When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (best short novels TXT) 📕

So, if someone wanted to wheel and deal with me on Friday at lunchtime for my fatback, they better have made the smart decision to order chocolate ice cream back on Monday morning when we turned in our lunch money. And I wasn’t stupid. No.

Before any sodium soaked skillet-fried sow passed from my hand to some salt junky, I demanded to see the little slip of paper that we got back on Tuesday morning in our cubbys confirming our ice cream orders. Looking back on it now, I suppose it’s fair to say that on Fridays, the little angel who always got a piece of fatback when she was in elementary school, turned into a fatback black market queen-pin once she got to the lunch table.

Of course, when we went to Middle School, I realized I was headed down a dark path if I kept up with my fatback/chocolate ice cream extortion ways even though they didn’t do the Friday Fatback treats. But they had other things I could have traded up to in the shady world of tasty lunch table bargaining. Honestly, if I’d not changed my ways, I’m sure I would’ve started dealing in those tasty yeast rolls that the school made each day as I always seemed to get two of them – perhaps my angelic reputation preceded me.  Either that or the lunch ladies felt like they needed to fatten me up because I was so itty-bitty back then.  But no matter what the reason, I always wound up with an extra rolls and I only ate one. If I had wanted to, I could’ve eaten my weight and then some in ice cream and french fries (back when they used to deep fry them in beef tallow). But I chose, instead, to simply give my extra rolls to one of my friends. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it)

Now you might think the doling out of fatback was something unique to my elementary school. But it wasn’t. No. It was a practice that was rampant in the school cafeterias in my area. In fact, my husband, who moved to the South from New York when he was around 10 tells the funniest story about how on one of the first days at his new elementary school, a lunch lady yelled 'FATBACK!' out to the students as they sat eating their lunches. And before the word had fully escaped her lips, the students all jumped up from their seats and dashed to get a piece. To hear my husband describe the scene it was almost as if Jesus, Himself, had stopped by and was handing out the stuff like Holy lollipops.

And so my husband, not knowing what he was in for, also jumped up, ran with the crowd and was given one of the coveted pieces of fatback. He thought for sure that fatback must be awe inspiring to have caused such a commotion. He says he excitedly took a bite and instantly thought Oh gross! as he spit the stuff out of his mouth. Apparently chowing down on crispy fatback was not a spiritual moment for him. However, just as I had done, he too, learned how to use the valuable brittle tidbit to his bargaining advantage. Honest to goodness, when he told me that, even though we’d been married for years, I knew it was fated that we were meant to be together. After all, how rare is it for two people – one Southern, one Northern – to come together and not adore a crispy piece of fatback? 

Of course aside from getting to enjoy an extra two to three whole ounces of ice cream each week there were other benefits to avoiding the fatback. Benefits I wouldn’t realize until years later. Because when I consider how much saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium is in one little piece, I swear I’m surprised I couldn’t hear my friends’ 10-year-old arteries hardening right there as we sat at Mrs. Eudy’s 4th grade lunch table. And now that I’m in my fabulous 40s, I cannot help but wonder how many of my old classmates are dealing with high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes considering the amount of deep fried, salt covered, carbohydrate packed foods that were ingested back then.

I’m pretty sure they don’t do Fatback Fridays anymore in elementary schools considering the kids have to eat things like oven-baked tater-tots and flavorless wheat rolls which they can wash down with chocolate flavored skim milk. Yum. And in an odd sort of way, I feel sorry for my daughter because she never got to enjoy the power a thick piece of fatback gave a kid even though as Peter Parker’s uncle said to the soon to be Spiderman, ‘With great power, comes great responsibility’.

Obviously, Spiderman’s uncle didn’t know how good the chocolate ice cream that the Cabarrus Creamery made was!

Food.

It has the power to take us back in time - back to good times. Times when our stomachs could handle just about anything we threw in them without so much as a gurgle or a burp. (Although, my four brothers would say that the 'burps' were the best part of a meal . . . I, personally, beg to differ!)

There are certain foods that make me feel happy if I do nothing more than think about them. And if I am lucky enough (or if I have enough gumption to prepare it myself) I can actually have a few morsels of one or more of those foods that take me back to those days when I sat around my dining room table and enjoyed dinner with my family. I’ll bet YOU have a food or that reminds you of a story from your youth, too! 

You might not know it from my long-winded ramblings, but there was a time when I used to teach history - mainly US history because I have a Master’s Degree in in the subject and there's not a lot a person can do with that sort of degree aside from teach. I could have chosen any number of other subjects to study (and I did - for a while I was a PoliSci/Econ double major and then I was a Theatre major - yes, I am one of those people who tested the extremes of the College of Humanities) 

But in the end, I chose History because even though I went from one end to the other in the humanities - there was always at least one history class on my schedule. One day I realized that my major had been right in front of me simply waiting to be seen. I suppose it's because I loved all the personal stories that lived within the history I was studying. And I carried that love into my classroom hoping that with each passing day I'd inspire at least one kid with my stories which were always a little goofy the way I'd been inspired all throughout my life.

My love of history came long before college. It started when I was young and would spend hours (yes, hours) sitting at our big, round dinner table practically every evening listening to the stories my father used to tell about his childhood, his college days, and his years in the military. You see, unlike most of my friends whose dads were in their 30s or maybe in their 40s when they were born - my father was 52 when I was born in 1970. A quick bit of math and that’ll tell you he was born in 1918 which means basically I lived with my own personal, walking, talking history book.  And did my father love to talk and tell stories!

He especially liked to tell his stories was while he was cooking. You see, my Daddy was a Stay-at-Home Dad before there ever was such a thing as S@H Dads! Only he didn't stay home because he wanted to. Oh, no. he would have much rather been working but he couldn't because he had his first bout with cancer from '77 to about '80.

The radiation and chemotherapy treatments, which weren’t nearly as pleasant (if you can imagine such a thing being pleasant) back then as they are today. And as a result it left him too tired to 'work' so he stayed home while my mother went to work. Now as I said, my Daddy loved to tell stories while he was cooking and now that I look back on it, I think he told his stories that way because he wanted me to associate all his sharable life moments with something tangible . . . something I could see or smell or taste later on in life that would trigger my memories so that his stories could come to life long after he passed on. 

My father successfully won the battle against the cancer that got hold of him in the late 70s. But sadly, he lost the war as he was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 1993 and died three months before my wedding. Now, now . . . no need for tears! With all those lovely stories he left me as well as a poem he wrote just for me and my future husband - months before he was ever told officially 'This is it, Steve, enjoy what you can while you can' - I have nothing but joyful thoughts. 

Moving right along, when my Daddy got to cooking dinner it was usually well before the dinner hour at 6PM. And that’s because good, old-fashioned Southern-style cooking takes a little time to reach that ‘Oh, my Lord that’s SO good’ stage! Besides, the prep time for the foods I grew up on were the best times to catch up on things that were going on. 

Somehow, I imagine this is true in many households where dinner isn’t something that is ‘just about refueling as quickly and as mess free as possible’.  I kid you not when I say there were times when I'd get off the school bus and you could smell the aroma of whatever my daddy had been working on wafting down our long driveway on a soft Southern breeze. 

And in our house a meal wasn't a ‘meal’ unless it had:

1. A meat: for instance buttermilk fried chicken; crusted cube steak with mushroom gravy* (a.k.a. chicken fried steak); or, big ol' fried pork chops smothered in rich, creamy gravy. Notice the overriding emphasis on the 'fried' part.  Sure you could do an 'oven baked crispy style' for each of the foods mentioned he had wanted. But he didn't want to. Truth is I'm not much for frying foods these days. But there are times when I just have to let loose and go all Southern-Fried-Yum-Tastic on my meats!)

*In my house, gravy was its own food group, mind you. Oh, Heaven help me, do I love me some good country-style gravy.      

2. Two vegetables like: fresh creamed corn; wilted spinach cooked with thin strips of crispy salted fatback {I’m personally not a fan of eating the fatback—however, I do love the flavor it imparts in a dish}; or,        -green beans. Oh, Lord have mercy! Those green beans! If I'm lying,