8/9/2019 Stirring the Pot Food as a Memory

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stirring-the-pot-food-as-a-memory 1/2

Stirring the Pot: Food as Memory, A Memoir

My case in point is Mrs. Lucy Washington, the head cook at the black, segregated elementary and high

school I attended. I loved food, and Mrs. Lucy Washington cooked food that I loved. Her schoollunches were better than anybody's cooking that I knew in the whole world.

My mother, never jealous or put off by my praise and devotion to Mrs. Washington's school lunch, waseager to hear, as I got off the school bus, the epicurean delight of the day. My mother took an active

interest in this high point because she loved food, loved me, and believed in my judgment and taste. So

empowered, together we shared, revered, and celebrated the gifts of Mrs. Lucy as I described her dailytriumphs in the school cafeteria. Mrs. Lucy Washington was a cook who could cook. She brought

something special to the process that magically transformed the outcome.

Spiritual connections were rooted in what she did with food. Cooking was Ms. Lucy's gift, anirrevocable talent assigned to her fiber, as natural as breathing, as commonplace as sunshine, and every

meal was Christmas Day.

For ten years, daily, the cafeteria had the excited buzz of the New York Stock Exchange. We students

 joyful entered into trades of tuna salad, Johnny Marzetti, meatloaf, chicken a la king, and fish sticks, but our favorite institutional currency was Ms. Lucy's breads--her fresh, hot corn biscuits (with fresh

whole corn!), chesse biscuits, peanut butter and blueberry muffins, and cherry upside cake. Our tradeshad real value: two biscuits for an entree was a common measure.

As we celebrated and traded, we established a community around her food. We found somethingspecial in each other. We shared a bond, enriched by our differences, a fellowship of common values, a

shifting cycle of surprises that held favor and rewards

The African proverb about the whole village helping to raise the child does not do justice to Mrs.

Lucy's single-handed work. Daily she brought us under her teachings. Through her extraordinary fare,

she taught us lessons about pride, love, faith, and sharing. Through her food we learned aboutcommunity, caring, preparation, respect, thanksgiving, and gifts.

What happened to the beloved community who gathered at Mrs. Lucy's welcome table? Gerald, later 

student council president, spent time in Guam as a federal personnel specialist and his son became thestarting point guard at William and Mary. The Faust twins played for a state football championship;

later, one of the twins died in a New York shoot-out. Danny, Ms. Lucy's son, studied voice and lived in

Germany. He is a professional baritone and directs the voice program and University of Michigan. Hesings on all the world's great stages, including Carnegie Hall. Charlie coached little league, became a

social studies teacher, married Chris, had three children (Korona and the twins), and is still my best

friend.

Back then, none of us knew that two hundred years before, colonial cookbooks treasured African

dishes. Dishes like groundnut (peanut or bennie (sesame) soup, or baked guinea squash (eggplant). Or a

classic French preparation of a Charleston favorite of African origin, “okra a la daube.”

We had never heard of Oscar, the Gullah body servant who, "for liberty," cooked a legendary sweet

 potato dinner at a secret camp in the South Carolina swamps for the American patriot, Francis Marion(the “Swamp Fox”), and a British officer during the American Revolution--a scene captured in a

 painting that hangs in the US Capitol. We had never heard of Gullah Jack's parched corn or crab claws,

8/9/2019 Stirring the Pot Food as a Memory

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/stirring-the-pot-food-as-a-memory 2/2

which, if eaten, promised invincibility to slaves who were to participate in a foiled 1822 Charleston

rebellion. And in a different time, we didn't know barbequed oxen was served at midnight to newly

freed slaves in the nation's very first Emancipation Proclamation celebration at Hilton Head, SC , on

January 1, 1863.

We did not know the legacy or history of the light that Mrs. Lucy carried for such a long term in our 

lives. We simply relished the fine points of taste we discovered and shared in our love of her cooking.

Years after leaving her cafeteria, I followed in father's footsteps and worked out front in food,

especially in fine dining. I worked high profile doors and dining rooms in country clubs, resorts, and private rooms back East, in places like the Homestead in Virginia and the World Bank in Washington,

DC.

And later, I produced the Sunday jazz brunch at Alice's Fine Foods on King Street in Charleston andwas its informal host for a couple of years. Aice Warren was from Walterboro, SC, a rural town nearby.

Her food was the top of the game in Charleston. We had people calling and coming from Germany and

Japan. I saw a bus-load of tourists from Florida clean out her  buffet and shut down the house oneSunday. I sold out of Alice's collard greens and Hoppin' John (eaten for luck and prosperity) during

Charleston's 2000 Millennium First Night celebration on Marion Square, named for the historic patriot

whose men survived in their fight for freedom on Oscar's legendary yams.

But my mind always goes back to Mrs. Lucy's lunch. There are days when the single thought of a bite

of her breads is enough to sustain me through the crush of a world that has left me starved for so much.