Free My Southern Journey by Rick Bragg Page B

myriad signs of the decline of life as we know it, this is, sorta, one.
    It’s as if chefs and cooks and drive-through mavens have decided it is not real food, that it is not perishable at all, like a packet of ketchup or a shaker of salt.
    We must stop this. We must rise up, as a people, and say no to rancid coleslaw, must stand strong in the rushing tide of apathy that threatens not just our quality of life, but life itself.
    For I fear that bad coleslaw can actually kill you.
    The next time you are served a half-pint of tainted slaw, do not just pick at it, regretfully and in silence. You know you have done this. You know.
    No, you must raise the offensive article high above your head and shout, “Nay!”
    Or go ask for a fresh one.

    I make it myself now. I coarse-cut red cabbage—we call it purple cabbage—and fresh carrots.
    They need to really snap when you break them. Mix in mayonnaise to taste. I use my hands.
    Some people like seasonings, but it is the taste of the cabbage and carrots that I like, so I just sprinkle on a little black pepper.
    I will eat it the second day, but never, ever the third, and certainly not if it has anything resembling a whang. We all knowthe whang. More than half the time, when we eat slaw, there is the whang.
    Life is too short for the whang.
    Rise up.
    Make T-shirts.
    A whang, with a slash through it.
    The Colonel would wear one, if he was still alive.
    You know Popeye would, too.
     

    NEVER-ENDING GRACE
    Southern Living , Southern Journal: November 2012

    W hen I was a little boy, the words seemed to last forever. It seemed like we were walking the Exodus ourselves, one paragraph at a time. Surely, I figured, thousands of little boys had starved to death between the words “Let us pray…” and “Amen.”
    The bad thing was, from where I sat, hands clasped but one eye open, I could see it all, and more than that I could smell it all, this wonderful feast laid out hot and steaming: Thanksgiving, my favorite day on the calendar, better than the Fourth of July, Halloween, and Presidents’ Day all lumped into one. The pinto beans bubbled in the battered pot, molten with the fat from big chunks of ham. Hot biscuits rested under a warm towel. Mashed potatoes, creamed onions, cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese—all waited, each one sending its own perfume wafting through the house. And in the middle of it all sat the big turkey, its sides trickling with melted butter, specked with black pepper, so close—why, a drumstick was just a side step and quick grab away—and yet so far.
    But it would all be cold as a Confederate statue on Christmas morning by the time we got any of it. Between me and all this bounty stretched what we have called and will always call “The Blessing.” It consisted, as near as I could tell, of reading the KingJames Bible front to back, then holding a discussion on its finer points. While I now see the beauty in those words and in this tradition, I was an ungrateful heathen back then, thinking only of my belly and my own little self.
    Before anyone fires off an angry letter pointing out the heathenness I have already confessed—I have learned that admitting to such things in some preemptive hope just makes people mad at you for robbing them of the opportunity to flog you unencumbered—let me say that I know how selfish and ignorant I was to wish for a shorter blessing, a more truncated thanks. I know. I get it. I was a bad child. But I was suffering.
    I grew up with Pentecostals, and they do not have a short blessing in their lexicon. They are not like some denominations that see prayer as a fixed ritual; the Congregational Holiness go to town with a prayer, and they do not turn loose of one till they have wrung it dry. So I suffered.
    Sometimes, they would have a child do a blessing, and I would grow hopeful, because surely they would not have so many words at their disposal, and older ladies would pat the good child when he was done