Bena Mae's Kitchen

Now, which one are you? continued... It was a similar story when we got ready for church on Sunday mornings. Seven females sharing the only large mirror in the house did not make for good family relationships. By the time we arrived at church, we needed a lot of religion to replenish what we lost in getting ready to get there. It’s a wonder we ever got anywhere in one piece, or made it through twelve years of schooling without driving our mother crazy. In school I always had an identity problem with being reminded of what a wonderful student the sister before me had been. Once in tenth grade algebra, the...

Now, which one are you?   Growing up in a large family had its advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages was that it was hard to establish an identity among so many siblings. I spent my entire life answering, “Now, which one are you?” to people who only knew me as “one of the Estep girls”. They could never tell one of us from the other. Even my poor father had trouble putting the right name to the right face and settled with calling each one of his daughters, “Sis”. We didn’t have to be invited to a party to have fun. We could have our own party. Nor was there a...

In Memory of Bena Mae Seivers April 30, 1927 - July 14, 2016 For the last 25 years, Bena Mae wrote a column in this space called “Simple Pleasures”. She will be sadly missed by the staff at the News Journal

Life goes on, as the saying goes. It was hard for me to believe that I had been caught up in a drama not unlike what I had seen in the movies or read about in crime novels. Even in high school I was fascinated with Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes mystery novels, graduating to the grittier Mickey Spillane, Nero Wolfe crime stories. But never did I think I would play a role so close to what I had read in fiction. It was totally unbelievable and left me wondering if I could place my trust in anyone anymore. I had stayed on a couple of years but the job was...

When the walls came tumbling down My story - Part 1 of 2 This is a story within a larger story. But it is my story. It covers several years of the most chaotic, disturbing time of my life. I may ramble at times, but the facts are so discombobulated that they lend themselves to skipping from thought to thought, memory to memory. It starts with the darkest day of my life and meanders from that day forward and sometimes backward because it is hard to separate them from the complete story. The story begins with the day the FBI arrested my boss, the high sheriff of Anderson  County. To give you a clear picture...

My life and times at the Anderson County Jail From 1974 to 1986 I was secretary to the sheriff in Clinton, TN. I could write a book about my experiences there, but out of respect to others I’ll just stick to the facts as they happened to me personally. My office was situated a few doors from the jail kitchen and several doors from three courtrooms that held court daily. The sheriff was very friendly and had an open-door policy, much like sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberrry that many regulars took advantage of.  And it had a Mayberry atmosphere for the most part. When the new courthouse was built, the benches in front of...

May the force be with you A minister has to be able to read a clock. At noon, it’s time to go home and turn up the pot roast and get the peas out of the freezer.” Garrison Keillor. Years ago when I was visiting my mother in the nursing home in Corbin, I would pop a cassette into the record player in my car when I started the climb up I-75 leading to Jellico and listened to a recording of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion. Dodging 18-wheelers going up the mountain was a little nerve-wracking and I needed the calm of listening to the fictional tales of Keillor’s Lake Wobegon where...

America! How Great Thou Art With the gift of 20/20 hindsight and age that sometimes gives one total recall, I realize that growing up in Corbin, KY in the 1930’s and 40’s was like growing up in a safe cocoon. The word “ethnic” or “ethnicity” was never in our vocabulary and we didn’t know what it meant. Politics was mostly local and republican. I remember Daddy voted once for a democrat and that was Jimmy Carter. Daddy thought he was a good man. Our world consisted of small close-knit neighborhoods where people really cared about one another. Our primary concerns were closer home. I have written about Elsie Freeman’s grocery store and how she...

I danced the Tango on the QE-2 The tango is a graceful dance characterized by slow graceful moves. frequent deep bending of the knees, quick changes of direction and very complex moves. Although my late husband and I took ballroom dancing for years, I never learned the tango. I was passable with the rhumba, samba, the cha cha cha, but l failed miserably when it came to the tango. I thought about this when I watched a video recently of the president who seemed to be quite accomplished with a dance that had always eluded me. And I knew why. He had a good partner as I did several years ago on...

Up on the hill Most cities and towns in today’s world provide its citizens with a city park - a safe and fun place to enjoy their leisure time. They have large staffs who promote healthy activities and quality programs and recreational venues. But in my day, I’m talking about the late 1930’s and early 40’s, there were no city parks, no organized staff of paid professionals. For families like mine, we had to provide our own place of leisure. We called it “Up on The Hill.” We didn’t know who owned the hill, we just accepted it as our own. The Hill, which rose several hundred yards from our house was...