muted as the design in a Japanese scroll of winter night.
“George?” An urgent plea before the supper-laden Irishwomen arrived, expertly balancing their offerings: “ Please , darling. We’ll think of somebody.”
V
Hospitality
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN the rural South, there were farmhouses and farm wives who set tables where almost any passing stranger, a traveling preacher, a knife-grinder, an itinerant worker, was welcome to sit down to a hearty midday meal. Probably many such farm wives still exist. Certainly my aunt does, Mrs. Jennings Carter. Mary Ida Carter.
As a child I lived for long periods of time on the Carters’ farm, small then, but today a considerable property. The house was lighted by oil lamps in those days; water was pumped from a well and carried, and the only warmth was provided by fireplaces and stoves, and the only entertainment was what we ourselves manufactured. In the evenings, after supper, likely as not my uncle Jennings, a handsome, virile man, would play the piano accompanied by his pretty wife, my mother’s younger sister.
They were hard-working people, the Carters. Jennings, with the help of a few sharecropping field hands, cultivated his land with a horse-drawn plow. As for his wife, her chores were unlimited. I helped her with many of them: feeding the pigs, milkingthe cows, churning milk into butter, husking corn, shelling peas and pecans—it was fun, except for one assignment I sought to avoid, and when forced to perform, did so with my eyes shut: I just plain hated wringing the necks of chickens, though I certainly didn’t object to eating them afterward.
This was during the Depression, but there was plenty to eat on Mary Ida’s table for the principal meal of the day, which was served at noon and to which her sweating husband and his helpers were summoned by clanging a big bell. I loved to ring the bell; it made me feel powerful and beneficent.
It was to these midday meals, where the table was covered with hot biscuits and cornbread and honey-in-the-comb and chicken and catfish or fried squirrel and butter beans and black-eyed peas, that guests sometimes appeared, sometimes expected, sometimes not. “Well,” Mary Ida would sigh, seeing a footsore Bible salesman approaching along the road, “we don’t need another Bible. But I guess we’d better set another place.”
Of all those we fed, there were three who will never slip my memory. First, the Presbyterian missionary, who was traveling around the countryside soliciting funds for his Christian duties in unholy lands. Mary Ida said she couldn’t afford a cash contribution, but she would be pleased to have him take dinner with us. Poor man, he definitely looked as though he needed one. Arrayed in a rusty, dusty, shiny black suit, creaky black undertaker shoes, and a black-greenish hat, he was thin as a stalk of sugar cane. He had a long red wrinkled neck with a bobbing Adam’s apple the size of a goiter. I never saw a greedier fellow; he sucked up a quart of buttermilk in three swallows, devoured a whole platter of chicken single-handed (or rather, double-handedly, for he was eating with both hands), and so many biscuits, dripping with butter and molasses, that I lost count. However, for all his gobbling, he managed to give us hair-raising accounts of his exploits in perilous territories. “I’lltell you somethin’. I’ve seen cannibals roast black men and white men on a spit—just like you’d roast a pig—and eat every morsel, toes, brains, ears, and all. One of them cannibals told me the best eatin’ is a roasted newborn baby; said it tasted just like lamb. I spec the reason they didn’t eat me is ’cause I didn’t have enough meat on my bones. I’ve seen men hung by their heels till blood gushed out their ears. Once I got bit by a green mamba, the deadliest snake in the world. I was kinda nauseated there for a spell, but I didn’t die, so the black men figured I was a god and they gave me a coat made of
“George?” An urgent plea before the supper-laden Irishwomen arrived, expertly balancing their offerings: “ Please , darling. We’ll think of somebody.”
V
Hospitality
ONCE UPON A TIME, IN the rural South, there were farmhouses and farm wives who set tables where almost any passing stranger, a traveling preacher, a knife-grinder, an itinerant worker, was welcome to sit down to a hearty midday meal. Probably many such farm wives still exist. Certainly my aunt does, Mrs. Jennings Carter. Mary Ida Carter.
As a child I lived for long periods of time on the Carters’ farm, small then, but today a considerable property. The house was lighted by oil lamps in those days; water was pumped from a well and carried, and the only warmth was provided by fireplaces and stoves, and the only entertainment was what we ourselves manufactured. In the evenings, after supper, likely as not my uncle Jennings, a handsome, virile man, would play the piano accompanied by his pretty wife, my mother’s younger sister.
They were hard-working people, the Carters. Jennings, with the help of a few sharecropping field hands, cultivated his land with a horse-drawn plow. As for his wife, her chores were unlimited. I helped her with many of them: feeding the pigs, milkingthe cows, churning milk into butter, husking corn, shelling peas and pecans—it was fun, except for one assignment I sought to avoid, and when forced to perform, did so with my eyes shut: I just plain hated wringing the necks of chickens, though I certainly didn’t object to eating them afterward.
This was during the Depression, but there was plenty to eat on Mary Ida’s table for the principal meal of the day, which was served at noon and to which her sweating husband and his helpers were summoned by clanging a big bell. I loved to ring the bell; it made me feel powerful and beneficent.
It was to these midday meals, where the table was covered with hot biscuits and cornbread and honey-in-the-comb and chicken and catfish or fried squirrel and butter beans and black-eyed peas, that guests sometimes appeared, sometimes expected, sometimes not. “Well,” Mary Ida would sigh, seeing a footsore Bible salesman approaching along the road, “we don’t need another Bible. But I guess we’d better set another place.”
Of all those we fed, there were three who will never slip my memory. First, the Presbyterian missionary, who was traveling around the countryside soliciting funds for his Christian duties in unholy lands. Mary Ida said she couldn’t afford a cash contribution, but she would be pleased to have him take dinner with us. Poor man, he definitely looked as though he needed one. Arrayed in a rusty, dusty, shiny black suit, creaky black undertaker shoes, and a black-greenish hat, he was thin as a stalk of sugar cane. He had a long red wrinkled neck with a bobbing Adam’s apple the size of a goiter. I never saw a greedier fellow; he sucked up a quart of buttermilk in three swallows, devoured a whole platter of chicken single-handed (or rather, double-handedly, for he was eating with both hands), and so many biscuits, dripping with butter and molasses, that I lost count. However, for all his gobbling, he managed to give us hair-raising accounts of his exploits in perilous territories. “I’lltell you somethin’. I’ve seen cannibals roast black men and white men on a spit—just like you’d roast a pig—and eat every morsel, toes, brains, ears, and all. One of them cannibals told me the best eatin’ is a roasted newborn baby; said it tasted just like lamb. I spec the reason they didn’t eat me is ’cause I didn’t have enough meat on my bones. I’ve seen men hung by their heels till blood gushed out their ears. Once I got bit by a green mamba, the deadliest snake in the world. I was kinda nauseated there for a spell, but I didn’t die, so the black men figured I was a god and they gave me a coat made of
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