Hinds County News

February 2017

Good Morning! Happy New year!

I celebrated New Year’s Day the in the southern tradition…. sort of.  This may surprise you all, but smoked hog jowl is impossible to find up here.

 last year, about this time, I mentioned my jowl disappointment to Tim, the gentleman who cuts my hair, he took finding hog jowl as a challenge.   Tim, bless his heart, thought he had found it a time of two…. but just was not to be.

  Black eyed peas, I found those in the bean section, on the bottom shelf, at the Sun Mart, a bit dusty, but hey I found them….no collards though…I grow collards but, mine were in the ground wilted from numerous frosts…so I had Cole slaw….and as you well know, cabbage is perfectly acceptable as your green for the New Year’s meal. Smoked hog shank was the replacement for the jowl. I Made ice tea, they drink tea up here, but it is unsweet as a rule, and cornbread baked in an iron skillet, so it was crusty on the bottom, rounded out my New Year’s Day meal.

Hog jowl is not the only thing difficult to find…. pig feet they can be found up here but, it is a road trip to get them.   Well, that not exactly true, every grocery stocks Hormel’s pig feet, pickled in a jar.

 Storytelling, like the food is different here, I came to that realization one day when a neighbor returned from a trip to New York City.  When I inquired her about trip…she told the WHOLE story in a couple of sentences.   A southerner can’t go to the grocery store without coming home with a longer story than that!  And she went to New York and came back without a story… I was shocked! 

A southerner telling a story about touring New York City!  I am here to tell you, it would be nearly impossible for that tale to be told in just one sitting.  Of course the story would not begin in New York, might would begin in the car headed to airport…because a trip to the airport is never uneventful….but could start anywhere anytime, even weeks before the trip began…shopping for the clothes to take….or even years ago telling about a movie they saw about New York. 

Let me tell you how stories in the south are often born…I was having a gathering on my front porch, everyone had arrived except my friend Fredna…. On after while, she arrives hurried and breathless, and explaining her tardiness as she climbed the front steps.  Fredna was late because she was trying to meet a taxidermist…as she went on with the explanation, we discovered Fredna was carrying around a deer head in the trunk of her car… and because she and the taxidermist had not been able to make connections, the deer head had been in the trunk for several days… Now keep in mind this gathering was on my front porch so it was not cold or even cool…. she did have it in a cooler…. but still and all.

We laughed and laughed and a story was born!   Fredna did not know at the time she was telling a story that will be told over and over.

Maybe the stories do change a bit from one telling to the next… not to embellish you understand, but because we remembered some very significant detail/details that will improve the story greatly.

Things just happen in the south that make great stories. I have a friend who is the mayor of one of our small towns in rural Hinds County, as was her duty, as mayor, she was participating in a celebratory parade, may have been 4^th of July, can’t remember.  Any way she was being driven in a patrol car by one of towns policemen, they were rolling along, waving and smiling at the crowds gathered along the street, when suddenly among the spectators, the policeman spots a “person of interest”.   The policeman had been looking for this “person of interest” all day. So, not wanting to miss this opportunity, he pulls over to the curb, puts the “person of interest” in the back seat and  then continues the parade route…with the “person of interest” in the back seat.   He too, the “person of interest” got in the spirit of the occasion and began smiling and waving too.

Southerner have stories…one story leads to another story… the tales can go on for hours and hours and often do.  I have fond memories of storytelling at social gatherings, pig pick’ns, crawfish and shrimp boils, church dinners of the grounds etc.   And dinners parties…. sitting down at seven and not get up from the table… many times until after 10 to go to the living room for a night cap.

One thing I love about the south…we are easily entertained and not easily offended by a story told on us…heck we will tell one on ourselves.

Love