Appalachian Heritage

cool place until fermentation ceases and the wine is clear. Decant into sterilized bottles and cap tightly. When Columbus came to America, he planted grapes in Haiti, and they were already beginning to bear in 1494. However, North America had been famous for grapes of its own at least five centuries before Columbus. Our own Appalachian area boasts the litde 'possum grape, which is more flavorful after a light frost. The dried raisins provide a coveted food source for the birds throughout the winter, and a spoonful of wild grape jelly on a hot buttered biscuit brightens a cold, blustery day for human gourmands of the wild. The Graveyard Quilt In a coal lamp's spitting sputter of light, her eyes squinting as asters she stitched the epitaphs of kinfolks: a needle her chisel, rags her marble. Her quilt, perhaps crazy, patched the tender lives and lungs torn by bituminous and pertussis, yet be it sunshine or shadow, she breathed sure as a spanky bellows. Through a needle's eye, she saw the flow of cribs and coffins, and put seams to the memories which with time might fade as the indigo skies overhead. Upon her death, the graveyard quilt was given at auction to a young mother needing to know that, yes there were others before her who'd outlasted the many, many winters. —Edward C. Lynskey 68 ...