The Love Potion

The lifestyle and history of the southernmost islands on the Florida Gulf Coast have a rarity and a unique quality that bridges time and tradition with a tangible and steadfast outreach of friendship. The bond that binds the love between church and community and friends and familyhas always been strong on the islands where almost everyone was once a newcomer, but when seasonal traditions blend with tales from our past,a romantic recipe of the oldest variety can bubble up into something almost magical.  

In the Appalachian Mountains, where the land is far older than the newcomers that came to settle, mystery is always a swirl in the fog that surrounds the Great Smoky Mountains. As the years change with the seasons however, the lessons of the elders to the offspring often remain the same—almost.  

The most watchful holiday for Granny after Christmas and the New Year was St Valentine’s Day. Mid-winter was very important for the old mountain grannies as it was a time to share the wisdom of the ages that had been handed down from the old countries. February was indeed a time to take stock and a season to be watchful and perhaps wary. This was when one particular granny was intent upon sharing the secrets of time-honored tradition with the younger women in her family who were hypnotized by their phones, watching too much TV, and taking dieting advice from starving girls on magazine covers.  

When Granny called her three granddaughters over to her house beside the horses, the barn, and the apple orchard, she already knew trouble was brewing. The coffee grounds falling into her compost pile were bunching to the north and not in the south, and the crows in the orchard - despite the heavy snow - had not flown south for the winter. When the girls arrived and Granny saw the “look and the signs” on her youngest granddaughter, she knew that the most precious of her newly married girls was having trouble with her man.  

When everyone was settled around coffee and apple pie at the kitchen table, but the pie forks were idle and only two of the girls were sipping the strong winter brew, Granny broke the brooding silence that was surrounding her troubled ladies. 

“The weather has not been right ever since they’ve been sending up those rockets,” Granny began. “It’s been the coldest winter in seventeen seasons, and those of us who are old enough to remember know that’s the time when someone will find an excuse to wander.” 

As if on cue, the youngest of the girls began to sob. Granny nodded, and the other girls leaned in to listen. “It’s that tramp manager from the new liquor store.” The youngest offered before the sobs broke into tears. “Robbie has never given me cause to worry, but that woman is trouble. He comes home every night with a bag from that store, and he doesn’t even buy liquor. And…I can smell her perfume on his clothes!” 

Granny produced a Kleenex as if by magic and allowed the sobs and the tears to run the course. When the crying spell was finished, and a few of the forks around the table began reaching out for the apple pie, Granny began. “There has never been anything stronger than Tennessee mountain magic, and we’ll get this fixed up faster than a sneaky woman can find a wandering man.” 

With the pie forks poised but waiting beneath more than one raised eyebrow, Granny searched the faces who were watching. “What we need here,” Granny declared. “Is a love potion. Sometimes love goes astray, and sometimes it takes more than family to bind things together or to break things apart.” 

During the following days, Granny and her youngest granddaughter were never apart. They trod over the horse pasture and into the snowy woods. The crows that were everywhere were watching in the trees, and when Granny bent to dig a root beneath a bramble of briars or scratch away at an almost frozen pansy patch, she would always stop to listen in the silence of the snow. When her basket was full of root work, and the youngest of her girls was exhausted, the women would follow the snowy tracks back to the horses, and the orchard, and the house that was always a home away from home.  

With a recipe as “old as the hills,” Granny mixed, ground, and boiled the profits of her root work and then began to mix in the vilest compounds of her chicken coup. A few basic chemicals from under her kitchen sink were soon to follow, and when her potion was ready, she poured the eye-watering mix into the oldest and most beautiful bottle in the house, corked the concoction, and set it outside in the snow to cool.  

The following day was St Valentine’s Day, and Granny drove into town and bought a heart-shaped box at a family drug store that had not been remodeled in half a century. When the beautiful love potion bottle was resting safely inside the box, Granny scribbled: “From Robbie” on the outside and marched into the liquor store. After she placed the box on the counter, she asked to speak with the new manager. When the woman who was older but pretending to be younger sauntered over in a red “lady of the night” outfit with ridiculously high heels, Granny smiled sweetly. “This is a special mountain delivery for you, my dear. It’s from someone very special.” 

When the beautiful antique bottle was open, a stench worse than a hundred skunks came out and latched onto the woman and everything around her. According to Granny’s great-grandmother, The Love Potion had nothing to do with love, but it did not wash off and would stay stinky for a month of Sundays.