Still Walters Run Deep

"for you have seen some unbelievable things..."
Crossbones Style - Cat Power

I am quite fond of cats.

My present tribe consists of Maude, a big, fat hoochie mamma cat, born a poor black stray under the house next door, and Hank (aka Henry II of Jungletouch), a designer puss with a trace of African Serval and a ton of ‘tude.

They were preceded by Harold, a magnificent creature who came to me as a kitten from the household of the late, great Frank Zappa. Harold should have been named Henry, but wasn’t, and therein lays the tale.

My father’s mother’s people were the Walters, but until I was nearly grown I thought their last name was Waters, because that’s the way they pronounced it. And they still do, as does everyone in Wilkinson County, Georgia, one of the great mysteries of the old south.

Daddy’s maternal uncle, Lee Walters, up and married my mother’s older sister, Mintora, who died shortly after giving birth to my first cousin and first-cousin-once-removed, Little Mint. Sometime later, Uncle Lee married his first wife’s (and my mother’s) first cousin, Mary Lee, making Little Mint also my step-first-cousin-once-removed. (Take your time.)

The Walters were considered peculiar, the universal mispronunciation of their surname not withstanding. (As you can see, even they got confused.) They generally married late, if at all, were not as super double Christy religious as most of their contemporaries, and were given to the accumulation of vast quantities of land, acquired by whatever means necessary and seemingly without the encumbrance of conscience. Although they didn’t necessarily like each other all that well, as witnessed by their numerous and storied internal feuds, they kept to themselves, even in death, having their own cemetery exclusively for the burial of their kith and kin, a practice in and of itself not uncommon in the rural south of the day.

As was customary, family members gathered at the cemetery once a year, usually in the summer when it was good and hot, and brought their rakes and hoes, lawnmowers and bush hogs, picnic baskets and coolers, for “clean-up day,” when they polished and pruned and prettied up the final resting places of their ancestors, loved ones, and, in the case of a few unmarked graves no one had a clue about, possibly even a charity case or two, though the Walters were not known for such. It was a ritual that continued well into my teens, although nobody had been buried there since 1959, except for Henry the cat.

I may have been present for the denouement of Henry’s not quite final resting place, but I can’t say I remember it, having been either too young or too stoned to take cognition of one of the family’s defining debacles. (In truth, if forced to go at all I usually spent the day in the cab of Daddy’s pick up, parked in the shade, listening to my transistor radio. God, I wish they'd had cell phones back then.) Consequently I didn’t learn of Henry’s unfortunate interment until years later, when during a trip to the homeland I visited Uncle Lee’s “baby” sister, my great aunt, Cora Walters Billue, a formidable woman, even in old age, (tall, overbearing and, quite frankly a bit scary), and then cousin-cousin-cousin Little Mint and her stepmother Mary Lee, who was by then a widow and living with her.

Mary Lee, who had been well ensconced in spinsterhood when Lee tapped her as his bride, ostensibly because he needed a mother for his motherless only child, was, as ever, tart and testy, and, as some alleged, quite possibly a little “touched.”

When I mentioned my visit with Aunt Cora, Mary Lee began to sputter like a wet Roman candle on the Fourth of July in hell. “Does she still look like a wrinkled up old prune?” she spat, looking like nothing if not a raisin in a crimson fright wig herself.

“Just how old is Cora now anyway?” It was not so much a request for information as a suggestion that she was tired of waiting for her to die.

I said Cora mentioned she’d be 92 come October.

“No such thing,” Mary Lee snorted, “Cora ain’t but ten years older than me, and I’m fixin’ to be 80. She always was a braggart.” (On checking the numbers, it turns out Mary Lee was right, about their ages anyway.)

“I ain’t had no use for Cora Billue for more than 20 years. Me and Lee had this white Persian cat named Henry. Had him for 18 years and he was just like another youngun’ to us. When he died, we made him a little casket, and and buried him in our plot in the Walters Family Cemetery. Next time we went to Dublin, we went by the monument company and ordered a little headstone, like you’d get for a baby’s grave, with ‘Our Beloved Pet, Henry,’ carved on it. When it came in, we took it up there and put it on his grave.”

“Come clean up day, Cora comes up to me and she says, ‘I didn’t know you had a baby who died.’”

I said, “I didn’t.”

“Well, whose baby is that then?”

I told her, “that ain’t no baby, that’s our cat, Henry. Can’t you read?”

“Cora damn near had a fit. Cussed me a blue streak for buryin’ a cat with her people. I told her they was our people too, but that didn’t make no never mind to her. Next time me and Lee was up to the cemetery, that tombstone was gone and there wasn’t nothing but a big hole in the ground where we’d buried poor Henry.”

When I got home to California, I called Daddy’s sister, the reigning family matriarch, and mentioned that I’d seen both Aunt Cora and Mary Lee. I asked if she was aware of any bad blood between them.

She was. “Oh, my God, they’re not still carrying on about that cat are they?”

It was a story with legs, but not one with a happy ending. While Aunt Cora hadn’t dug up the cat and stolen the tombstone herself, word was she’d put one of her boys, Lanier, up to it and that he’d even kept the grave marker as a souvenir. “Used it to prop up firewood in his camp house down at Bear Camp Lake,” according to those who claimed to have seen it. As for Henry? “Probably ended up thrown out in the woods somewhere.”

To make the saga even more delicious, some family members had actually taken sides in the squabble. The leading consensus was that Mary Lee had in fact engineered the burial of Henry the cat next to Lee’s first wife (the aforementioned Mintora) so there’d be no space for Lee to be buried beside her. Thereby assuring that when his time came he would have to be buried next to Mary Lee in her family's plot at Northview Cemetery in Dublin. (Which is how it turned out, eventually.)

A few months later when I got a kitten I thought to honor the exhumed family feline icon with a namesake. Unfortunately “Henry” slipped right through the sieve of my brain and “Harold” slipped out. I was none the wiser until I next saw Little Mint and she set me straight. By then, however, Harold was firmly Harold, and it suited him very well. Mint also filled me in on the back story.

I had initially figured, his having been eighteen and all, that Henry the Persian had wandered gentle into that great litter box in kitty heaven. But, no, tragically Henry was decapitated and partially devoured by old man Joe Lavender's German Shepherd, Robert, a vile and villainous beast who'd been trying to catch him for years. Finally did. I hear tell Mary Lee caused quite a scene the Sunday morning she found Henry's broken body in old man’s Lavender’s front yard. Called him of his house and "preached him a sermon, he won't likely ever forget." Apparently there was also some loose talk about a gun and doing some killing, but Uncle Lee and Little Mints' husband pulled Mary Lee off the lawn and dragged her home before things got too out of hand.

I wasn't there, but I know witnesses who swear it happened just that way.

My Greens Bowl

“I'm a Southern Girl.
Countrified. Everything I eat is fried.”
Southern Gul – Erykah Badu

Where I came from most folks figured if you couldn’t fry it, it probably wasn’t worth eating. That’s certainly how I felt about it. But then you’d just be amazed at what all you can fry. Sure, there’s chicken and chops and catfish and green tomatoes, and so on. But I’m thinking about things that require a little creativity. Not the gross stuff like fried Mars Bars and Twinkies that you find at the county fair, (although I understand fried Oreos are very good), but things that require real culinary imagination. And when it comes to frying, most southern cooks have plenty. Corn, beans, peas, carrots, peanuts, bread, dill pickles, cream cheese and last night’s leftover rice can be fried, and that’s just for starters. Fruits? Wrap ‘em in pastry and make a fried pie. Apples, thank you very much, do quite well without the pastry. Green apples, sliced, tossed into a pan of hot bacon fat, and dusted with sugar, were a big favorite of mine. But then so was anything fried in bacon.

Which, in a roundabout way brings me to greens, which is what this is all about. That and the bowl I serve them in, but I’ll get there.

Growing up, I wouldn’t touch cooked greens. Probably because nobody had come up with a way to fry them, although God knows I’m sure they’ve tried. In my family they cooked greens in a pressure cooker with a smoked ham hock thrown in for seasoning. Then they served them up with a generous dash of homemade pepper sauce and a serious slab of hot water cornbread. Some people might add fatback or sprinkle cracklins (like pork rinds, only better) on top, but we were purists, and Methodists. We liked to keep it simple.

I might eat a bite of turnips, if you bribed me, (then, as now, I was cheap – the promise of a coca-cola after supper, or French fries for breakfast, would suffice), but never collards, which I found particularly foul. They imbued the kitchen, and sometimes the whole house, with a smell not unlike puppy farts, and sat dull green and slimy on the plate, like the desiccated kelp washed up on the beach, minus the flies.

Mustard greens weren’t in play because we didn’t eat them nor did anyone we knew. (A kind of food snobbery, I think. Some people raised mustard for their chickens, but it wasn’t considered fit for the proper table.) Kale and Chard? Never heard of ‘em. Spinach was something that came in a can. Popeye ate it. We didn’t. And in our family mixed greens were unheard of. As I said, we were Methodist.

My distaste for cooked greens persisted well into adulthood. Quite frankly, I considered them nasty. Do you have any idea how long it takes to wash greens straight from the field? We’re talking like three or four sinks of water. And that’s before you tear them off the stalks, stem by stem, and separate them from the ribs, leaf by leaf. (My mother’s sister, Aunt Sister, said only lazy cooks had stems in their greens, and the look on the face of a guest who bit down on one would bear her out.) Then there’s the enormous amount of vegetation required. Imagine three big grocery bags, the kind you get at Piggly Wiggly or Whole Foods, depending on where you shop, stuffed, absolutely stuffed, with greens. (Hence the expression " a mess of greens.") That’s what you’re going to need to feed a big family or holiday gathering, and you’re still going to want to have Macaroni and Cheese as an extra side. That’s the other dirty little secret of greens, they’re mostly water and cook down to nearly nothing. It was more of an investment than I was willing to make.

Then I got the greens bowl. I can’t remember whether I bought it or if it was a gift, but I think I knew from the minute I saw it what it was, although I was loathe to admit it for quite some time. It was made by an old boyfriend, not my first love, but my second, (which those who’ve had a few can tell you is infinitely more intense), who now a potter. It sports a gray/green glaze (roughly the color of my cat’s eyes) that he was particularly proud of. I honestly forget what he called it, but in and of itself the bowl is right pretty, and quite reminiscent of his work, though it has evolved considerably over the years.

I know this because I’ve Googled him a few times and have seen some of his pieces on the web. I also know he’s married to a tall woman who looks good standing next to him, served as a member of the city council in his small coastal community, and, rumor has it that he was the model for a semi-nude, semi-famous statue of Neptune, touted as one of the largest working sundials in the entire world. (An image that lends itself so freely to the abuse of the imagination that I include a second link.) I also know he likes greens. As do I, because as soon as it dawned on me what the bowl was for, I felt obligated to cultivate the taste.

I first learned to tolerate them in some of the finer meat and threes, and worked up to even ordering them in a proper restaurant on occasion. Eventually I guess you could say I came to the point where I actually enjoyed a good helping of greens, but I never felt the kind of lust for them that I feel for chocolate, or the aforementioned old boyfriend, back when we were barely legal and living in sin, not that rip off your jeans, lock the door and, oh sweet Jesus, roll around the bed until the sun comes up kind of lust. Needless to say, I require a lot from my food.

Meanwhile the greens bowl was sitting on one shelf or the other in one or the other of my apartments. Sometimes I’d use it for potato salad or coleslaw, but it never really felt right. And anyway, potato salad already had a pretty blue banded yellow ware bowl, and I’ve never liked coleslaw well enough to give it a bowl of its’ own.

I didn’t fall in love with greens until shortly after I married, when a friend of my husband’s (and later of mine) brought greens as his contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. He was from Texas and his greens were steeped in the drippings of freshly fried bacon and topped with the crumbles. Those greens were so good that if the man hadn’t been gay, I might have lost my bearings. As it was, I was content with his recipe, which I’ve goosed to feed a crowd and tweaked with more bacon, of course.

It would delight me to report that the gray/green glazed greens bowl, (say it five times real fast), virtually sang with joy when I piled my first pot of ‘gourmet’ greens into it, but really, it’s just a bowl, can’t sing, and couldn’t care less. It does, however, make a splendid backdrop for a dish that, let’s face it, needs one. The greens sort of slip into the finish, and the blush of clay peeping through the glaze echos the crisp red brown of the bacon. I guarantee you, these greens don’t just look better than yours; they are better than yours.

Whenever I serve them I always give credit where it’s due, a shout out to J. D., who gave me the recipe, and a nod to the bowl maker, who, after all, as the second love of my life can never be forgotten.

And finally, if I’m with a grace saying crowd, I always add my two cents. “Dear, God, I hope that glaze doesn’t have lead in it, and I sure hope that, wherever she is, my mamma doesn’t find out I’m cooking mixed greens, and using mustard too.”


My Greens Are Better Than Your Greens Greens

2 bunches collard greens
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch kale
1 bunch chard
1 large onion, chopped
3 or 4 large carrots, diced
3 or 4 large celery stalks, diced
1 pound bacon

NOTE: Fortunately most greens we buy today are pre-washed, but you’ll want to wash them anyway, at least once. Also you can buy packaged “pre-cut” greens, but I don’t advise it. They’re full of stalks and stems and take as long to pick over as preparing them from scratch.

Wash greens and tear into bite size pieces, making sure to remove all stalks, stems and large ribs.

Brown bacon in a large pan or pot. (I use an 8 1/2 quart saucier pan.) Drain bacon and reserve.

Drain about half of the bacon grease from pan and discard. Add chopped vegetables to pan and sauté over medium heat until soft (about 10 to 15 minutes).

Add prepared greens, a few at a time, (the greens cook down quickly, making room for more), until all greens have been added to pot.

Lower heat and braise for 45 minutes to 1 hour (depending on how tender you like them).

Crumble the reserved bacon, add to greens and serve.


P.S. I’m still looking for a fried greens recipe (not sautéed, mind you, fried, preferably battered and in bacon fat). If anybody finds a good one, do let me know.