Just another farm dinner: shredded confit on crowders, tomato and cucumber salad, cabbage and carrot slaw.

I should be outside mowing the lawn. Claiming that the mercury is climbing is really not an excuse or a reality. For it is a beautiful Saturday afternoon with highs in the mid-80s and lowish, for us, humidity. That the morning was productive — a gutter cleaning, the daily harvest of crowder peas, weed-eating around the day’s rotation of trees, vines, bushes, and outbuildings — seems to matter not. Through the open window my mower’s kin call gaily out to mine from up and down the valley, “Come out and play.”

Slamming the window on their siren song, I determine to focus my considerable energies on more fruitful projects. An hour later, a handful of computer chess game victories under my belt (All praise the Undo button!), I continue to wrestle with my work avoidance and open the refrigerator.

A little snack to fortify my willpower for the afternoon is called for in this moment. Before me, in a dish gifted by my 99-year-old aunt, lie salty duck legs buried in white glistening lard. Beautiful confit! (The result of another work avoidance project tackled earlier in the week when I should have been completing a memorandum for something or other.)

I reach past the various salads and grab a hunk of cheddar. In mere moments, it is turned into a lovely shredded mound. A few simple steps more: a bowl, a small jar of pimentos, drained, then tossed with the cheese, freshly ground pepper and a sprinkle of salt, a healthy dollop of Blue Plate mayonnaise, a wooden spoon to mix and mash and I’m done.

Now, if you are from regions less enlightened than the South, you may already have stopped reading. Good riddance! For it is truly depressing to the soul that there are depraved and deprived individuals who have never and will never eat a pimento cheese sandwich. So be it. I pledge, henceforth, to drop this messianic desire to convert. To never exalt in the blended perfection of extra-sharp cheddar and piquant pimento is a sad existence indeed. But it is yours — welcome to it.

There are moments in life, genius moments, that strike us all. Ford had his assembly line and Edison his lightbulb. It is in these moments that the gods hold their breath: “Will he???” With generations of can-do pioneers coursing through my veins, I answer with a resounding “Yes!” I will take that hill and scatter the naysayers. Give me that ceramic of confit and be quick about it, sires!

Two slices of sourdough, a heap of pimento cheese on top and shredded duck confit on bottom, assembled into one glorious sandwich. I stand out on the porch, my masterpiece in one hand and a cold beer in the other, and dare the world.

But wait, fortune smiles on me this Saturday afternoon. Do I see gathering clouds? They do look like they could carry rain, might even, in time, develop into dangerous thunderstorms. Should I dash out and mow and risk certain death … on the admittedly random chance of being struck with lightning?

Nay, I head back inside, unwilling to hazard depriving future generations of these awesome insights.

You are welcome.

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