Grandma told tales as long and winding as tobacco rounds, gathered us around her dinner table and made us believe her gospel. She always told us about the night she fed General Sherman, but we never believed that he could stay so villainous if he had eaten one of Grandma’s biscuits. She claimed to have fired a shot at an intruder in the field behind her house. Said she sent that booger away, jumping ten rows of cotton at one time. We wondered about the truth of her stories, but we knew it best to keep our doubts to ourselves. Grandma’s switches grew as long and hardy as her tales, and she knew how to find switches! She raised six boys and three girls. All but one of her boys went to war and they all came home. Grandma McLamb refused to die young. She held on to what she remembered and what she made up. She fed the feral cats who swarmed the horse barn, and she pruned the blue blooming hydrangeas that stooped below her front porch. She rocked on that porch as if it would keep her alive. She rocked on that porch until her boys came home. We suspect she assumed her entrance to Heaven would be as easy as churning butter, work the milk, whipping up by hand until she found the yellow miracle. She spread the meal of life with her bare, brown-spotted hands. Teresa McLamb is a retired English teacher from eastern North Carolina. She has an MA in English from N. C. State University and an MLS from N. C. Central University. Blackmon’s first book of poems, Daddy Said, was published in 2020. Her chapbook, A Cast of Characters, has recently been accepted for publication. Blackmon shares her home with several four-legged animals whom she adores.