The Food of a Younger Land (19 page)

Originally the celebration was a religious event marking the last quarterly meeting of the year, of the official board of the African Union Methodist Episcopal Church, established as the first all-Negro church in Delaware in 1805. It was the custom of slave owners in Delaware and nearby states to allow slaves to have a day of freedom quarterly to worship or do as they pleased, and many slaves were provided with carts and ox teams to make the trip to a common gathering place. The August meeting in Wilmington came at a time when weather conditions made traveling best, and throughout the years, attendance at Big Quarterly increased.

The modern trend of scoffing at old traditions exists but has affected Big Quarterly little. The celebration is more largely attended than in former years. It is now celebrated by Negro churches of all denominations, which hold special services, and make constructive effort to infuse the spiritual meaning of the celebration, without spoiling the feasting. These services are augmented by crusading missionaries, both men and women, who loudly exhort the passing throngs to Christianity from street corners.

Not the least of the attractions drawing the large crowds are the tables lining the sidewalks, where the savory aroma from sizzling dishes tantalizes the appetite. In addition to the sidewalk concessions, practically every house in the section is an “eatery” for the day. Feasting begins early in the morning, and continues throughout the day. The varied menu consists of fried chicken, chicken pot-pie, ham and cabbage, hot corn pone, greens and side meat, frank-furters, watermelon, soft drinks, pigs’ feet, pork roasts, and baked ham thickly studded with cloves. There is no formality to the eating, most of the diners making their selections from the stands and feasting on the succulent morsels as they walk along the street, then stopping at the next stand that attracts the eye and palate. All the diners are not just promenaders, but many are singers, breaking forth with Negro spirituals at such times as their mouths are empty, while those who have seen the “light” of conversion are ready, between nibbles on the breast of fried chicken, to loudly proclaim their faith.

GENEVIEVE WILCOX CHANDLER

N
ote: The barbecue described below occurs in a verbatim story from Horry County. This county has always had the highest ratio of white people in the coastal counties. Horry County has been largely detached from other sections because the swamps made transportation very difficult. Now-adays good roads have been built and the county is said to have more schools than any other in the state. Contrasting the Backwoods Barbecue would be the serving of food in the fall on the occasion of the Farmer’s Day, when governors, senators, and other important guests are feted by the prosperous tobacco, cotton, and truck farmers of the county.

 

 

 

O
h, he’s one ’o the low-downdest men that ever hopped up, Zack Long is! Zack was aimin on havin a barbecue like folks will do to kinda celebrate when they tobacco’s done cured and graded and tied and sold. If a man ever does feel plumb rich, then’s the time. And Zack he beat around askin everybody he seen at the store and post-office and them he met on the road to come to his barbecue. Bein’s he seemed so anxious, peared like me and my old man thought we’d orta go.

“We hit the house round ten in the mornin. They was thunder heads makin up and everbody had one eye on ’em and the other on the table out there under them chaney-berry
¹
trees. They was beginnin to spread papers and put out stacks o’ plates. If them papers hadn’t been weighted down we’da et on the rough planks, the wind was breezin so. Hit peared like they wanted to eat and git through before the storm broke.

“And what a mess o’ food Zack put on them planks that day! They was stewed cow and barbecued; barbecued hog and great gobs o’ fat boiled. Rice was cooked in the big black iron washpot over a bed of live coals. They was such a waste o’ rations to pots was crowdin each other plumb off the table. Hit pure turned a creetur’s stummick. Seemed like my appertite had plumb took a vacation and that was funny bein’s I hadn’t seen no kind o’ fresh meat in a month or more. You see, hit was August. There warn’t hide nor hare of a screen to Zack’s shack. Jest open to the skeeters and the flies like in old times ’fore the days o’ screens. And the table was sot inside the palin’s under them chaney-berry trees. Good thing too, or we’da had razor backs
²
as well as hounds under foot. But the palin’s didn’t interfere none tall with the flies and it peared like every fly in the county come to that barbecue.

“How many folks come? There was clost on to twenty head of chillun and mighty nigh as many head o’ grown-ups and pretty night ever hound in the neighborhood. Bein’s there warn’t no close neighbors I kept a wonderin where all them flies hatched off. Flies must sho have a terrible nose—they must! I just couldn’t figger out how they knowed bout all them rations thout some fly flewed round and spread the news. But we didn’t miss what they et, and you could pure see them hounds swell!

“They’d go too near a young ’un and his Ma would squall, ‘Looka Sam! Aint they no way to keep the critter’s nose out the young uns rations?’

“And down that plate would go. Hound knock it outa they hand. And the kid would be give another plate piled up with sufficient rice and backbone gravy to feed a common sized family! I aint to say stingy but I pure abhors to see nothing waste. But when you come down to brass tacks Zack didn’t really waste nothing—not even what fell to the ground for the hounds took care o’ that and he ’portioned out what was left. That storm did make up and it poured like in Nora’s
³
time but that man wouldn’t sleep till he’d shared all the leavins with his neighbors, black and white. And while they was filling up on his victuals that night there warn’t nary one but said, ‘Zack’s a good sort.’ They thought he was most as good as that crisp, greasy, barbecued hog—but if the truth were tell that man, to be she, must be one of the low-downdest men that ever hopped up!

“Generous? Oh yes, it did look like he was generous to a fault. Hit pears to me hits a good thing to be generous with what cost your own sweat and elbow grease but I cross my heart to die if that man didn’t kill and cook Joe Patter’s young guernser heifer out the public pastor and Joe one the chief ones bid to come to the barbecue! And I ain’t never spotted the sow yet—be-in the head warn’t round no where handy—but I’d know them ear-marks anywhere! And as sure as men’s born to die, somewheres they is a buried hog head and I’d give a pretty sum to know if that sow’s ear aint got a crop in the left and a under-bit in the right! Them was the markins on the widow Jenkins’s black sow and that sow made a git-away just round the time last August Zack Long give his farewell barbecue.

“It was lucky he leave so soon. And warn’t it queer how he never cracked bout how he was plannin on goin back to Georgia? Jest bout ten days after the barbecue when Joe was scourin ever bay in the pastor
⁴
for his guernsey heifer and the widow Alford was plannin on lawin anybody who was eatin or sellin fresh
⁵
—why Zack jest up and pulled out bag and baggage for parts un-known! The smoke was comin out his chimbley supper time on Wednesday. Bill Hicks was a-passin and seen hit. And that was the last smoke anyone seen from that chimbley in quite a spell.

“Nobody knowed tell he was gone how the place was done sold to strangers and papers signed. Nobody knowed tell the sheriff made his raid. Oh No! Zack had done took the still and all the evidence. Reckon he planned on usin that down in Georgia.

1
China berry tree.

2
Hogs allowed to run wild and forage for themselves.

3
Noah’s time.

4
Pasture.

5
Fresh meat.

Make slightly salty. After adding enough water to make approximately ¾ gals. cook 30 minutes. Baste meat on every turn and turn frequently during cooking process.

Pinky Langley (white man) uses this recipe for his swabbing barbecue sauce, 230 S. State, Jackson, Mississippi.

T
he annual banquet of the Polk County Possum Club at Mena is perhaps Arkansas’ outstanding ceremonial feast, and certainly is characteristically Arkansan in its background and color. Organized in 1913 as the result of a jocular possum hunting contest between two citizens of Mena, the club held its first banquet shortly afterward. Since that time the affairs have grown larger each year, until now between 500 and 600 guests are usually present. Membership requirements are lax; governors and senators rub elbows with Ouachita Mountain backwoodsmen, and only seriousness is forbidden.

Preparations begin a couple of weeks before the dinner, which has lately been held in December. Dozens of possums are captured in the woods and boarded in show windows by Mena merchants. When the day comes some of them are hung on trees along Mena Street, where they remain docilely throughout the celebration and provide atmosphere for city visitors. The rest go to the cooks.

In conformance with tradition, the possums are “baked” in the oven, along with a flanking corps of sweet potatoes. For stomachs too finicky to stand their rich meat (which tastes a good deal like oily pork), turkey is also on the menu. And of course there are the trimmings: green beans, turnips, and other vegetables, salad, and pumpkin pie. It is a point of etiquette that all attendants eat as much as they can hold.

After the banquet comes the initiation of new members and the election of officers for the ensuing year. The initiation is naturally a secret ceremony, but indiscreet novitiates have let slip information concerning the “possum grin” and the “possum sign.” The “grin” is a baring of the teeth, in imitation of a treed possum poked by a hunter’s gun; the “sign” is a clenched fist with the forefinger crooked outward, which gesture remotely resembles the furry ball of a possum’s body with the long prehensile tail curving away.

Elections are featured by uproariously burlesqued campaign speeches, “ringer” candidates, and wholesale charges of fraud. Despite the presence of sundry prominent citizens at the banquets, the officials chosen have been local men. The first president, who served from 1913 until his death in 1935, was B. S. Petefish, a rural station agent; the second was English Baker, an 82-year-old mountaineer who basked in a deerskin vest; and the incumbent is Rufe Miller, a Polk County farmer.

A
fter catching the possum “before you go to bed that night, scald the possum with lye and scrape off the hair. (Or have it done, which would be altogether more pleasant all around.) Dress whole, leaving on head and tail. Rub well with salt and put in a cool place overnight. When ready to cook, put in a deep pan with one quart of water, place three or four slices of breakfast bacon reverently across his breast, and put in oven. When half done, remove from oven and stuff with a dressing made of bread crumbs, a little onion, salt and pepper and possum juice taken from the pan in which he has been reposing. Return him to the pan, and place around him some small peeled sweet potatoes, and bake all until a light brown, basting frequently with the gravy.”