Ode To The Hushpuppy

Gene Crabtree is participating in the perfect by-product of a fishing trip. He's overseeing the crackle of cooking oil as morsels coated in cornmeal fry to tastebud ready wellness. I'm attending the annual fish fry at the Liberty Baptist Church in Fulton County. While not exactly the bustle of Fancy Farm and its yearly cookout, revered all the same by the local Baptist and other denominations that find out there's free food up the two lane.

There used to be more shade trees on the church grounds. Now down to just one, and underneath the usual splay of unmatched lawn chairs and tailgates loosed for a constructed seating arrangement. The elders stand watch over the fry duty. Women, per tradition, perhaps, in the fellowship hall readying sweet tea and ice cubes for a wash down later.

I love a good fish fry mainly because I grew up eating creek caught fare with my Dad and his Dad before. If it wasn't deer-something, it was fish tonight, after night, after night. But it's the fixings, as called, that I'd like to ponder for a moment. Everything tastes the same at a good fish fry. The fish taste like the fries, which taste like the onion rings, and especially the dollops of cornmeal themselves just cooked and eaten alongside as if the coating on the fish wasn't breading enough. Therein lies the South's fascination with the hushpuppy.

We have our favorites. It became entree alone. You ate the rest of the meal not to look like a person just eating hushpuppies. A good one is fluffy, greasy, and good in bunches eaten much like potato chips dipped in too much ketchup.

The term dates back to 1899, but hushpuppies were perhaps named such during the Civil War. Soldiers making cornbread would tear off a little piece and toss to the Confederate dogs to "Hush the puppies." Now we've stuck with the name, and better such, the side item.

So synonymous with seafood now that it almost seems like it was caught in the water just as well. Think about it. We never hear of hushpuppies served with hamburgers or BBQ. Not with any other major food group except the fish group. And so it seems that at one point in its life span that the cornmeal nugget was a bottom feeder in a creek with legs and fins sort of like a crawdad or similar. I could picture my Granddaddy pulling into the driveway and calling to Grandmamma in the kitchen, "Marthann (her name is Martha Ann, but was always shortened), get the stuff. Got fifteen crappie, a couple catfish, and we caught 25 hushpuppies near this one stump." Hushpuppies caught on a cane pole? He could have done it, cornmeal or not.

Well, I've now sat here and written an entire column on hushpuppies, and what's worse is you just read an entire column on hushpuppies. Time to find another church having a cookout.

Originally published in The Hickman Courier, August 2013

The Hat Lady of Cave City, Kentucky

I just needed a road. That’s usually how these things start. Two hours and nothing else to do but drive and seek. Park City seemed close enough to establish a makeshift outpost for the morning. From there, plans were to drive a back road of Barren County until I had to double back for work.

The plans rerouted. My lone Park City Shell Station was lined to the brim with Interstate pull off traffic and the local yocal needing five dollars worth. So I settled for the Dixie Highway north to the next City. Cave City, that is. Another Shell Station across the street from the new KFC neighboring the old Kentucky Fried Chicken. Cave City’s Colonel held onto the old Bucket sign for years and years longer than most others. Now, the bucket of chicken is gone, replaced by a marketer’s brainstorm.

My Shell pump clicked full, another bank hold added to the fifty or so dollars to fill the tank. They all do that. Try filling up three or four times a week with a card at the pump. Hundreds float around on hold at all times.  Got on the downtown loop to figure out where to go, and a tailgater gets right behind on the bumper. Why not? Bumper to bumper so close I may as well had a trailer hitch for his car. I pull over to a parking spot in front of a bank in the historic district and let the enthusiastic driver pass. Idling, I look in front of me to see a faded sign on the side of a faded building. Magaline’s Antiques. Hundreds of Booths, it says. Air Conditioned, it says. I went in.

Well, before I opened the door, I saw a handwritten sign. “No Large Purses allowed! You will be searched!” So, I entered to find the typical antique store welcome and asked if they’d like to “Check my purse.” From there, the memory of the day began in earnest.

My host was dressed like Halloween. It was June. Maybe the Derby, still a month late. Hat with green sash. Green vintage dress that looked to be antebellum at best. Antiairconditioned at worst. To which, there wasn’t as much as advertised outside on the building. I broke a sweat looking at the Swisher Sweets.

"Hun, is there anything I can help you with?” said Jolly Green. I had spied a toy John Deere tractor in a locked case. One of those little ones. A day earlier, I had promised a girl a tractor if I came across one. Ok, a young lady my age that I was hoping to win over with a tractor (another blog). “You’ve got everything locked up in here! Can’t get to nothing!” I exclaimed. “I can tell you’ve never had a business!” She said. I picked out a tractor for a lass. And entered into conversation with Magaline Meredith. Hat Lady of the South.

To pay for my find up at the archaic cash register, I turn around and see pictures of country singer Marty Stuart of Hillbilly Rock memory posing with her. The Kentucky Headhunters posing with Mrs. Hat, too. An article written about her…by Byron Crawford. Next to the Kentucky Colonel certificate and Grand Marshall Award for the Cave City Christmas parade.

Turns out, Magaline pioneered a downtown renaissance in Cave City two decades ago after a try at a sandwich shop that turned antique store when the junk made more money than the food service. She was the first to try her hand (along with her husband) at opening a new store away from an interchange.  At one local event in 1995, she dressed up in a hat and the yocals when crazy with compliment. It’s been a hat day ever  since. She has 400 plus. A room built onto her house. For the hats.

I realized I was in no ordinary antique store. Same stuff one sees at a hundred of these places. A stand alone personality second to none. Flamboyance all the difference.  Makes one want to come back. I stayed as long as great conversation allowed.  Heard about the house she grew up in at a holler named Buzzard Roost.

About her newfangled e-cigarette. About the time a guy drove right into her store and busted out the plate glass. And decapitated a concrete lion, too. She had Polaroids of that. I aksed her if she was on Facebook. She said no. I took a picture for Map Dot anyway. Left with a John Deere tractor, a Pepsi race car, and a smile. From  just needing a road.