NMissCommentor » Southern History & Culture

My father talks about Phil Stone and William Faulkner

NMC — Thu, 17 May 2012 23:07:12 +0000

Here’s a short documentary my daughter Sarah Simonson did for a Southern Studies class. The documentary is about Phil Stone (my dad’s first law partner) and William Faulkner and includes a section of my father talking about Stone and Faulkner. (I’m in there, too). I’m so glad this is on video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sarah gets her masters in architecture at Tulane on Saturday!

More News from Yalobusha County: This time, it’s theater criticism

NMC — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 21:10:22 +0000

When we last reported Yalobusha County news from the North Mississippi Herald, it was the story “Ambushed Dad Has Questions” (I’ve not followed up on that story). This time, there’s a bit of theater criticism in the Betty’s Week column, which has been reporting (or not reporting– “Sylva Rena Grocery (where there’s usually lots of news, most of which I can’t print)”) community news down there for 30 years. She describes a local theater production stitched together from excerpts of Shakespeare’s plays:

I enjoyed the play and actually came away thinking a little better of the Bard. Know it was just fiction, but any help he gets in my eyes is a plus—I am not a Shakespeare fan.

The North Mississippi Herald: Not afraid to speak its mind. I wonder if she wrote this weeks column while still up with the caffeine buzz from splitting a 64 oz bottle of Coke with Margie Pilcher at the Woodland Hills Easter Egg Hunt.

h/t Coulter Fussell on Facebook. I really need to check that paper more often.

Update

Yalobusha corrected.

Out on Highway 61

NMC — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:41:42 +0000

In Tunica for Chancery Court, we went by the Blue & White Restaurant for the lunch buffet.

The Blue & White was in downtown Tunica by the railroad tracks until 1937, when Highway 61 was upgraded on the edge of town. The Blue & White moved out to the highway, where it was a Pure gas station (thus establishing the color scheme) and the Greyhound bus station. It’s still there on the highway, and, according to their history printout, three generations (a grandmother, two daughters-in-law, and a granddaughter) are cooking in the kitchen. It’s a pleasant stop, and lots of southern vegetables and meat to choose from on the lunch buffet.

The stretch of Highway 61 from Tunica to Memphis was once remarkable (it’s pretty radically different since the advent of the casinos). According to my grandfather (a civil engineer) for a long time it held the longest stretch of highway without a change of grade or a curve in the US Highway system. That wasn’t repeated because it’s not safe– drivers zone out.

When I first read All the Kings Men, I was convinced that Robert Penn Warren must have encountered this stretch of road when he was working at Southwestern in Memphis and used it for the highway that’s at the start of that book:

Mason City. To get there you follow Highway 58 going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at you and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back on, but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll try to turn off the ignition just as she starts to dive. But you won’t make it, of course. … Then a few days later the boys from the Highway Department will mark the spot with a little metal square on a metal rod stuck in the black dirt off the shoulder, the metal square painted white and on it in black a skull and crossbones. Later on love vine will climb up it, out of the weeds.

In the eastern suburb of Strayhorn on Highway 4 west of Senatobia, I encountered the sign in the picture below.

OKRA ATTACK!

NMC — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:00:12 +0000

While in Cleveland in the Delta last Saturday, I saw a small banner that suggested I be afraid.

I just encountered this video, which illustrates what folks are supposed to find fearful…

Click here to view the embedded video.

… and discover there’s a whole website devoted to Okra fearing at Delta State.

Sam Sifton gets cornbread horribly wrong– almost as much sugar as cornmeal?!?

NMC — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 03:52:57 +0000

In the New York Times magazine, Sam Sifton writes about the cornbread recipe from Chris Schlesinger’s East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass. The recipe contains 2 parts flour to 1 part cornmeal, reversing the ratio I use (because, opines Sifton, if you don’t the cornbread will be “gritty.” Sifton must be using the wrong cornmeal, or, perhaps, doesn’t understand why folks down here use buttermilk and not milk), but more startlingly, adding almost as much (3/4s of a cup to 1 cup cornmeal) sugar as cornmeal (and then suggests pouring pepper flake infused honey over that. The man must have a sweet tooth). He also cooks it a long time (an hour) in a slow oven.

Yes, the degree to which cornbread from Northerners incorporates more sugar than Southerners (which frequently– I’d say usually– use none) has been much discussed. But 3/4 the amount of sugar as cornmeal? Are he and Schlesinger kidding?

And the recipe calls for whole milk instead of buttermilk, apparently unaware of the advantages the acid in the buttermilk provides in terms of tenderness-of-crumb and leavening.

As a corrective, I’ve decided to post a couple of cornbread recipes. Making cornbread is such commonplace that my grandmother, who had cornbread on the dinner table every night she cooked dinner, did not place a recipe in her extensive notecard folder of recipes– I was horrified to discover this when it was too late to document what she’d done, although I think I’m pretty close now except that I’m adding non-canonical thyme, red pepper, and garlic.

So, maybe we all know all of this and I’m not providing news to the readers of this blog.

First is the recipe I use for cornbread. It’s based on a recipe from Powell Hassel of Suwanee, Georgia, with a few touches of our own (“our” being my wife Joyce and me; we’ve spent a fair amount of time kicking this back and forth, and comparing notes on what we remember from our various families– her mom in Columbus/West Alabama, her dad in Pelahatchie, and my father’s family in Port Gibson and that area). The second recipe is from Joe York, who is from Alabama and published a description of his family recipe in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook.

Southern cornbread recipes pretty much agree on the use of white corn meal, buttermilk, and minimal if any sugar. There’s some debate about whether or not to use eggs. My recipe uses eggs, and Joe’s family recipe does not. Both require a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

Cornbread at the Freeland’s house

either
1 1/3 cup self-rising white cornmeal
2/3 cup self-rising flour (for both, Martha White would be preferred in either group. It’s flour is softer)
1/4 tsp salt
or
1 1/6 cup white cornmeal
2/3 cup flour
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt

plus
1/4 tsp finely chopped fresh or 1/8 tsp dried thyme
a large pinch of cayanne
2 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 clove garlic, mashed and very finely chopped (this is totally nonstandard but try it)
1/4 cup or a bit more canola oil

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Pre-heat the skillet (I’m using a 10 inch, roughly) on the stove over medium heat. You want the skillet good and hot, which takes a while. As it starts to get hot, add a good glug of canola oil, about half of what’s being used. The idea here is to basically start frying the cornbread in the skillet as soon as you put the batter in it.
3. Mix dry ingredients (the alternatives plus thyme and cayenne) then add eggs, buttermilk, and garlic. Mix to a batter and taste for salt. Add the other half of the oil, another good glug, and mix.
4. Tilt the skillet around to spread the oil evenly on the bottom and sides, then pour the batter in it. It should sizzle a lot–what you are doing here is fry the batter. Immediately put in the oven.
5. After 20 minutes, increase the oven temperature to 450 degrees to brown on top. When brown, take out of the oven and turn into a dish. Possibly out of superstition, I tend to wham the skillet on the stove, thinking I’ll loosen the bread so none of it sticks. This cornbread is great with or without butter or other possible additions.

Joe York’s Cornbread

This cornbread is from Joe’s family in Alabama, originating with his great-grandmother. He tells the story of it in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook, noting that he has an 8 inch skillet. I’ve never used the cornbread mix called for here, but wondered about the lack of added salt. I’d taste the batter when you make this one for salt before putting it in the skillet.

I’ve had this cornbread, and it’s excellent. You should obtain and read the recipe Joe’s description in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook

1/3 cup Crisco
2 1/2 cups Aunt Jemima White Cornmeal Mix
2 1/s cups buttermilk
1/2 cup White Lily Self Rising Flour
1/4 tsp baking powder

1. Preheat the oven to 480 degrees.
2 Put the Crisco in an 8 inch cast-iron skillet and put that into the oven.
3. Mix the cornmeal, flour, buttermilk, and baking powder.
4. Pull the skillet from the oven and pour about 1/3 of the crisco into the batter. If it doesn’t sizzle, you haven’t got the skillet hot enough. Sprinkle some flour into the remaining Crisco in the skillet (the idea is that it will make it less likely that the cornbread will stick. This is an idea I’ve seen in other recipes). Pour the batter into the skillet.
5. After you pour the batter into the skillet, shortening will come up the sides of the skillet and pool around the top of the batter. Take a spoon and fill with the shortening and spoon it evenly across the top of the batter, smoothing the surface as you go. The top should be “good and greasy.”
6. Put the skillet in the oven and cook for 25 minutes until nicely past golden brown. Take out of the oven and remove to a plate.

In his description in the Foodway’s cookbook, he says this recipe isn’t healthy. The only thing “unhealthy” is the Crisco– if he swapped that for canola oil, there’s nothing unhealthy about his recipe. It doesn’t even have eggs! But one thing I can guarantee is that either one of these is going to produce a better result than the one that ran in the Times today.

I found my April 1st post in Ruleville, Mississippi

NMC — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 06:00:37 +0000

They were built in 1920 and 1921, behind the (now abandoned) cotton compress there.

Last year, folks in Ruleville decided the rusty water towers needed painted. They anticipated April 1st by months.

At Dockery Plantation, the real home of the blues

NMC — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 04:37:05 +0000

Dockery Plantation, between Cleveland and Ruleville, Mississippi on state Highway 8, was established in 1895. It is and will be historically remembered as a major dissemination point for the blues, at its beginnings. Charley Patton lived there, and a number of musicians who learned directly from him learned there or in that area. The plantation headquarters is largely intact and is being preserved, and the store is being restored. With a state Blues Trail Marker by the back building (below), it invites folks to walk through the main buildings.

These are some iphone photos from a bright late-March day.

House on Highway 8, just west of Ruleville, Mississippi

NMC — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 04:30:05 +0000

Every time I go on Highway 8 between Holcomb and Ruleville, I’ve noticed this building. Today, I stopped and took photos, travelling through the Delta with Joyce, Chris Offut, and Melissa Ginsburg. Melissa noticed that, to one side behind the house, it had a satellite dish.

There has to be a story about this place that I’d like to hear. I’m curious about its age (late 19th C?), and anything else worth knowing about it.

Earl Scruggs has died at 88

NMC — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:24:57 +0000

Earl Scruggs revolutionized banjo playing while in Bill Monroe’s band in the 1940s, and then, with Lester Flatt, formed one of the greatest country, string, or bluegrass bands of all time. He died at age 88 today.

Here are Flatt and Scruggs, “Rolling in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

and “Lonesome Road Blues”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here he is (on guitar) with Flatt and Mother Maybelle Carter doing the Carter Family’s “Foggy Mountain Top”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another one with guitar, “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

“You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing.”

NMC — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:57:19 +0000

Bill Monroe credited as a profound influence his Uncle Pen Vandiver, and wrote one of the greatest bluegrass songs about Uncle Pen’s fiddle playing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are no recordings of Uncle Pen, and artifacts from his life are rare. The International Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro Kentucky has discovered and is displaying the first two known photographs of Uncle Pen, along with Uncle Pen’s fiddle. He’s holding a fiddle in the second picture.

h/t Mary Katherine Aldin on Facebook.