I was raised
in the Jim Crow south during the era of segregation. My grandmother and I first lived in Kentucky
and then when I was eight we moved to her hometown in the heart of the
Mississippi Delta. I was always
considered and outsider: no father, from the north (Kentucky,) not Baptist and
on top of that I was small for my age. When
I was nineteen I left Mississippi, joined the Navy and never returned.
Decades
later, when deciding to retire, my wife agreed to move to the small town in
western Kentucky where I spent my youngest days, a time that had produced fond
memories.
The south is
still covertly segregated. The people
in the south aren’t bad people; they are congenial, thoughtful and resourceful,
with strong family ties. But, their
religious bred ignorance so permeates every facet of their life that it made
the six years we spent in Kentucky uncomfortable. Their religious prejudices are as strongly
held as the Jim Crow prejudices held during segregation.
The only
good memory I have of Mississippi is the food.
Mississippi home cooking, strongly influenced by the black community,
was in a class by itself. Fried
chicken, not breaded but lightly rolled in flour and then fried in bacon grease
in a cast iron skillet until the skin was crispy; greens cooked with ham hock –
cooked for hours until it surrenders a rich pot liquor – eaten with a dash of
Louisiana Hot Sauce; catfish and hush-puppies with white beans; fresh slice,
tart, acidy tomatoes with a dollop of mayonnaise, salt and pepper; homemade
biscuits and eggs cooked in bacon grease with a side of grits with butter for
breakfast; these were common fare and the memories I still carry.
And Oh yes,
the music – the Delta Blues
Black people in that Mississippi Delta town
were looked down on, considered inferior in every way, exploited and often
brutalized. The irony is that today the
only claim to fame that Mississippi town promotes is as the home of Muddy Waters.
the Ol'Buzzard
