donbosco
Honored Member
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Thoughts on Cornbread. When my Momma and Deddy were running #BonleeHardware (which they did from 1940 until 1983 when I was 25), they never ate ‘dinner’ (lunch to Northerners) together Monday through Saturday since they also ran the Post Office and one of them needed to be attending the public there 9 to 5.
My Momma would go first, running up to the house (you could see it from the store) to get dinner together for herself and Deddy. Momma got a longer ‘break’ if you want to call it that because she laid out the food. Some days she made cornbread. Time was short to down dinner and what I remember being offered were pintos and peas and green beans galore with tomatoes and cucumbers and cantaloupe added in during the warmer months. But cornbread was, at least to me, the literal centerpiece of the meal. I was a kid and all those vegetables could be a bit too green for me. I admit to PB&J sandwiches fairly often. Just the same I remember dinner. And I did love the crunchy cornbread that my Momma made. It was almost burned frankly -- she always did struggle with minding the oven. At dinner in the middle of the table there always sat a deep-brown crusted ‘shape-of-a-cast-iron-skillet’ upside-down plate of cornbread with a soft-soft kitchen cloth draped over it.
Cornbread keeps well and sometimes it was the day-before’s crusty round but other days it was fresh and hot. From 12 I worked regularly in the store during summers, holidays, and after school - my parents weren’t mean about it and I have too many memories of goofing off for my ‘shifts’ to have been that strictly prescribed but there was a routine and ‘going up to the house’ for dinner was a major part of it. During my teen years Pearly Marsh often worked at the house a few hours a day and she was usually there for dinner too.
I never really knew what Pearly’s schedule was, but I was never surprised to see her around. She did laundry and cleaned the house. I usually ate my dinner with her. Momma and Deddy ate theirs quickly and alone so they could get back to the store. They worked hard and their days were timed out strictly with the dinner break often barely squeezed in.
And that brings us back to cornbread. In a renowned 2017 ‘Charlotte Observer’ article Kathleen Purvis wrote about cornbread and race in The South. According to Purvis, as well as the well-known African American chef and food historian, Michael Twitty, Black and White people in the region ate/eat different cornbread. See here: https://amp.charlotteobserver.com/living/food-drink/article68763427.html The thesis of the Purvis piece and the assertion of Twitty and other researchers and observers is that from the originating recipes themselves that Whites eat cornbread with a savory lean and Black people eat it sweet.
My Momma’s cornbread was close to salty. There was nothing the slightest bit sweet about it. In a nod toward his sweet tooth my Deddy’s own splurge was pouring molasses over it. I remember even then thinking that was odd since as a boy he had lost the fingers of his left hand in a sorghum mill mishap. I preferred plain old butter on my wedge. According to the Southern Kitchen Lore of Purvis and Twitty, Pearly, who was African American, may very likely have thought my Momma made her cornbread wrong.
Corn is the most American plant of all I’d argue. It is a gift from American Indians as is cornbread itself. Africans and Europeans adopted and adapted the grain in the years after the invasion, embracing it in multiple forms. In current times, the thick, smallish round corn tortillas from Guatemala that I have grown to love through my years spent there are increasingly part of the cuisine of The South And #DeepChatham. I once brought home to #Bonlee some tamales that I had bought in #SilerCity and Deddy was brave enough to try one after some coaxing. He tasted, and I saw him pause and ponder — I suspect now that he was recollecting his youth during the Great Depression on a struggling #SandyBranch tobacco farm and a table where corn was the staff of life. Savoring the masa of that foreign corn delight, he held it up, looked over at me and spoke just three words, “Poor folks food.” He finished his tamale.
Very near our apartment in #WestHarlem are two good cornbread spots - the first, a BBQ joint called Dinosaur that cooks with hickory that I can literally smell as it wafts up from the riverside and the second, Charles’ Fried Chicken (I met Charles - he’s from outside Charlotte, NC - a Tar Heel), both serve the sweet kind. Dinosaur isn’t southern but they keep some skin IN their pork ‘que and mustard OUT so it’s a good influence and Charles’ has fine chicken and solid sides - the cornbread in those places harkens homeward.
There are a lot of ways to eat corn - sweet, salty, ground up, creamed, on the cob, roasted, chips, tortillas, and flaked but it does seem to bind us historically and moving forward may it bind more than divide.
