Category Archives: Childhood

Repast

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shrimp gumbo

The owner came from the back, out of the kitchen. “Boys, you are welcome to come look in the freezers,” he said, “but you have eaten everything in the place.” We eyed each other, stomachs more than sated, and noted the smug look on each other’s face. “Nope,” I said, “we are done.” Mission accomplished at the all-you-can-eat frog-leg buffet on the outskirts of Ruston, Louisiana, circa 1980. Lesson learned by the owner of the diner: You cannot compete with the appetite of a horde of 18-year-old males. If you offer it, they will descend like locusts and strip the foliage bare from the counters and the freezers.

Sometime around 2005, my father and I were touring some historic sites in the western parishes. After a morning on the battlefield of Mansfield, we stopped in Many for lunch. At a small cinder block restaurant on the outskirts of town, we ordered bowls of crawfish étouffée that were as good as any to be found. A glass of iced tea and a slice of pecan pie and we were back on the road.  We spent the afternoon at Los Adaes, an old Spanish fort. When the French held Louisiana, the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City established this eastern outpost to stake a claim to the area.

One fall day, perhaps 1976, after visiting a construction site near Abbeville, Dad and I passed through the river town of Mermentau. There, we spotted a shell-covered parking lot packed at lunchtime with pickup trucks — in south Louisiana, a siren’s call to a gustatory feed. We slowed, found a spot, and got out. The menu was short. Nary a hamburger to be found, gumbo or catfish sauce piquante were the only options. We made our choice, paid, and moved to the other end of the counter to collect our bowls. Today’s lunch was the deep mahogany of a chicken-and-sausage gumbo. We took our place outside on long tables under the oaks, the oil roughnecks sliding over to make room for us.

Another day, this one in spring of 1984, I caught the ferry with friends and crossed the Mississippi to the historic town of Plaquemine. We stopped at a few random gas stations and bought a couple of pounds of homemade boudin at each. Boudin is a regional meal of rice, pork, and liver stuffed in natural hog casing. It is found throughout the southern part of the state, a perfect lunchtime repast, a meal-in-one that satisfies. We caught the ferry back across and spent the afternoon sitting on the levee eating our lunch and drinking Dixie beer before heading back to Baton Rouge.

This coming weekend I’ll be off the farm and back in the Deep South for the annual get-together of men in our family. We are staying in a lodge near Ville Platte, a town that used to be able to compete with all others for the quality of its boudin. We shall soon see if 2018 has brought any diminution to that reputation.

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Reading this weekend: Payne Hollow (Hubbard) and Between Meals (Liebling)

The Blood On Our Hands: revisited

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My father, now 91, fell and broke his hip this past week. Typically, for him, he is already up and walking after a ball-joint replacement. That incident has had me thinking about him, my childhood, and the unique sporting life we enjoyed. Here is one from the archives.

I laid out my shotguns and deer rifle on a folding table outside the kitchen window. With fall around the corner, it was time to clean and oil the guns. It’s a methodical process that is satisfying to undertake on objects that are a beautiful marriage of design and utility. Using a kit made for the purpose, I rammed the cleaning rods through the barrels, oiled the working parts, and rubbed the wood stocks till they shone. I finished just as guests arrived for dinner, returning the guns to the cabinet as they walked up the drive.

Growing up in Louisiana, I, alongside my father and brother, hunted and fished year round. It was a rare week that did not find me crouching in a duck blind, running trot lines, crabbing, or catching crawfish. Game, fresh- and saltwater fish, shrimp, and oysters easily provided five dinner meals out of seven for our household. Staying up late at night cleaning and gutting fish, setting the alarm every two hours to run the trot-line, waking up at 3 a.m. to get to the duck blind or be on the open gulf by sunrise, all were part of the landscape of my childhood.

Mine was the hunting and fishing of providence, not of the trophy hunter. It was the experience of a profoundly masculine world. From the catching, shooting, and cleaning to, in many cases, the cooking, it was a culture of men putting food on the table for their families. It wasn’t needed in the middle class home of my father—he certainly could have provided all of our meat needs from the grocery store—but it was a lifestyle I shared with most of my friends growing up.

There was always an exhilaration in making a good shot or setting the hook on a large fish. It provided, and still does, a sense of accomplishment that is part evolutionary and large part tribal. The camaraderie of men in camp, the solitude of the hunt, being on the water by myself, or with my father, the rituals of killing and of eating, each shaped who I am as a person.

Perhaps it is counterintuitive, but killing another living creature can teach a person a lot about nature. Putting that act of killing in its “proper place” reminds us of where we came from and where we belong. And remembering our place in a natural order may be the best way to save this planet.

A detractor could argue against the killing, the male role in that culture, and I would listen and perhaps agree in part. But my defense is simple and straightforward: I prefer to be the one with blood on his hands. I believe it is a stance that makes me more, not less, sensitive to the value of life. It is the same reason I butcher poultry and livestock. It seems more honest.

Some may be shaking their heads right now. But as we collectively pile into our cars, while away our hours shopping, allow our kids to grow up without seeing the light of day as they game their way into perpetual adolescence, move from air-conditioned office to air-conditioned vehicle to air-conditioned home, with all that those actions entail to the planet, we might ask ourselves a hard question: who are we kidding?

Whether vegetarian or meat eater, just because we do not pull the trigger or set the hook, we are all culpable in the killing that our lifestyle requires.

Father’s Day Weekend, 1974

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Happy Father’s Day

It is dawn out on the Gulf of Mexico. The throttle is hard down on the 22-foot open Wellcraft as the first waves check our smooth progress, sharply marking the passage from inside South Louisiana’s protective Mermentau River jetties to open water. With an hour till full sunrise, the air is still cool and we have 10 miles to go before the inner line of oil rigs. I eat a mustard and liverwurst sandwich, sitting on the bow, legs dangling over the side, as we begin to plane out over the crest of the waves.

The fog is lifting when we pass the first rigs, and we both see and hear them, each with its own distinctive horn. The skies are clear, the winds calm, so we head farther into to gulf to the rigs 20 miles offshore in search of red snapper.

Once we’re beyond the first belt of rigs, we drop the trolling lines, looking to get some king mackerel. We find instead that the Spanish mackerel have started their runs in the northern gulf. We quickly begin to get some strikes. Before long we have a dozen seven-pounders in the ice chests, thumping around in the well running down the center of the boat.

By 10 a.m. we are pulling up to the next grouping of rigs. Dad slows the boat and circles the platform so we can tie up and fish. Standing on the bow with the rig hook, a 10-foot-long aluminum shaft with an over-large shepherd’s crook on one end, I wait. The rig hook has a rope attached with a rubber tensioner tied in the middle, and each oil rig is composed of two-foot-diameter pipes. My job is to reach out and hook the rig, then secure the rope.

Modest three-to-four-foot swells are coming in under the bow, and with the boat nosed under the platform, the up and down motion is significant. Balancing, waiting for the boat to rise, I reach out and make the hook. Dad throttles back to about 30 feet from the rig, and I tie us off. My brother Keith and I break out the tackle, bait our hooks with pogies, and drop our lines. The depth at 20 miles off the Cameron Parish coastline is only 20-30 feet.

We stay put for a couple of hours, adding more sheepshead than red snapper to the cooler. The waves start to shift direction, so we move on. We troll for another hour without much success. Keith gets one sensational strike from what is probably a ling, but the large fish throws the lure in an acrobatic leap out of the water.

Thunderstorms are beginning to build to the east and west, so Dad turns our boat northward and begins a fast run to the jetties. Other than a few waterspouts at 10 miles distance, the return trip is uneventful. The water is smooth on the Mermentau, and we head the final four miles to the dock at Grand Chenier. With our boat safely trailered, we stop by the Tarpon Freezo for a malt in the one-blinking-light town of Creole. We’re delayed at the drawbridge by heavy barge traffic on the intercoastal, but we’re finally back home around 5.

Having cleaned the boat and hosed the salt from the tackle, the three of us stand in the backyard cleaning and gutting for the next couple of hours. I dump the heads and guts to the waiting turtles in our five-acre pond. The fish are packed in Guth milk cartons and stacked in the freezer. Exhausted but satisfied, we polish our shoes for church in the morning and call it a day.

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Reading this weekend: some light summertime fare. Hope Road, by John Barlow. A Taste For Vengeance, by Martin Walker

How to Visit a Farm: A Primer for the Considerate

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We receive a lot of visitors to Winged Elm Farm. Most are thoughtful and respectful of our time, appreciative of what we have to offer. We enjoy the showing and explaining of our routines. For many, it is their first outing to any sort of farm. With that in mind, I offer this curmudgeonly guide to the dos and don’ts of a visit.

Somewhere

  • Sturdy shoes don’t have suede: Bare-toed Birks among the clover, where the bees are busily gathering pollen; suede designer boots calf-deep in pig muck; Italian loafers tiptoeing through the sheep poop — all have all been worn by ill-prepared guests. A working farm means manure, nails, and insects that sting. There’s a good reason we warn you to wear sturdy footwear.

 

  • “Arrive at 10” is not simply a suggestion: When we ask that you be here at 10 a.m., we expect you to arrive at 10. Not 9 and not 11. And certainly not 2 p.m., when we are just lying down for a nap. Farm work is never ending. We will be at it five minutes before you arrive and back at it five minutes after you leave. Letting you come to “see” the farm is, in our mind, a treat and a courtesy. Respect the offer and watch the clock. Be aware, too, the subtle signal to end the visit. When we say “Better settle in and help us do some work,” don’t be surprised if we hand you a pitchfork when you don’t take the hint.

 

  • Pets are accidents in waiting: Don’t bring your dog. Yes, he is the light of your life. And, of course, everyone deserves to scratch his fluffy head. He is well-behaved, you have perfect control … until he sees his first chicken or his first flock of sheep. Or much worse, our varmint-killing farm dog catches sight of this unexpected intruder. Tears will ensue, trust me.

 

  • Children, Part 1 — playing with electric fencing: Our farm contains miles of electric fencing. There’s a reason it keeps cattle, sheep, and pigs in their respective places. We will point it out as you stroll the farm. Don’t touch it or pee on it. Don’t let your kids touch or pee on it. (Yes, that’s your responsibility.) When your darling daughter reaches down and grabs a six-joule hot wire … again, tears will ensue, trust me.

 

  • Children, Part 2 — harassing, damaging, or killing livestock: When your son squeezes the baby chick so tightly he squishes it, there is a proper first response. No, it is not consoling the crying boy. It is placating the horrified farmer, whose future egg layer hangs limp from chubby fingers. It is he who deserves consolation, if not at least the offer of compensation.

 

  • Children, Part 3 — staring at screens: You thought getting the kids out of the house to see a farm was a great idea, right? We do too. That’s why we must insist that they refrain from wasting their visit staring at a tablet or iPhone. Leave the digital devices in the car.

 

  • Gates work best when latched: There are dozens of gates on this farm, and they all serve the same purpose: keeping the livestock contained. Feel free to walk the farm, but do close the gates behind you. And, yes, closing means latching.

 

  • Don’t call it a hobby farm: We understand, the farm is fun and its animals cute. But, we work to make it pay for itself and support our basic needs. The term “hobby farm” is a slur to the working rural community.

 

  • These are not therapy animals, and this is not a petting zoo: Remember that we raise animals to be slaughtered and eaten. While they are on our farm, they are treated with respect, fed and housed and handled with care. They are not here to be cuddled or coddled, but to provide protein and good taste for yours and our dinner plate. Admire them, even pet them under supervision. But keep the life cycle in perspective while visiting.

 

  • It’s all fun and games until someone gets sucked into the baler: There are a million ways to be injured or even killed on a farm. This is not an OSHA-sanctioned environment. Keep a close watch on your youngsters and husbands. And that fancy scarf around your neck? It is a magnet for a PTO shaft. You really don’t want to find out what that means.

 

  • You are welcome to buy something: We don’t charge to visit, although some farms do. But if you need eggs, veggies, honey, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, or even lumber, we have all available to sell.

 

  • Dinner is served: We are generous with our time, and, truly, we are glad to have you visit. Be respectful, show an interest, and ask questions. And, if invited, we hope you’ll accept our offer to stay for dinner.

What We Share

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Sitting down with kith and kin at my dad’s 91st birthday, I was reminded that we learn to eat as children. The table last Saturday was weighed down with more than 150 pounds of crawfish and accompanying bags of spicy boiled corn and potatoes. Homemade jambalaya my sister Laura made. And, for the vegan niece, some sort of weird processed “hotdog.” We variously stood and sat as we talked and listened. Food, family, friends, and lots of conversation.

The role food played last week was the same role it played in my childhood, and still does in my adulthood, that of bringing people together. From the crawfish and crab boils to grand Sunday dinners and church picnics; from duck and chicken-and-sausage gumbos to BBQ and fried catfish, links of boudin, and platters of dirty rice; from running trotlines, fishing 30 miles out in the gulf, and hauling up shrimp nets or oyster tongs to shooting ducks and geese and harvesting deer, the end goal was always the same: food that you could share.

TV and computers were not part of our world. No screen time, head down, eyes staring. You left the table only after you asked to be excused and were given permission. Weeknights were family dinners and catching up. Weekends and holidays were gatherings of the larger group of friends and family. And always set to the backdrop of food, meat, seafood, game, vegetables, and the ubiquitous dish of rice.

Sunday was the time for the big dinner of the week. It was frequently an occasion for serving up some fish or seafood we had caught — red snapper in butter and lemon, mackerel balls fried with a cornmeal dusting, platters of oysters, mounds of fried catfish, all accompanied by coils of the spicy local sausages, warmed on the grill. The family would often be joined by guests, perhaps a couple of youth from Boys Town or a new minister and his family.

During one such dinner, with a new pastor from Oklahoma, we received a call from an elderly neighbor. Upon coming downstairs that fine spring morning, she found an alligator in her parlor. It had strolled in through an open door and made itself at home. Dad used a ski rope to make a noose, slipped it over the beast’s head, and dragged it back out to the bayou, no doubt confirming in the new minister’s mind his worst fears about where he had relocated his family.

Some Sundays after service we headed to the Piccadilly. Dining at the small-town Southern restaurant was reminiscent of the Lyle Lovett song, “Church.” If your preacher became a bit long-winded, you might just find yourself waiting in line behind the First Baptists, or, God forbid, the Methodists.

From a kid’s perspective, Fridays were hopeful evenings. My parents were active in a supper club and a bridge club. Supper club in the house meant hovering near the kitchen to snag plates of oysters Rockefeller fresh from the oven, bridge club loading up on shrimp broiled in butter and spices.

Annually, there were the church picnics, feasts of such epic proportions they required each of us to be heroes of the plate and fork. Whole tables were devoted to fried chicken and banana puddings, the memory of which would still be a siren’s call onto the rocks of gluttony, except for the fact that underpinning all the food was the fellowship of friends and family.

So today, on our farm, with freezers full and gardens gathering steam, we ask the weekly question, What do we have to share and who can we invite to join in the bounty — neighbors in the valley, friends from town or city, longer-distance guests?

Last night six friends helped us devour bowls of creamy grits topped with cooked-down collard greens and fried slices from a terrine of braised pork. We dined outside, sitting late into the evening as the full moon rose high in the sky. Good friends, conversation, and a bottle of elderberry mead helped us keep the faith with who we are as a people and the traditions we carry forward from childhood.

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Reading this weekend: Ramp Hollow: the ordeal of Appalachia. By, Steven Stoll.