Cornbread and Bitter Greens
I sat sulking and skulking in the privet hedge right behind the garage, and I could smell the wafting aroma of bacon frying and cornbread baking. I was sulking because I had run away from home. Yes, sir, I had made up my little five-year-old mind that I would no longer take the awful abuse from my mother—a tongue-lashing for my latest error, and a smack on the derriere for that offense. (Where was Children's Services when we needed them?!) I was skulking because I had indeed NOT left as I threatened, but had opted to hide out behind the small weather-beaten edifice about seventy-five feet from my home. Who ever knew if it was really a garage?—no one had seen a car in there for years, only items for storage. But the “garage” gave a great view to the kitchen window and my mother’s actions.
I had packed my bag—a small pink suitcase, laminated with a picture of a princess in a coach, and left for parts unknown. I had packed plenty for survival on the road—one-half of a peanut butter sandwich, a doll, a doll blanket and a needle, thread, and various scraps of cloth to make my own clothes. Oh, and I had taken the trusty family mastiff—a miniature fox terrier, Bingo, to keep me company in my wide travels.
There we sat, side by side, no more peanut butter sandwich and a slight breeze and dusky light told us that night was beginning to fall. To make matters worse, my mother had called out her secret weapon—the aroma of Southern food. I knew she was cooking butter beans, one of my favorites. Now, in case you don’t know this, in the South we are known for eating butter beans, a hunk of cornbread, and a chunk of onion, and calling it a meal. Oh, let us not forget the regional drink, sweet tea. My father, a strapping six foot-guy, thought this was not quite enough to eat. To appease him my mother always fried a bit of bacon. And so it was the bacon frying that reached me and called me home.
After much mental machination, I made the determination that I must swallow my pride. My sandwich was gone, the dog was licking his chops, and the likelihood of making my own clothes had faded. So I screwed my courage to the sticking place and marched in through the back door. Then I saw it—“the look.” That’s another staple of Southern women—the look. My daughter swears I use it constantly. It entails the use of the mother’s countenance—and this tool only—to assure, confront, shame or communicate with the child. This particular time my mother showed me in one look that she was not surprised at my entrance, and she knew that her very own Jacqueline Kerouac had only made a small journey to a nearby patch of brush with her loyal dog.
This small fable only goes to show you the power of just the aroma of food here in the South. I have heard that the sense of smell is the strongest known way to evoke memories. I find no fault in this theory as I flash back over my childhood and remember the meals I could determine from a wafting Southern breeze. One of the best smells was that of pork chops cooking. Usually my mother had pork chops, some kind of side dish, biscuits—real Southern biscuits, rolled by hand--and cantaloupe. Yes, I could smell the sugary sweetness of that, too, as I played a few feet from the back door.
Cornbread, another staple of our family, is totally detectable a block away. I can’t recall how many times I was pulled home by the aroma of a skillet of cornbread baking. Then there was the fried chicken, golden, crisp and guaranteed to garner children at dinner time. Fish, because of the distinct smell, meant that we would have coleslaw. The slaw was only a simple cabbage mixture, and a secret ingredient, I think--but it was so delicious. I have yet to totally replicate its very simplicity and taste. Another fish tale hung in the frying of salmon “cakes”—not the more snooty “croquettes." Such "cakes" meant that we would have macaroni mixed with canned tomatoes to accompany the salmon. Years later I worked with a great lady who hailed from Texas. Imagine my surprise when I found that when her mother fried salmon, they always had the same side dish. It makes one wonder if we were related; was this pairing a common thing in the South, in the nation? Was it in our culinary DNA?
A savory pie, like chicken pot pie has a wonderful aroma, and of course a “berry pie” smell signaled a large cobbler baked in a deep rectangular dish. No dainty round pies for us; here in Georgia we are serious about our desserts, and make them in quantity. The aroma of a cake baking was like having a smell from heaven shot right down to where you stood.
Christmas baking particularly stands out in my mind. What an array of smells, what a cornucopia of treats for the nose! It would start with the fruitcake that had to be baked early and swaddled in cheesecloth. At our house we used that swaddling to hold in the little bit of brandy that moistened the cake. We were not usually drinkers, but the fruitcake was an exception. It yielded a cake that people actually ate, contrary to the many legends of fruitcake disdain. Then we would move on to cookies and pies. We made candy in a billowy cloud of confectioner’s sugar and the overriding exotic aroma of vanilla flavoring. Then we labored over the ambrosia, and the smell of citrus filled the house. The piece de resistance was the coconut cake, baked on Christmas Eve. That distinct smell ties together all my Christmas memories. I recall once sitting in my own apartment. My husband was putting together some Christmas gift, and I was baking the coconut cake. The smell of that cake filled our space and I was transported to another Christmas, another time. I could see me and my mother cooking and feel the warmth of the kitchen. Those memories are golden and can be called back magically with only a hint of vanilla. My mother died in 1993, but she is with me in memory every time I bake a coconut cake.
Food is important here in the South. It was scarce after the Civil War, almost non-existent in the Great Depression, and rationed in World War II. When we have food, we thank God for it, we cook it with love, and we honor our guests with it. The sharing of food is more than eating a meal—it is a ritual, a bonding. It reflects a time to eat, but also to linger and talk and tell tales. It stands at the heart of a family as a time to come to a table and have all your needs met—body and soul.
Do you think I make too much of this? Do I sound like a gourmand and not a gourmet? Perhaps. But I’m a Southern gal and this one necessity—cooking—often becomes for a Southern woman a hobby, a passion, a pastime, and for some a business. The South is legendary for its foods—gumbos and johnny cakes, cornbread and bitter greens, cobblers and Lane cakes.
I only know one thing. When I die, perhaps my life will flash before me, perhaps I will re-live the things I did and said, perhaps I will see a light. But I feel that I will be "called home" with the smell of something wonderful like cornbread. For I envision my mother in that faraway place, with the culinary smells of my life leading me on. Now, that’s heaven Southern style.