A Southern Gallimaufry
Oil and line a 9″ skillet with parchment paper. Drizzle in 1/4 cup melted butter, and layer with sliced pineapple and cherries. Sprinkle chaotically with light brown sugar. Pour in vanilla-flavored sponge cake batter and bake until sides have pulled a little from the pan. Cool well before inverting; refrigerate before slicing and serving.
The most cherished and versatile element of my batterie de cuisine is a well-seasoned 6” cast iron skillet I inherited from my sister Cindy, who called it her baby skillet.
Now, Cindy called anything of a diminutive nature “baby”; a hand spade was a “baby shovel.” I swear I once heard her call little old Massachusetts the baby state.
“Cindy,” I said, “It’s the Bay State.”
“That’s not what I said,” she replied with a sharp glance. I let it drop; I’d learned a long time ago you can’t win an argument with a big sister.
This skillet is just the thing you need to use for baking in small amounts. This little honey is perfect for good half-dozen (or four catheads). It’s also ideal for a pan of cornbread that will feed at least four easily, and a meat loaf that will feed three. When it comes to baked pasta, I would dearly love to have three more of these skillets to use for a manicotti party, one pan of four for every two people.
They’re also inexpensive, but if you’re lucky, you get one from someone you love.
This text and recipe is from Howard Mitcham’s magical Creole, Gumbo, and All That Jazz.
After gumbo, the most famous Creole-Cajun dish is jambalaya. The word is probably derived from “Jambon,” which means am in both Spanish and French. The “a la ya” is probably an African expletive which can be interpreted as either acclaim or derision. Jambalaya was a well-known dish even before Hank 
Williams’s Hit Parade song came along and made it nationally famous. Millions have sung the song without knowing anything about what the dish was like. The recipes herewith will give you a chance to really get on the bandwagon. Jambalaya started out as a poor man’s catch-all, utilizing any leftover meats, sausages, shrimp, or fish that might be lying around, and stretching them a long, long way with plenty of rice. If a poor Cajun family had five or six kids, it’s a safe bet they ate jambalaya several times a week. Like red beans and rice, it kept people from starving during depressions and recessions.
But the consummate artistry of Creole and Cajun cooks has lifted jambalaya above its humble beginnings to a higher plateau, and it is now served with pride and joy in the mansions of the wealthy and in high-toned restaurants. This dish is a close cousin of the Spanish paella, and it probably originated down around New Iberia, which, as its name suggests, was originally a Spanish settlement. However, there’s another town with a Spanish name, Gonzales, up near Baton Rouge, that calls itself the Jambalaya Capital of the World. Its citizens hold a jambalaya festival every year. They cook big black iron wash pots full of the stuff, and people come from all over to sample the rich and redolent fare. A real Gonzales jambalaya is so peppery hot, spicy, and rich that the uninitiated can barely cope with it, but an aficionado of the art can consume a half gallon of it and ask for more. The version of Creole Jambalaya here is lighter fare than the Gonzales product.
Melt a half stick butter in a thick-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, cook 1 pound andouille or smoked sausage (or both) until lightly browned. Stir in a heaping quarter cup of plain flour, add 3 medium white onions, chopped finely, 4 minced cloves of garlic, 6 whole scallions, chopped. Cook until onions soft and clear. Add a 16 ounce can diced tomatoes, drained, along with a bay leaf, and a teaspoon each thyme, cayenne, cumin, and black pepper. Add 4 cups broth (chicken or beef), a cup of cooked chicken, and a cup of diced ham. The liquid should cover the ingredients. Bring to a rolling boil and stir in 2 cups raw rice (let me recommend Zatarain’s long grain, jly). Cover, boil for about 5 minutes, then reduce heat and cook until rice is done. Remove lid to cook off excess liquid; “a jambalaya should be moist, but not soupy.” Salt to taste.
Syracuse, New York is hometown to Tom Cruise, Grace Jones, and Jake, who says his ancestors were Greek fishermen. Every now and then he’ll offhandedly mention “Uncle Ari and Aunt Jackie.”
Jake sniffs at my Southern heritage, informing me that his parents contributed to programs for eradicating hookworm, pellagra, and illiteracy in Mississippi. He came to Jackson over two decades ago as the result of a convoluted series of circumstances I’ve long since quit trying to unravel. He stayed because he likes the weather; his recollections of lake-effect snow are unbelievably horrific. Even after twenty-plus years here, people still ask him where he’s from. It drives him nuts.
Generous soul that I am, in an effort to reciprocate his family’s (likely fictitious) charity, I had to learn how to make good Yankee baked beans using the sturdy pots he brought back from Maine last year, which of course had been made by exceedingly sweet people in a religious community near Bangor. (No, I didn’t go; he was meeting his mother to visit an aunt, and I was better off here with beer and cable.)
I breathed deeply and put my gloves on. Then I took a pound of dried navy beans, a cup of diced ham with rind, and a half cup of sorghum molasses and threw it all into the (unquestionably gorgeous) 2 quart pot with a cup of chopped onions and a bay leaf. I covered them with water, seasoned with a teaspoon of black pepper and a heaping tablespoon of dry mustard. I water to the rim , covered the pot, and put it into a 250 oven for four hours.
The beans were rich and buttery, and the mustard cut the molasses enough to let the beans make a statement. Jake credited the results to the pots, so I whacked him with a wooden spoon. Twice.
Heat 2 cups white vinegar with a cup each of sugar and water, and three tablespoons salt and pickling spices. Break 2 heads cauliflower into florets, toss with a sliced lemon, and pack into jars with strips of sweet peppers. Pour hot brine over vegetables, cool, and seal.
The first carnival was held on Thursday, August 27, 1931. At that time, the entire nation was in the grip of the depression. In Water Valley, a bank had failed, the railroad had pulled out, and unemployment was high. Local businessmen were concerned about the spirit of the townspeople, so they decided to host a carnival to boost morale. The Carnival consisted of a parade, a pageant to name the carnival queen, and a formal ball. Festivities were repeated for nine consecutive years, and then halted with the outbreak of World War II. The Watermelon Carnival lay in dormancy until 1980, when it was successfully revived. This account of the first carnival appeared in vol. 20, no. 4 of the Illinois Central Magazine.
The weather man predicted rain; yet early Thursday morning, August 27th, cars began arriving in Water Valley, Mississippi, for the Watermelon Carnival, the crowd continuing to grow until 12,000 to 20,000 persons could be counted. All wore holiday clothes and entered into the spirit of the day. C.R. Pitts, manager of the Yalobusha Democrat, presented the Watermelon Carnival idea to the people; then the Water Valley Junior Chamber of Commerce voted to sponsor the Carnival, and, receiving the cooperation of other civic organizations and private citizens, has made the Watermelon Carnival the outstanding attraction in North Mississippi, embodying a program which is unexcelled in beauty and originality.
Ever since Yalobusha County has been settled watermelons have been raised on the farms. Each farm had a small ‘patch’ of watermelons for private use. Occasionally a few choice melons were brought to town in the farm wagon and offered for sale on the streets. Only in recent years have melons been produced for outside markets.
The production of watermelons in this section has been a gradual growth until in 1930 more than 100 carloads of watermelons were shipped by rail from Water Valley and many more were transported by trucks. Water Valley melons are known for their superior flavor. The sandy loam, found in the hills of Yalobusha County, is especially adapted to the production of watermelons. The land is thoroughly broken and laid off in “hills” eight feet apart. Each hill 18 fertilized. If barnyard fertilizer is used, the fertilizer is placed under the hill during the winter or long enough in advance of planting so that the fertilizer is thoroughly decomposed and will not heat. When this method is used, the hills are marked by pegs so that the seed may be planted on top of the fertilizer in the hill. Planting takes place as soon as the danger from frost has passed. Cultivation consists of ordinary plowing and hoeing, to keep the ground loose and to destroy weeds and grass, care being taken not to injure the roots or vines. When the vines have attained a sufficient growth, the crop is “laid by”, and at maturity the vines cover the field solidly from hill to hill.
Some of the varieties of melons planted in Yalobusha County are Renter’s Wonder, Texas Jumbo, Klecky Sweet, Stone Mountain, Irish Gray, Honey Dew, Halbert’s Honey, Lem Green and Schockler; and some of the principal growers are W.E. Walker, Joe Holt, Jim Hayles, Will Hayles, Fred McCracken, W.0. Champion, Charlie Goodwin, Ernest and Joe Stone, Clarence Hervey, Dixie Davis, Robert and Ben King. Ten acres is considered a big field for one man. The average yield per acre is about 30,000 pounds. Prices range from 33 1/3 cents to $1.00 per hundred pounds, varying according to the season and the grade of melons.
When the melon is ripe, the ‘curl’ which grows out of the stem dies. One may judge of the melon’s condition by the sound brought forth by thumping it with the finger. A melon pulled green never ripens. A prime melon pulled when ripe will usually be in good condition for ten days or two weeks, without extra care, and will keep indefinitely in cold storage.
The Carnival Program “The carnival program on August 27th was ushered in by the noise of many instruments as the crowd began gathering. The Holly Springs’ band concert was the social program’s first number. Kermit Cofer was master of ceremonies and introduced the principal speaker of the morning, Congressman W.M. Whittington of Greenwood, Mississippi, who addressed the farmers in keeping with the spirit and intent of the occasion. During the day thousands visited the melon display where the largest melons produced in this section as well as other farm products were to be seen. There were ten melon and garden display booths that aroused the admiration of the throngs.
At 1:30 o’clock in the afternoon talks were made by Congressman Jeff Busby, H.J. Schweitert (general agricultural agent of the Illinois Central system) and L.A. Olsen, extension director of the A. and M. College at Starkville. At 3 o’clock a baseball game between the Jolly Cabs of Memphis and a home team, with Water Valley winning 5 to 2.
At 4 o’clock an important part of the carnival was the cutting of 1500 ice-cold melons. The melons were passed out over the long tables to the thousands. The melons were purchased by the Junior Chamber of Commerce from the many growers in the County. A number of special varieties were donated.
At 7 o’clock one of the most elaborate parades ever seen in Mississippi proceeded from Blount Street north to Court Street around the City Park and returned to Blount Street in the following order: mayor’s car of welcome; official decorator’s car; Sardis Drum and Bugle Corps; 155th Mississippi Infantry, Company G, Aberdeen, Mississippi; Captain E. L. Sykes in command; Curtis E. Pass Post, American Legion, and visiting ex-service men; American Legion float; W.S. Turnage Drug Company’s decorated car; Memphis Band and Orchestra, Oakland Mississippi; merchants’ float; Kraft Cheese Company’s decorated car; McCullar-Suratt float; Indian Tribe on move; T.P.A. float; R.L. Mann’s Floral Garden float; Chapman Service Station float; decorated car of Mrs. John Dalton; Memphis Illinois Central System Band; ‘Queen’s float’, queen and princesses; decorated car of Lee’s Hardware and Furniture; Water Valley Rotary Club float; Oak Grove Dairy float; U.S. Post Office float; O’tuckolofa Consolidated School float; Will Henry’s thirty piece band; United Daughters of the Confederacy’s float; Henry Ford’s special car; Martha and George Washington; W.B. Moorhead and Company’s float; Peoples’ Wholesale float; decorated car Water Valley Hospital; float of three banks; float of Grand Theatre; two floats of Hendricks Machine Shop; Babe Ross’ famous clown band of fifteen pieces; Ford caravan headed by their special built radio and victrola on truck followed by sixteen latest models of Ford cars and trucks.
One of the most impressive floats in the parade and one which was as typically southern as the watermelon festival, was the float which was entered by the Daughters of the Confederacy. This float represented ‘The Old South’, a picturesque old carriage, of the antebellum period, which was covered with 1500 home-grown, old-fashioned red and white (the Confederate colors) hollyhocks! B. Leland, a veteran of the War Between the States, who is the father of Mrs. A.D. Caulfield (the Illinois Central’s superintendent’s wife), represented a plantation owner of the sixties; his posing, in character, made the U.D.C. float seem a reality. Mary Lynne Brown was a true picture of early Confederate womanhood; while Charlotte Blackston, daughter of Engineer and Mrs. H. R. Blackston, was a dainty reproduction of a young lady of our revered ‘old South’. The red-and-white hollyhock covered antebellum carriage, entered as a float by the members of the local U.D.C., was drawn by two bay horses, and was preceded by four ‘outriders’, one of whom–‘ Uncle’ Frank McFarland, a negro veteran of the War Between the States–had enlisted with his master and had remained in active military service under the Confederate flag with his master during those memorable days.
The Illinois Central platform was decorated to represent a large watermelon patch (sand, vines and watermelons being used for the natural effect); where, after the parade, Mrs. E.L. McVey directed a beautiful pantomime composed of more than fifty little children who represented flowers, butterflies, birds (large ones, of course) and happy children disporting themselves in the watermelon patch. The fairy pantomime was followed by the crowning of the Watermelon Carnival’s Queen, who was Eleanor Houston, daughter of Chief Dispatcher and Mrs. L.S. Houston of the Illinois Central System.
After presenting a silver loving cup to the Watermelon Carnival Queen, Miss Houston, and as the conclusion of the coronation, Edwin Blackmur (president of the Junior Chamber of Commerce), with the queen, led the grand march for the street dance, followed by ten princesses of the. Watermelon Carnival. Each princess was accompanied in the grand march by a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. The big Watermelon Camival program closed with a magnificent display of fireworks including six beautiful bet pieces, one of which portrayed a watermelon, twelve special arena pieces, and fifty-two aerial bombs, the display being handled by G.L. Gafford, chief clerk to the Illinois Central Superintendent.
In 1936, with the world on the brink of war, Olympic games were held in Berlin, where Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler was to stage a celebration of his rise to power and a confirmation of the Nazi ideal of Aryan racial supremacy, an ideal that was shattered by African-American athlete Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in the track and field events. Among Owens’ teammates that year was another gold medalist, a native of Calhoun County, Mississippi, who rose to a commanding position in track competitions at Louisiana State University, dominating the 400 meter hurdles around the world throughout the 1930s and offering equal competition in the 400 meter flat race.
Glenn “Slats” Hardin, was born July 1, 1910 near Derma, Mississippi, a small town in the southern half of Calhoun County, Mississippi. The family moved to Greenwood when Glenn was in the 2nd grade, and there Hardin became one of the most outstanding athletes of his generation, earning his nickname “Slats” because of his long legs. He began competing in state track and field competitions during his junior year. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported in May, 1930 that “the tall blond boy ran the 220-yard hurdles in 25 flat. The old record was 25.6. He stepped the quarter-mile in 50 and the half-mile in 1:59, slipping 5 seconds off the latter record.” According to observer Fletcher Oaks, “He was a tall, lanky, long-legged boy. There was a guy I went to school with in south Mississippi, Jack Burnett. Jack had won the 100-yard and the 220. Hardin had won the hurdles and the half-mile. They both competed in the quarter on the second day, and while Jack ran a good race, he was no match for Glenn. Burnett had to run hard, but Hardin was just loping out there, with the easiest–looking stride, just like a deer running.”
Hardin, to the chagrin of athletics at both Ole Miss and MSU, attended Louisiana State University, which dominated the old Southern Conference in track during the late ‘20s and early ‘30s. While at LSU, he won four NCAA individual titles, the 440 in 1933 and 1934 and the 22-yards low hurdles in the same two years. Hardin was a member of the LSU Tigers outdoor track and field team that won the school’s first ever NCAA Championship in 1933. In 1935, his senior year, he finished second in the hurdles at the NCAA championships to an Ohio State runner with whom he would compete in Berlin. That runner was Jesse Owens. Hardin qualified for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where he finished second in the 400 m. hurdles in 52.0 but was given credit for a world record when the winner, Bob Tisdall from Ireland, knocked down a hurdle, an error that in those days disqualified a performance for world record consideration. Hardin lowered the record to 51.8 in the 1934 AAU championships and then bettered it to 50.6 during a meet in Stockholm later that year. That record would stand for the next nineteen years.
Hardin along with Owens qualified for the Olympic team at the trials in Randall’s Island, N.Y. in 1936. Owens was certainly a good bet to win his three individual events—the 100, 200 and long jump—in Berlin, and Hardin was close to a sure thing for a gold medal in the 400 hurdles where in the final of six runners, Hardin drew the outside lane. U.S. Teammate Joe Patterson, running from the inside, went out so fast that he was actually ahead of Hardin at the half-way point despite the difference in the staggered start, but in the third 100 meters, Hardin surged past Patterson and entered the final straight one meter ahead of John Loaring of Canada. He held the lead to win the gold at 52.4.
Hardin retired from athletics after a failed effort to organize a professional track circuit, married in 1937 and settled in Baton Rouge, never finishing his degree at LSU. He worked for the Ethel Corporation and his wife taught high school history. In the late 1960s he began to travel for the state overseeing voting machines. His second oldest son, Billy, was also an NCAA champion hurdler for LSU in the 1960s and made the Olympic team in 1964 for his dad’s event, the 400 m. hurdles. Glenn Hardin died in Baton Rouge, 1975.
This essay by Alexander Lee Bondurant appeared in Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society, vol. 1 (pp. 104-6), printed for the Society in Oxford, Mississippi in 1898. Other entries include “Mississippi as a Field for the Student of Literature”, by W.L. Weber, “Suffrage in Mississippi”, by R.H. Thompson and “Some Inaccuracies in Claiborne’s History in Regard to Tecumseh” by Charles Riley.
Most alumni of the University of Mississippi will find Professor Bondurant’s name familiar if only for the classes they took in Bondurant Hall, though some of the most hard-core Ole Miss fans will remember him as the man who established the University of Mississippi football team and served as its coach during its first season in 1893. For the record, the Rebs had a 4-1 season, losing only to the Southern Athletic Club in New Orleans (0-24) on Nov. 30; they stayed in the city long enough to beat Tulane there two days later (12-4). Bondurant was also a classics scholar with degrees from the University of Virginia and Harvard.
I reproduce his essay refuting the existence of the Free State of Jones out of historical interest. I myself remain solidly convinced that the Free State of Jones was never a cohesive entity, much less one with noble objectives, most likely nothing more than a handful of outlaws protecting themselves and their families against the depredations of a moribund, corrupt local regime.
Did Jones County Secede?
It seems that many within and without the State would answer this query in the affirmative, and even their ordinance of succession is given by one writer on the subject as follows:
“WHEREAS, The State of Mississippi, for reasons which appear justifiable, has seen fit to withdraw from the Federal Union; and,
WHEREAS, We, the citizens of Jones County, claim the same right, thinking our grievances are sufficient by reason of an unjust law passed by the Confederate States of America forcing us to go into distant parts, etc., and therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That we sever the union heretofore existing between Jones County and The State of Mississippi, and proclaim our independence of the said State and of the Confederate States of America; and we solemnly call upon Almighty God to witness and bless this act.”
Such being the case, it has seemed to me in order to advert to a discussion in The Nation beginning March 24, 1892, which throws considerable light on the question. In the paper of this date Samuel Willard, of Chicago, writes that he had been a soldier in the army which invaded Mississippi, and that he had never during the war heard of such an occurrence. When, therefore, he saw the statement made in The New England Magazine for November, 1891, the author being professor Hart, he doubted its accuracy. It may be stated just here that Professor Hart, in a subsequent history of The Nation, gives as his authority Mr. Galloway, historian of the Sixth Army Corps, who published in The Magazine of American History for October, 1886, an article entitled “A Confederacy Within a Confederacy”; but upon what authority Mr. Galloway based his statements does not appear. He therefore wrote to the Governor of the State of Mississippi and to the clerk of Jones County, and elicited replies from both of these gentlemen, and Governor Stone enclosed a letter from his predecessor, Hon. Robert Lowry, who was sent to Jones County during the war in command of troops for the purpose of arresting deserters. The texts of the letters are too long to quote in full, so a few passages will have to suffice. Gov. Stone writes:
“It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the whole story is a fabrication, and there is scarcely any foundation for any part of it. To begin with, Jones County furnished perhaps as many soldiers to the army of the Confederacy as any other county of like population. * * * Many of them declined to go into the army in the beginning, but so far as formal withdrawal or resolution to that effect is concerned, no such thing ever occurred in Jones County. Hon. Robert Lowry was sent to Jones County during the war for the purpose of arresting and returning deserters to their commands, and there was some little fighting with these bands of deserters, or rather bush-whacking of his men by the deserters; and some of the deserters were arrested and executed, but only a few. The whole story is the veriest fabrication, and I presume few persons of intelligence will believe any of it.”
Ex-Governor Lowry writes: “The county furnished nearly and probably its entire quote of soldiers, many of whom did splendid service. No such effort as establishing a separate government was ever attempted. The story of withdrawal and establishing a separate government is a pure fabrication—not the shadow of foundation for it.”
Governor McLaurin, in a recent letter to me on this subject, writes: “I was a boy thirteen years old when the war commenced. I was ‘raised’ in Smith County, a county adjoining Jones. I was at home the first three years of the war, and, if there was any attempt by Jones County to secede and set up a separate government, I did not hear anything of it. I was in a brigade that intercepted a federal raid that started from Baton Rouge to Mobile in November or December, 1864, and we passed through or very near Jones County, and I never heard of any attempt to set up a separate government in the county. I think it safe for you to negate the whole story.”
E.B. Sharp Esq., chancery clerk, writes: “The report is utterly false in every particularly.”
By the middle of the last century, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, known to the world of letters as M.F.K. Fisher, had established herself as the preeminent culinary essayist in the English language.
Her visits to Dijon, Vevey and Provence resulted in works such as Serve It Forth (1937), Consider the Oyster (1941), How to Cook a Wolf (1942) and The Gastronomical Me (1941). Those and her translation of The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin (1949) had garnered her praises from around the globe. W.H. Auden said of her, “I do not know of anyone in the United States who writes better prose,” no small acclaim in the age of Faulkner, Hemingway, and Steinbeck.
In 1964, Fisher had just finished the stunning Map of Another Town, an excerpt of which was published in The New Yorker in January. Subtitled “A Memoir of Provence”, the work marks a departure from her gastronomical memoir-cum-recipe format since the book is built not around food but around places: the cours Mirabear, the Deaux Garcons, La Toronde and other sites associated with Aix-en-Provence.
She had established herself as a writer, but she had already told friends she wanted to do something different: she wanted to teach. Other than a writing workshop in Utah in 1954 and various public speaking engagements, she had no teaching experience.
She also lacked sufficient academic credits to qualify for certification at public schools, but private schools like Piney Woods offered leeway in the matter of credentials and she entertained the idea of teaching English literature, basic composition, home economics (try to imagine taking home economics from M.F.K. Fisher) and tutoring students in French, Spanish and Italian.
“I’ll be working with students in advanced high school and junior college who are preparing for the ministry, the law, teaching and medicine. I’ll also be working with students who have come from the most God-forsaken rural areas in the state. The main thing is that they will be there because they WILL it, and not because it is the easiest, coziest and most indicated way to social and economic success.”
Fisher first heard about Piney Woods in the early 1920s when their gospel choir performed at The Bishop’s School in La Jolla, California, where the teen-aged Mary Frances and her younger sister were enrolled. For some time afterwards, her mother Edith subscribed to the Piney Woods bulletin and regularly sent donations of money and books, which her daughter continued to do for decades.
In her letters to family and friends in the early months of 1964, M.F. wrote of her preliminary discussion with Dr. Laurence Jones, the founder of Piney Woods, about her plans to volunteer her services at the school and her reasons for doing so, saying that she had “almost finished the active mother-role and that I am destined to go to waste unless I make some strong move.”
The year 1964 was a sadly historic one for Mississippi; the state had become a battleground in the American struggle for civil rights. Fisher confessed that she was no martyr to the cause of racial equality, and “as for accepting and being accepted, I honestly think that would soon take care of itself, easily and thoroughly . . . there would be suspicion of my motives at first, as is very understandable . . . so many white people want to ‘help’ but, are conditioned too far back to be anything but self-conscious about it, and I seem to be born without a racial conscience or whatever it is.”
She was not being altruistic at all, she was doing this for herself because after so many comfortable years in St. Helena and so many years of raising her daughters to be citizens of the world, she now had her back to the wall and needed Piney Woods as much as or more than the school needed her.
After sharing her plans with family (to mixed responses), Fisher boarded the California Zephyr in San Francisco on June 22. Once in Chicago, she boarded a train bound for Jackson, some twenty miles from Piney Woods.
During that time radio broadcasts and news coverage focused on the disappearance of two white civil rights workers from New York, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and their black activist host, James Chaney, who were the first casualties of what was to become known as the “Freedom Summer”. On August 4, the FBI would discover the inhumed bodies of Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, and the South would explode in acts of violence and bigotry
But at Piney Woods, the focus was on work and education. Fisher said that the students were “too busy for trouble.” She eased into teaching with noncredit courses on fables (“from Aesop to Thurber”) and also tutored a handful of students. She lived in the comparative luxury of an air-conditioned mobile home of a faculty member who was away on vacation and ate most of her meals in the dining hall, which she considered disastrous because of the emphasis on starchy foods.
It should be noted that Fisher dined at the famous Revolving Tables in the Mendenhall Hotel, but records of the meal and her impressions of it are if in existence unavailable.
Fisher was at Piney Woods for a very short time, less than six months all told: two school terms, a summer and a fall. Despite the miserable Mississippi summer heat, her first term was the happiest. She wrote, “For the first time in many years what creative energy I have is being directed toward other things than my professional and emotional self.” She spoke of “wooing the students” to make herself acceptable, and her non-credit courses were popular.
She talked of her time with Dr. Jones, who was away from campus most of the time on fund-raising junkets. During his absence, the dean of the school Dr. Chandler was in charge, and Fisher described her as a “somewhat ridiculous little figure”. Fisher was soon to tangle with the steely Chandler and became outraged at a librarian who would not check out books “to NEGRO students!”
During the October break between the summer and fall semesters, things began to go awry. Even as she boarded the plane in Jackson, “I was surrounded by men and women and their frightened children speaking Mississippi dialects, several civil rights workers were flying out, the plane was stiff with heavily armed police, and I became more convinced that I could never come back.”
She spent her break at a beach house in Bridgehampton, N.Y., attending Broadway musicals and dining with Truman Capote, but that autumn her daughter Anna lost her job and became pregnant, her friend and editor Pat Convici became gravely ill, and her sister Anne was also in poor health.
When she returned to Piney Woods, she threw herself back into teaching, but the daily grind soon began to wear. After a difficult Thanksgiving with her family in California, when she returned to Piney Woods in December she asked to be relieved of her teaching duties for the remainder of the fall semester.
Her plans were to return to California to her daughters Norah and Anna, but, incensed that she seemed to have abandoned them in their time of need (Norah was by now caring for the pregnant and unstable Anna) for a group of Negro students in the middle of nowhere, they both insisted that she shouldn’t come.
Fisher left Piney Woods for Chicago in January 1965 and never returned. She had lost 20 pounds and was absorbed in self-reflection. Looking back on that time she wrote, “I began to come to life again.” She later described her time in Mississippi as “a pit of non-existence” she subjected herself to.
Once back in Chicago, she began writing again and sold some articles she had written long ago. “I thought a great deal about Piney Woods – the iron hand of Dr. Chandler, the librarian who didn’t want books taken out of the library, the conformity. People want me to write controversial stuff about it, but I am still too close, and I do not want to hurt the old man who founded the school.”
“He is a rascal, but he is also something of a real saint, in my eyes. I am making many notes, of course, and may some day be able to tell what I think is the truth about the basically noble but infamous place.”
These notes were never assembled, much less expounded upon. In Conversations with M.F.K. Fisher, edited by David Lazar (University Press of Mississippi: 1992), Ruth Riechl in 1990 describes this exchange:
“Mississippi?” I ask. Fisher sighs. “In 1964 the kids were all gone and I thought I’d find out if the South was as bad as I thought. So I went to teach at the Piney Woods School.” Piney Woods was a school for black students; the faculty, says Fisher, was half black and half white. She taught English. “The South was worse than I expected. I didn’t go to town at all while I was there.” But why did she go in the first place? Did she plan to write a book, to fight a fight? She looks slightly horrified. “God, no, I wasn’t planning on writing anything about it. And I didn’t go there to fight anything. I just went.” Fisher smiles a little, remembering. “I found it took six months before the kids would eyeball me. But after six months I was without color, and so were they.”
She smiles. “I was not invited back,” she adds with a certain amount of pride, “because I was a trouble maker.” She seems pleased by this, and then abruptly stops talking.
All butter beans are limas, but not all limas are butter beans.
Actually, it’s a lot more complicated. While lima beans and butter beans are usually thought of as two different types of beans, they are both varieties of Phaseolus lunatus (literally “moon bean”), which has a very long and complicated history of domestication in Meso- and South America.
During the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru (16th-19th centuries), when limas were exported to North America and Europe, the boxes of beans were stamped with their place of origin (“Lima, Peru“), and the beans got named as such. But of course, when referring to the bean, the word is pronounced LY-mah, while the Peruvian capital is (as you all know) pronounced LEE-mah.
As a rule, large, yellow/white/speckled limas are generally known as butter beans, while the smaller, green varieties are called, well, limas. The smallest may even be called “baby” limas. However, I have been told that “they call butter beans limas up North,” which really throws a wrench in the works.
Limas are a warm-weather crop and come into season sometime around mid-June and with the planting of second crops in late July and early August, stay in season well into October.
Among the most popular varieties grown in Mississippi are ‘Thorogreen’ and ‘Henderson,’ both small green bush types; ‘Jackson Wonder,’ also a bush variety, is small and brown or speckled; ‘Florida Speckled’ is a larger pole variety, and the hard-to-find ‘Willow Leaf,’ also a pole variety, has something of a cult following. Butterpeas are a type of lima beans.
Fresh beans should be smooth and plump, somewhat tacky to the touch. Fresh beans should be washed and picked over for damage, dirt, or detritus, washed, and set to cook in water 2:1; fresh beans don’t need as much water as dried, and they don’t need pre-soaking. As with most American bean recipes, fatty pork is a classic addition.
Bring beans to a boil, then lower heat to simmer and cover until beans are soft. I always use white pepper instead of black to season, and rarely use anything more until the beans are cooked, at which point they become the basis for any number of wonderful dishes.
Every summer I make baked limas in sour cream. For a pound of cooked limas with about a half cup of the liquid, add a quarter cup of brown sugar, and a cup of sour cream mixed with a teaspoon corn starch to keep it from separating. Flour will work in a pinch. Mix well. Bake in a low oven until set. This dish goes with anything at all but is open to any number of frivolous variations.
