Michael Evan Parker: “Old Woman Sweeping”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Raised and fed by a Southern lady from Chattanooga, who taught me good eating and good manners.
When I die and go to heaven, I'm praying the heavenly banquet will include:
Fried Livermush
Pintos (with pork in them)
Green beans (with pork in them)
Collards (with pork in them)
Corn bread (with pork cracklins in it)
If there is no livermush or pigs in heaven, then--if I have my 'druthers--I reckon I'll have to stay right here in North Carolina.
Kathleen Kirk: “The Last Word”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I was born in Oklahoma and then lived in Florida from infancy to age 6 and went to kindergarten during the Cuban missile crisis and ate sugar cubes with polio vaccine in them. My favorite foods as a child were watermelon and hushpuppies. (Why aren’t hushpuppies on your list?) I also sucked on sugar cane and ate boiled peanuts. Childhood is all about food, right?
Theresa Corbin: “The Climb Down”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
I am a map of all colonies passed in Louisiana. Not the Louisiana we know today, but the big boot that once stomped it’s splendor over one third of our great country. My features mix Spanish settlers and French revolutionaries with a generous pinch of aboriginal Americans and an African essence that make all these traits given to me decidedly creole. But more than that, I have an inexplicable lust for all things spicy. I can’t make my feet still at the sound of a drum carrying a rhythm. My grandfather’s blacksmithing art was commissioned in the building of the bird cages at the Audubon Zoo. I am deeply offended by improper nomenclature of my favorite native dish, it’s not crayfish! Those native neighbors of New Orleans who dug up the mudbugs’ mud piles in their backyards as kids and suck the flavors from their deliciously stewed skulls call them crawfish. My first trip north of the line of Mason Dixon was not until I was sixteen. I must have brought the heat with me because it was the worst heat wave that Michigan had ever seen when I arrived that July. Welcome to my world, I thought. I have lived through hurricane after hurricane (and I’m not talking about the libation sold on Bourbon St), and humid hot summer (of swimming and sipping tea) after humid hot summer (of slip and slides and hiding in the shade of a tree). And for all this I carry the badge of Southerner.
Dempsey D. Miles: “Idle”
Southern Legitimacy Statement:
Honeysuckles, Chopped Pork BBQ and Muscadine Wine
I remember walking from my grand mama’s house with my brother. We’d walkthrough the lane that was in truth a two way, one way street. I mean the signs said one way but cars went both ways and nobody seemed to mind because everybody in Starkville, Mississippi knew that the one way was a two way. The lane contained the most magical delights almost year round. There were pecan trees, peach trees, pear trees, and a long row of sugary sweet honeysuckle vines; and that was just on one side of the road. We never seemed to mind it was all on somebody else’s property. I am sure they didn’t mind sharing with all the kids who walked that lane.
My Uncle Johnny barbequed pork almost year round, no matter the season, in every type of weather. He cooked whole hogs for other folk’s barbeques and party’s. He owned a little farm, with a cinder block smoke pit in the rear. He would slow cook the hogs for long hours then once the meat cooled he would chop it up, adding grand mamma’s secret vinegar and tomato based spicy sauce. The kids made sure to hang around near enough to be unofficial, official tasters. As much as we tasted it was a wonder there was enough hog left to serve at the party. That chopped barbeque served on white bread with homemade potato salad and collard greens was always a show stopper. Add a little sweet tea, or an ice cold Budweiser, and you were in it to win it!
My other Uncle, on my Momma side liked to brew his own “shine”. That’s moonshine to everyone above the Mason-Dixon Line. He was a bit of a local legend in his day known for his jovial nature and quality of his shine. He even measured a man’s worth in increments of shine. For example, if he said a man wasn’t “worth a fifty cent shot” then you knew that person to be of low character. And who are better judges of character than shine drinking Baptist in Mississippi? My favorite was his muscadine flavored wine. He’d pay his nieces and nephews to collect ripe muscadines by the brown paper bag full; two dollars a bag, good money back in the day. He’d throw the bags in the back of his old Chevy truck and disappear off to his secret place to brew his wine. We children would always be allowed a good nip during funerals, weddings, holidays, are whenever somebody left a jug unattended and in our reach. It was always sweet going down with just the right amount of burn in the throat.
Now you tell me; ain’t I southern enough?
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