Horse Corn

Whenever I would talk about getting a car that was too expensive, or buy a suit that was too expensive, or chase a girl who was above my station, my father would always remind me that my grandfather was a dirt farmer in Atalla County before he came to Jackson, and whatever happened since, I had no business putting on airs.  

The suit thing was kind of a trick because one his best friends was Billie Nevill, who owned the Rogue and sold me the suits and then advised I get the good Allen Edmunds shoes; still, the point remained:  I was twenty, I was from Mississippi, and it was morally bound to remain humble.  Daddy wasn't the only one.  I knew guys who bought the most expensive suits at the Rogue and even traveled to Memphis and New Orleans to buy clothes but kept a cheap suit handy for when they went before the public because they didn't want anyone to think they thought more of themselves than they did the people they represented.  

My grandfather didn't actually farm dirt.  He, and his father, and his grandfather farmed white corn, called "horse corn" in Mississippi, because it mostly was used to feed horses and cows.  The Campbells and the Boyds were humble people all the way through their lives in Atalla County, Mississippi, all the way back to Scotland; they were farmers or laborers. On my mother's side, the Bradys of Learned Mississippi also grew horse corn and tobacco and whatever vegetables they needed for the table.  The simple country store a cousin built is now the hippest place to buy a steak in Mississippi.   I know people who brag about the kings and dukes and famous people that lay in their family tree; there are none in mine.  We're humble people from humble stock.

My father never used the word hubris, but that's what he was warning me against.  People resent it when you think too much of yourself, he told me.  That actually wasn't a problem for me.  I thought very little of myself.  I struggled mightily academically, and stuttering and other issues made socializing very difficult, and my weight would make wild fluctuations.  The only trait I felt confident about was physical strength.  My other talents, more creative talents, remained hidden most of my life.  Some people, who lack self-confidence, try to cover it by putting on airs; expensive clothes and cars and exclusive club membership mask a sense of insecurity.    Not only was I discouraged from that, it was absolutely forbidden.

My family was divided on the issue of what temperature meat should be served.  Half believed it should be served the color of dry concrete.  The other half believed it should be the color of watermelon.  My mother sided with the concrete faction, so whenever she cooked a roast it was--grey.  Mother was otherwise an excellent cook, but beef was not a specialty--unless you also liked your meat grey.  

This meant that my father and I were on our own, and the only time we were able to express this was with grilling.  I watched Justin Wilson and Julia Child religiously, so I knew something about cooking, and our school library had two books on grilling, so I became quite good at it.  Every so often my father couldn't take it anymore and he'd drag me to the grocery store to buy meat to cook.  Half the steaks were cooked properly, the other half were cooked until they were the same color as the grill itself.  Sometimes I'd cook for my dad's friends too.  That meant they were nearly all cooked properly except for Ben Puckett, who liked steak basically raw.  It also meant I got to both make and have whiskey or vodka.  Daddy preferred vodka; I preferred whiskey.  Rowan Taylor taught me the finer points of good whiskey--I retain this to today.

What my mother lacked in cooking beef, she more than made up for in cooking vegetables.  Two of my siblings rebelled against eating just vegetables, so we didn't do it that often, but when we did, it was glorious.  My mother and her friends were devoted customers of Alice Berry at the old Farmers Market off Woodrow Wilson Road.  She would buy butter beans, field peas, snap beans, and green peanuts, and Mrs. Berry was one of the few places where she could find the horse corn my father loved.

She'd come home with brown paper sacks full of fresh Mississippi vegetables.  My grandmother, the maid Hattie and I sat in front of the television, shelling peas and snapping beans for the country feast ahead.  Mother taught me how to husk the horse corn and pull the tassels off the kernels while she got her biggest pot ready.    She boiled enough corn for everybody to have two ears, plus butterbeans, plus boiled okra, plus fresh, ripe tomato sliced with mayonnaise.  My grandmother made cornbread in a skillet she got from her mother who got it from her mother way over in Learned, Mississippi.  

My father, who taught me to eat sardines in a can, vienna sausages on crackers, cow tongue, snails, beef  and chicken livers, sause (otherwise known as head cheese), had a plate of just horse corn and tomatoes and was in heaven.  No matter what he attained in life, he struggled to keep in touch with the idea of humble food for humble people.

Like Ireland and Scotland, Mississippi is a humble place.  We're a people who work the land but remain fiercely proud.  It's important to be humble.  It's thinking you're better than somebody that starts most of the problems in this world.