Brief Conversations With People Present and Passed (Lora)

We arrived home today, so this is our last post 'from the road.'  There are several more in the pipeline that we will get up as soon as we finish writing them.

Before I get carried away with my topics for this posting I want to address the many requests I've received for the recipes of several of the fine dishes that Father Thomas Bouterie prepared for us at our soiree in New Orleans.  So without further ado here they are:

OYSTERS MOSCA

 2 cups Italian bread crumbs

½ T. cayenne

4 T. lemon juice

¾ cup olive oil

5 cloves garlic, pressed

3 T. chopped parsley (optional)

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 quart oysters, drained

Combine all ingredients except oysters.  Place oysters in baking dish, ramekins or shells.  Top with mixture.  Bake at 350’ until oysters curl and then place under broiler until slightly brown.

 ** I put oysters in the oven without the mixture and let the oysters throw off a bit of water and then add the bread crumb mixture to absorb the liquid. Then I follow the directions to bake and then put under broiler.

After getting a brief glimpse at the Gulf of Mexico in Galveston we decided that a few days at the oceanside after New Orleans would be just the thing before heading North and into the last few weeks of the trip.  Ralph Brennan suggested that we go to the place his family had spent many happy summers, so we headed east from New Orleans to Pass Christian, Mississippi (see below for the location and the correct pronunciation). 

We walked into the bar in the place we were staying (Hotel Whisky) and met the Mayor of Pass Christian Les "Chipper" McDermott.  I urge you to click on that link (embedded in his name) and listen to him talk about the rebuilding of his town after Katrina wiped it from the map.  You have to listen to a few seconds of someone trying to teach you how to say Pass Christian in slow-mo, but the opportunity to listen to Mayor McDermott tell the story is well worth it.  He was hanging out in the bar with three friends.  One of them made a point to express how very thankful he and the people in that area of the Gulf coast are to people who came from New England after Katrina to help rebuild the area.  'I'll never forget how they helped us out," he told us.

People build (and re-build)their homes on pilings probably 20 feet above ground level and ground level itself is about 20 feet above water level. This style of building can be seen up and down the Gulf Coast.  One of my revelations as a result of this trip is to empathize more with folks who, in spite of knowing that the next big hurricane will probably destroy what they've re-built, this is a place they are inexorably connected to and find it impossible to turn their backs on.  Add into the mix rising tides, increasingly destructive storms, and people's expectations of the role of FEMA in rebuilding, and you have a situation that's complicated both emotionally and economically beyond belief. 

There's more than sun and sand on this area of the Gulf coast.   There's the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi. I could dedicate an entire blog just to George Ohr , but there isn't enough time to write about him and everything else, so I will offer these two images as an enticement to check him out.  

Here's George Ohr and below is a photo of the museum dedicated to this visionary ceramicist who made exquisite vessels out of clay dug from the banks of the nearby Tchoutacabouffa River.  He pushed the boundaries of the art of making pots, and like many 'outsider artists' his genius wasn't appreciated until long after he had died in abject poverty.  Chances are you might recognize work of the man who designed the museum buildings.  

We had two long conversations in Pass Christian.  The first was with a retired couple who were long time residents.  The husband was a birder and loved to fish.  She had just retired from teaching middle school.  Their children had moved far away and there was little to draw them back.  She and I talked about cooking and regional dishes that her generation loved but her children no longer eat, mainly, as she explained, because they eat a healthier diet.   She spoke nostalgically about dishes she used to make.  "Duck gizzards and the like just aren't something that they like to eat anymore," she told me.  "But surely they enjoy the oyster dishes you make."  "No, we don't eat oysters from the Gulf anymore," she replied. "They can make you sick, so we stopped eating them."   Of course David and I had been eating oysters non-stop and without a problem since we arrived in Louisiana.   Were we just lucky, I wondered.  

Our second conversation was with Diana (below), a 2nd generation Mexican American, born in Louisana and recently returned from living in Anchorage, Alaska.  She was just out of the military after completing four tours of duty in Afghanistan.  "My parents were afraid.  They didn't want me to go, but I was tired of hearing people say that all those folks over there were evil.  I didn't believe that, and wanted to judge for myself.  And I was right.  Some of the best people I ever met."  Now she looks forward to going to college on the GI Bill.

With only two more weeks to go in our trip we (reluctantly) turned northward.  At the suggestion of our new friend Bob Robinson we went to Jackson.  We didn't have a lot of time there, and chose to spend the few hours we did have on a tour of Eudora Welty's home.  It was a treat.  The house is infused with her warm and welcoming personality,  In fact, it seemed as if she had simply run out for a while and left the door open so we could look around and wait for her to return so we could join her in the honey suckle-perfumed garden for drinks and a chat.  What made the tour exceptional was that we were the only people on what ended up to be a private tour with a gentleman named Bill Walton.  He lived just down the street and had known Ms. Welty well.  In fact he is the godfather to her great grand nephew.  

I have loved Eudora Welty since first reading her books in college.  What cemented my relationship with her, though, was the quote someone had scribbled on the bathroom wall of our place at the Shack Up Inn in Clarksdale, Mississippi when we had driven the Blues Trail a few year before.

What made me feel right at home in her unassuming house were the piles of books everywhere.  On chairs and end tables, lining the sofa, and totally covering the dining room table.  It looked pretty much just like our house where you often can't find a place to sit or eat because of the book catastrophe going on there.  Eudora Welty was a voracious and eclectic reader of both classic and contemporary fiction, and non-fiction, poetry, biography and the like.   It gave me special pleasure to hear that she loved mysteries and was, in fact not only a fan, but a very close friend of Ross MacDonald's.  So much so that Mrs. MacDonald was suspicious that something was going on.  Mr. Walton assured us this was not the case.  

He also told us that she cared little about fame and preferred to let the light shine on others.  It was only in a bookcase in a tucked away upstairs bedroom that we saw some of her own books (first editions translated into dozens of languages).  In fact, after she died the people cataloguing the contents of the home couldn't find the Pulitzer Prize she had won in 1973 for The Optimist's Daughter.  Weeks later it was located stuffed in the bottom of a cardboard box in the back of a closet.

We spent several hours with Mr. Walton, and at the end of the tour we both felt we had been afforded very special look into the life of an remarkable woman.  

We had a very different experience in Oxford at Rowan Oak, the ancestral home of William Faulkner.  Here visitors are held at arm's length, never getting much of a sense of the man behind the framed letters and photographs on the wall.  

Because this team does like to eat, around noon that day we consulted Yelp and got off the highway at Winona, the town where the final spike was driven into the tracks that united the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico.  We headed for the railroad station to eat at The Tracks, and had our first encounter with fried pickles.

Here, at Donna Pearson's cafe, they with come with a side of Come Back Sauce.  But you'd best not eat the whole basket because it would be criminal not to save room for a burger topped with pimento cheese and then, of course, there's dessert...

While we rested up between courses David chatted with Maurice Ferguson, who stopped in for lunch.  He and David talked about timber, which is Mr. Ferguson's business.  Loblaw pine, to be precise, and his business card says, "Money Grows on Trees."  He also has a deep interest in American history with a concentration on George C Custer, and was delighted to learn that we went to Custer State Park.

When it comes to dessert at The Tracks, the concept of 'nice pie' becomes 'nice cake.'  They taste as good as they look.

Amber, our lovely waitress (2nd from the left) took terrific care of us, and Donna (last on the right) and I have become friends on Facebook.  Below is her recipe for Sweet Cream pies.

Then on to Memphis with pretty much one special destination in mind.  David hadn't ever been to Graceland.  I've been there three or four times and wanted him to see it.  He was cynical at first, but then began to see and appreciate a bit the genius that was Elvis Presley.

This time I actually left more depressed than impressed.  I thought of Prince and Michael Jackson and Jim Morrison and Janice Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and Amy Winehouse and Mama Cass (to name a very few) and all the talent wasted and the young lives that ended as a result the toxic mix that celebrity can afford.  As far as Elvis is concerned, I think that Bono said it best.

Ending on a more upbeat and hopeful note, in the photo below is Chastity Wright (right) and her Mom who both work at the Cozy Corner Tavern in the tiny town of Loretto, Kentucky.  Chastity took our lunch order then stuck around to answer our questions about the area.  She told us about how Marker's Mark (the place that manufactures fine bourbon in that town) has grown big and created solid economic gains for the locals.  She'd grown up there, but told us she'd traveled to all the US states except Hawaii and Alaska when she worked as a long haul truck driver.  She mentioned the places in the Boston areas she'd gotten to see.  But she hadn't ever flown on a plane until just recently when she went to Las Vegas.  

Chastity has three daughters.  The eldest, Layla Spring, is 16, a junior in the local high school. On March 11 look for Layla when she appears on America's Got Talent.  Listen to her sing.  She'll knock your socks off: Layla Spring.  

David and I left thinking, once again, as we had so many times on this long trip, that everyone has a story.  All you have to do is offer to listen.