When would you give a pounding to someone in need? When you’re talking about a community coming together to give food staples to, say, the new family in town or a new bride and groom. The term pounding, also known as a pound party, derives from the early practice of bringing foodstuffs by the pound. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling, once wrote about a pound party, albeit one with a surprise ending. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Pound Party”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello.
Hi, who’s this?
This is Brenda from Chico, Texas.
Chico, Texas.
All right, well, fire away.
What can we do for you?
Well, I have a mother-in-law who’s 97, and for her Mother’s Day gift this year, she asked all of her children and grandchildren to give her a pounding.
Say what?
And I wasn’t familiar.
Yeah, pounding.
I wasn’t familiar with it.
It sounded kind of mean, but it turns out it’s where you bring people food, primarily staple goods, canned goods.
And I was sort of fascinated by this term since I’d never heard it before.
And I did a little Internet search and couldn’t find anything really other than sort of an Amish connection.
But my real wonder was, is it a pounding because people would give a pound of flour or sugar or anything like that?
Yes, that’s exactly it.
A pounding in that sense isn’t about beating somebody up.
It’s about bringing a pound of this or that to people who need it.
It’s a lovely small town, often southern tradition of bringing stuff to people in need, newlyweds and people who just moved to town, neighbors whose house burned down.
Yes, you said the right thing, Brenda.
It’s staples usually.
It’s not like you’re going to bring prepared lasagna in a dish.
You’re going to bring stuff that can be used to make other food, right?
Wow.
Yeah.
I had never heard of that before.
Isn’t that great?
Well, she loved it.
She cleaned up.
She got lots of things in her pantry now.
But is it really Southern?
It has a long history, at least in terms of the dialect.
I think it’s used mostly in the South.
In fact, I can remember my grandparents getting a pounding.
My grandfather was a Baptist preacher in the hills of Virginia, and we went to church with them one Sunday.
And the verb to pound in that area often means to pay the preacher in goods rather than money.
And so we got a pounding after church where there were all these bags full of groceries and fresh corn and fresh tomatoes and all that.
So I think it’s largely in the South, although the tradition may be much more widespread.
And in fact, I don’t know if you ever read The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
She has a short story called The Pound Party.
It’s also called A Pound Party.
And it has to do with that kind of thing.
Everybody’s supposed to bring a pound of something.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a pound anymore.
I gather it’s coming back.
Well, I hope so.
It’s a lovely tradition, isn’t it?
Yeah, it reminds me of stone soup.
Everybody bring a little bit while we eat together.
Yeah.
Excellent.
Well, thank you so much.
Yeah, but it must have been weird when your 97-year-old mother-in-law asked me.
Well, and I’m not young.
I’m in my 50s.
I had just never heard the term before.
You were rolling up your sleeves and making a fist, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Seemed kind of mean to do for an elderly woman, but all right, we were in.
Take out your dentures.
So she was happy with her pounding.
What did she get?
I don’t know.
Boxes of canned goods.
And she also got some frozen things.
And, you know, I guess now we have, we don’t need staples to last forever because we have ways to preserve things.
But, yeah, she got loaded up.
Great.
I love that idea.
Lots of good things.
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much for calling.
Well, thank you.
Have a great day.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye.
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