Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Cornbread Nation: Best of Southern Food Writing) (57 page)
Authors: Unknown
Saddler Taylor is curator of folklife and research at the University of South Carolina's
McKissick Museum in Columbia.
Sarah Thomas works in public relations at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North
Carolina. Her husband and three dogs are her muses.
Mary V. Thompson is currently the research specialist at Mount Vernon, where she
has worked since completing graduate school in 1980.
Calvin Trillin, a native of Kansas City, is a staff writer for the New Yorker. His most
recent book is Feeding a Yen: Savoring Local Specialties from Kansas City to Cuzco.
Robb Walsh is the restaurant critic of the Houston Press. His newest book is The
Tex-Mex Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos.
Amy E. Weldon, an Alabama native, is a Ph.D. candidate in nineteenth-century
British literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jake Adam York's poems have appeared in the Southern Review, Shenandoah, Crab
Orchard Review, and many other journals. He coedits StorySouth.
A lot of individuals worked hard to put this book together. Someone had to get authors' permissions; someone had to keep the files in order; someone had to answer
phone calls and write letters; someone had to make the editor look good when he
failed to do so for himself. Almost all of those people were named Mary Beth Lasseter.
We offer her a small thanks in lieu of the much larger compensation she deserves.
This, the second volume of the Southern Foodways Alliance's Cornbread Nation,
owes much to the team who put together the first volume-John T. Edge, our director; John Egerton, our spiritual leader; David Perry, our editor at the University of
North Carolina Press; and Mark Simpson-Vos, his assistant.
The Southern Foodways Alliance would also like to thank the Atticus Trust for
their very generous financial support. We are also grateful to the writers and photographers whose works appear herein. Many contributors waived their reprint fees, and
we are doubly thankful for that. We have made every effort to trace and contact copyright holders. If an error or omission is brought to our attention, we will make corrections in future editions.
If you wish to submit an essay for inclusion in Cornbread Nation 3, please write to
John T. Edge in care of the Southern Foodways Alliance, Center for the Study of
Southern Culture, P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677, or send an e-mail message to
[email protected].
The following is a list of permissions to reprint the essays that appear in this book.
"The Land of Barbacoa" by Barbara Renaud Gonzalez. Printed by permission of
the author.
"Barbecue Service" by James Applewhite. Originally published in Michael McFee,
The Language They Speak Is Things to Eat (1994). Reprinted by permission of
the author.
"Caribbean Connection" by Jessica B. Harris. Printed by permission of the
author.
"George Washington and Barbecue" by Mary V. Thompson. Originally prepared
for Mount Vernon. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"An Ode to the Pig: Assorted Thoughts on the World's Most Controversial Food"
by Bethany Ewald Bultman. Originally published in Louisiana Cultural Vistas
(Louisiana Endowment of the Humanities) 15, no. 2 (Summer 2004). Printed
by permission of the author.
"The Georgia Barbecue" by Maude Andrews. Originally published in Harper's
Weekly, October 24, 1896.
"Dixie's Most Disputed Dish" by Rufus Jarmon. Originally published in the
Saturday Evening Post, July 3, 1954. Reprinted by permission of the Saturday
Evening Post, ©1954 (renewed), BFL&MS, Inc., Indianapolis.
"Texas Barbecue in Black and White" by Robb Walsh. Originally published
by
"The Rhetoric of Barbecue: A Southern Rite and Ritual" by Stephen Smith.
Originally published in Studies in Popular Culture 8, no. 1 (1985). Reprinted
by permission of the author.
"Politics and Pork" by Jim Auchmutey. Originally presented at the 2002 Southern
Foodways Symposium at the University of Mississippi. Printed by permission
of the author.
"Barbecue Sociology: The Meat of the Matter" by John Shelton Reed. Portions of
this essay originally appeared in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture,
August and September 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"In Xanadu Did Barbecue" by Ripley Golovin Hathaway. Excerpted from
the author's senior thesis at Vassar College. Reprinted by permission of
the author.
"We Didn't Know from Fatback: A Southern Jewish Perspective on Barbecue"
by Marcie Cohen Ferris. Drawn from a forthcoming book to be published
by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
"By the Light of the Moon: The Hash Pot Runneth Over" by Saddler Taylor.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Ribs Hit the Fan" by Max Brantley. Originally published in the Arkansas
Gazette, July 21,1977. Reprinted by permission of the Arkansas DemocratGazette.
"Cheer Up Mama" by Peter Kaminsky. Excerpted from his forthcoming book
Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine. Reprinted by permission of
the author.
"When Pigs Fly West" by Lolis Eric Elie. Originally published in Gourmet, June
2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Whole Hog" by Jeff Daniel Marion. The poem "Song for Wood's Barbeque
Shack, McKenzie, Tennessee" was first published in Crossroads: A Journal of
Southern Culture 1, no. i (Fall 1992) and later reprinted in Lost & Found (1994).
Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Kicking Butt" by Matt McMillen. Originally published in the Washington Post,
June 19, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Real Barbecue Revisited" by Vince Staten. Reprinted by permission of the
author.
"To the Unconverted" by Jake Adam York. Originally published in Crab Orchard
Review, Spring 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"In the Kitchen" by Linda Parsons Marion. Originally published in Home Fires
(1997). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Willodene" by Juliana Gray. Printed by permission of the author.
"Creole Contretemps" by Brett Anderson. Originally published in the New
Orleans Times-Picayune, July 7, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Viking Invasion" by Molly O'Neill. Originally published in the New Yorker,
July 29, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Never Give a Child an Artichoke" by Jenine Holmes. Originally published in
Knoxville Writers Guild, Literary Lunch (2002). Reprinted by permission of
the author.
"The Power of Memory and Presence" by Randy Fertel. Excerpted from his
forthcoming book The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steaks. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
"The Hamburger King" by William Price Fox. Originally published in Free Times,
July 12-18, 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"End of the Lines?" by Pableaux Johnson. Originally published in Gambit Weekly,
March 4, 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Catfish People" by Earl Sherman Braggs. Originally published in his hook Hat
Dancer Blue (1993). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"And the Band Played On: Taylor Grocery, Mississippi" by Sarah Thomas. Printed
by permission of the author.
"Open House" by John T. Edge. Originally published in the Oxford American,
January/ February 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Learning and Loafing at Tennessee's Oldest Business" by Fred W. Sauceman.
Originally published in Marquee magazine, Autumn 2002. Reprinted by
permission of the author.
"Roadside Table" by Michael McFee. Originally published in Nantahala Review 1
(2002). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"What Abby Fisher Knows" by Sara Roahen. Originally published in Tin House 4,
no. 2 (2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Ice Cream Dreams" by Eddie Dean. Originally published in Arthur, October
2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"For the Love of Mullet" by Diane Roberts. Originally published in the Oxford
American, no. 25 (1998). Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Boiled Peanuts" by John Martin Taylor. Originally published in Gastronomica,
Fall 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"The Fruits of Memory" by Amy E. Weldon. Originally published in Southern
Cultures, Summer 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Missing Links: In Praise of the Cajun Foodstuff That Doesn't Get Around"
by Calvin Trillin. Copyright © 2002 by Calvin Trillin. Originally published
in the New Yorker, January 26, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author
and Lescher & Lescher, Ltd. All rights reserved.
"Women Who Eat Dirt" by Susan Allport. Originally published in Gastronomica,
Spring 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Rich and Famous" by Julia Reed. Originally published in New York magazine,
April 21, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
"Love, Death, and Macaroni" by Pat Conroy. Originally published in Gourmet,
February 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.
The Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), an affiliated institute of the Center for the
Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, celebrates, teaches, preserves, and promotes the diverse food cultures of the American South. Along with
sponsoring the Southern Foodways Symposium and Southern Foodways Field Trips,
we document Southern foodways through oral history collection and archival research.
Established in 1977 at the University of Mississippi, the Center for the Study of
Southern Culture has become a focal point for innovative education and research by
promoting scholarship on every aspect of Southern culture. The center offers both
B.A. and M.A. degrees in Southern studies and is well known for its public programs,
including the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference and the Conference for
the Book.
The fifty founding members of the SFA are a diverse bunch: they are cookbook
authors and anthropologists, culinary historians and home cooks, chefs, organic
gardeners and barbecue pit masters, food journalists and inquisitive eaters, nativeborn Southerners and outlanders too. For more information, point your browser to
