Capping its January-October monthly meeting season, the Bulloch County Historical Society on Monday took a half-hour gaze into its executive director Virginia Anne Franklin Waters' kitchen, with nostalgic forays into the local past, through a video called "Remembering Bulloch with Dishes for the Dearly Departed."

Tyson Davis, who became the society's president this year and was previously vice president, is a senior lecturer in Communication Arts: Multimedia and Film Production at Georgia Southern University. For a few years now he has been working with Waters, Historical Society members and various other people with long memories in the community to build a collection of local "living history" videos.

But fall, especially late October, can be a season for less serious remembrances, even concerning the deceased. The new video's connection to "the dearly departed" is the year-round tradition for communities, notably but not exclusively in the South, to shower families with neighbor-cooked food brought with condolences to a home, church or other venue before or after a visitation or funeral.

"Virginia Anne and I had talked about doing something like what we're going to show you today for some time, but it seemed like this would be the right time to do it," Davis told the group. "We've had some kind of heavy subject matter this year, scattered throughout our presentations, and we really wanted to end the year with something lighthearted and enjoyable and littered with Bulloch County history."

About three hours of video, he said, was shot for this "cooking show," and edited down to 30 minutes. Besides his role as director, Davis is heard and seen in the video. But the host is Waters, starring with her recipes and reminiscences from the kitchen at "The Hideaway," the Savannah Avenue, Statesboro, family home she shares with husband Bill Waters, also an active Bulloch County Historical Society member and reportedly willing washer of dishes.

Pound cake, revealed

Of course, the first thing she starts making, with assistance from a KitchenAid stand mixer, is a pound cake. (It doesn't appear, finished, for Waters and her video co-producer Davis to slice and sample until later in the video.)

A couple of her personal pointers for achieving a prime pound cake are to use Irish butter and Mexican vanilla. Another "secret" is that to make a pound cake with a fine, tender crumb you don't just mix in a pound of this and a pound of that, but should really give the batter a good pounding.

"You want to beat it to death, the sugar and the butter and the cream cheese. …," Waters says at one point, while the mixer slowly turns. "Then, I don't know if you know, but a pound cake needs to be dropped, and my rule that I learned from Mama was 20 times; bang that pound cake pan on a surface to get out the air bubbles."

Historic digressions

One of the historical interludes, or digressions, that prevent the video from being all mixing, measuring and chopping is the display and discussion of two same-day, circa 1915 photographs of Waters' father, Paul G. Franklin Jr., at age 2, and her grandfather, Paul G. Franklin, crossing the dirt street — East Main Street — toward each other in front of the Bank of Statesboro, still recognizable today as the corner front of the Averitt Center for the Arts Main Gallery.

Waters reckons that the downtown streets were paved circa 1920.

Other photos displayed in the show are of the "five-star shack" and the "WPA outhouse" or "Roosevelt outhouse" preserved outside her home. The outhouse was built by Works Progress Administration participants. The WPA was founded in 1935 as part of the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was renamed in 1940.

In fact, the video starts with another such digression, with Waters saying she loves antiques and anything that has to do with Bulloch County and confessing that she is a "packrat," for such things, an attribute she inherited from her father and her Grandmother Franklin along with some of their treasures.

"I probably, since Smith Banks has passed — I'm sure I do — have the largest collections of postcards of Bulloch County that exist: there are hundreds here," Waters said.

She also showed several souvenir silver spoons from her collection, including the one engraved "Statesboro," with the Georgia state crest. Somewhere in there, she mentions that her grandfather's business phone number was originally just "2" at Franklin Drug Company, 2 East Main.

A more contemporary digression shows Tyson Davis' son, Judson Davis, now 15, in multiple photos eating wedges of pound cake.

"I bake his precious son a pound cake every year for his birthday," Waters said.

"And it is devoured in a night — literally," Davis said.

Pineapple delights

Next in the show, Waters prepares a chopped pecan-crusted pineapple cheese ball, another classic buffet-table offering for neighbors in mourning. This prompts Davis to comment on a simpler treat, also made with pineapple fresh from a can.

"My favorite sandwich is a pineapple sandwich. …," he said. "I grew up with my Mom fixing just mayonnaise, a slice of pineapple and white bread … and then if you're getting really fancy, you take the pineapple can … and you can out the circles of the white bread so it fits perfectly with the pineapple ring."

A little later in the show, Waters does something similar in making open-faced cucumber and open-faced tomato sandwiches. Those require a certain type of cream cheese spread instead of just mayo, and Waters attributes the recipe, more or less, to the late Roberta Mallard, who operated a catering business in Statesboro in the 20th century.

Ice box special

Finally, Waters' mixing, chilling and baking of "ice box cookies" is folded in with some talk about how "ice box" refrigerators — with a metal compartment on top where a big block of ice was placed to melt for days and cool food in the storage area below — preceded the electrically powered kind.

That digression opens with a photo of an ice bag, made of fabric with a draw string, labeled from the Statesboro Provision & Ice Co., that is part of Waters' collection. Such bags held chipped ice in the early days of iced tea.

This story has mentioned the dishes, but not all of the ingredients, details and digressions. The video can be found here.

The Historical Society plans to resume monthly luncheon meetings in January. These are usually held on the fourth Monday in the fellowship hall at Pittman Park United Methodist Church.

Meanwhile, for more about the organization and its programs, visit www.bullochhistory.com.