
The green foam comes up on top and they skim it off into a bucket, and the juice moves down the pan getting darker and thicker, and by the far end it is the color of a good saddle. The old man told me the whole trick is the fire. Too hot and you scorch it and the batch is ruined, too cool and you will be standing there till Christmas. He said it with the face of a man who has done both at least once. He let me taste it off a stick of cane while it was still warm, and I can tell you store syrup has no right to the same name.
I stood there better than an hour. People came and went. A woman sold quarts off a card table at eighteen dollars and nobody argued with her. Kids ran through the cane pile. The smell of that steam gets in your jacket and stays there, sweet and smoky at the same time, and I could smell it on myself all the way home.
Bought two quarts and wrapped them in a shop rag in the saddlebag so they would not knock together. Came back by way of Hartsville and on along the river, slow, because I had a good deal of glass behind me and nowhere to be. Got home about suppertime with the sun going down orange behind the ridge.
Had biscuits Sunday morning with that sorghum and butter, and I believe that is what my grandmother meant every time she said things used to taste like something.