Life in
the South

Mother Pearl was my daddy’s mamma who lived up the hill from our place. She was a southern cook of the highest order.   Tea cakes, fried pies, buttermilk pie, banana pudding, bread pudding,  pork chops with red eye gravy, fried white meat,  cat head biscuits, turnip greens with ham hocks, and butter rolls were just a few of the heavenly creations birthed from my grandmother’s Kenmore glass door oven. Even Mother Pearl’s cyarn bucket contained victuals of a higher quality than are served on today’s human troughs called “All You Can Eat Buffets.”

Mother Pearl’s kitchen was a sacred place and the center of her universe.  It was her kingdom, the form of government was sovereign rule, and Pearl was the Queen. Her kitchen was open at her will and closed by the same. Between meals the kitchen was wiped down and dishes were washed then dried and placed in their assigned cabinets. No adult or child was given grazing rights between meals and if thirst hit a soul during times of shutdown, relief could be found with their lips under the yard spigot.

Mother Pearl’s cooking utensils were her most valued belongings.  With a lifetime of use, each had become an extra limb to her body. They reflected the ingenuity and necessity Pearl used while feeding her family during the depression. The “Old Crow” whiskey bottle, my grandfather had donated during a younger more spirited time of his life, was her favorite rolling pin. The thick glass bottle rolled out a million miles of dumplins before I entered the world and another million afterwards.  Pearl’s wooden tea spoon, a family heirloom, stirred acres of cane sugar into her sweet tea. The spoon was stained a rich cinnamon color from years of use by the previous generations who taught Pearl her trade. The “Holy Grail”, Pearl’s cast iron cornbread skillet was shown the same reverence as the family Bible. It was protected from defilement at all times and remained in the oven when not in use.  Pearl’s greatest fear was for someone to wash her skillet and it magically lose its seasoning. No southern cook can tolerate cornbread sticking in a skillet. It’s a life altering event if the cornbread doesn’t flip from skillet to serving plate.  Losing the perfectly cooked golden crust on a pone of cornbread can bring great shame to southern womanhood, especially if the cornbread is destined to a church social. It was in Mother Pearl’s kitchen, her holy place and my place of fleshly worship, I learned the lessons of defilement and redemption.

Mother Pearl’s cobblers were hands down the best thing I ever put in my mouth.  Even today I would bargain time from the end of my life to have one whole cobbler for myself. The cobbler recipes, like all of Pearl’s recipes, were rarely written down or passed down.  Recipes are power in the south.  Many in the family have tried to imitate her creations only to feel a sense of great sadness and shame after one bite of their futile attempts. Pearl made sure none of her recipes wound up on enemy soil, enemy soil being another woman’s kitchen.  No cooking-age woman was ever allowed in Pearl’s kitchen during times of food preparation, especially when cobbler creating was going on.  Most southern women caught their husbands with their recipes, they are culinary love potions. I myself was caught with fried pork chops and homemade hash browns fried in bacon grease (the south’s number one seasoning ingredient). Mother Pearl wasn’t sharing any of the bait she caught my grandfather with and no woman could blame her.