The South’s best potato salad

Blind Pig Pub has it

Published in the June 25, 2009, Oxford Town. The weekly arts and entertainment publication does not have its own site at present, so you can find my articles here.

If black eyed peas bring prosperity, tuna casserole is meant to solace grief, and oysters signal lust, what emotion is mixed into a bowl of potato salad?

Most people approach the stuff with caution. They’re not quite fans, but they don’t hate potato salad. Plus, you can never be too sure on how long the mayo-doused concoction has been sitting in the heat. But you’ll be damned if you don’t suffer through a few bites of your aunt’s tried and true recipe.

As Will Campbell, Mississippian Civil Rights leader and one-time director of religious life at the University of Mississippi, sees it in his book “Brother to a Dragonfly,” potato salad almost means more than saying “I love you.”

Sell My Old Car, I’m Off to Heaven

You might think I’m slightly insane. Maybe just Europeanized. Or inspired. Thank you Anne Fisher-Wirth. (Our assignment last week was to play outside sans technology for 2 hours = awesome.)

I’m going to try to use my car as little as possible from now on.

I do live .7 miles from the Square and 1.2 miles from the Student Union. What’s wrong with me? In France I walked to the grocery store, to school, to see my friends, to the bar – everywhere!

Looking at the Oxford transit maps and schedules, I’ll still leave the house at about the same time. (Doesn’t parking suck?)

Ode to Hush Puppies: From trailer park goodness to haute cuisine

This piece ran in Oxford Town, The Oxford Eagle’s weekly arts and entertainment publication. The Oxford Town did not publish stories online at the time of publication. Copyright 2009 Oxford Town.

The first couple broke apart, spittering into gritty remnants in hot grease.  On the paper towel, they resembled sand-sprinkled fritters more than the round, deep-fried biscuit balls they wanted to be.  My mother laughed at them, suggesting we hit up Catfish One.  I cranked up the heat.

Finally the gooey cornmeal and stale beer mixture maintained its integrity, bobbing in the oil and resurfacing as a puffy and round slut puppy.  This is close to what Ruby Ann Boxcar promised in her cooking volume, “Ruby Ann’s Down Home Trailer Park Cookbook.”  She said everything in the book was “EDIBLE!” and “Boner petite!” Good enough for me.

France calling

A month ago I was “French fried frites, yo.” Ready for some dollar menu, to see my college friends again, to speak fluently everywhere, to comprehend television in my sleep. All I wanted was America.

But here I am. Back one month, and all I want is France. Maybe it’s melodramatic of me, but I think I miss the freedom most. I miss being anonymous, blending in. I miss the feeling that my every action would not set off some reaction that would eventually get back to everyone I knew. It’s not that I was running around making a fool of myself, but I reveled in that traveler’s bliss of being here one day, gone the next, remembered or forgotten inconsequentially.

Homesick on Halloween

I’m homesick.

There's my French pumpkin (left - spider).

I miss my mom with her endless chatter and her delicious warm meals and a woodstove keeping our house all toasty.

I want to be wherever Lindsey and Andrew are. Guys, I wish so much to be in one of your many former or current apartments doing something really mundane like playing a board game and talking about journalism politics or grad school or whatever.

Not much has changed in Oxford Town

I guess at least today we get convictions instead of open-ended murders in ‘Ole Oxford, Miss. A friend alerted me to this chilling story he’s been covering.

Others who have followed the case say they believe it’s all true. Lafayette County does indeed have a whorehouse, where men in wheelchairs are involved in threesomes with 3-year-olds on painkillers to numb the pain of intercourse. I knew people in Lafayette County were a little out there … but I didn’t know this kind of Flannery O’Connor, Faulkner stuff still went on.

3 men found guilty of raping 3-year-old girl

The girl’s mother, Krystal Jordan, was a prosecution key witness. She pleaded guilty to sexual battery in 2007.

During her testimony she said she initially allowed her husband to have sex with their daughter because she was pregnant.

According to Krystal Jordan, the 3-year-old cried so much the second time she was assaulted that she was given pain killers to prevent the noise.

Can we put birth control in the water or McDonalds like tomorrow? These kind of backwards people do not need to be having children, and I don’t see any other way of preventing this sort of abuse. What’s sadder is that so much of it goes unreported.

Oxford, how I’ve missed you

So I’m back in Oxford. It’s hotter than Knoxville. It doesn’t cool down in the evening.

But today Paul and I went to the new Big Bad Breakfast restaurant that John Currence of City Grocery opened. Wow. Farm-raised everything. Fresh-squeezed OJ. Brulee grapefruit. Andouille sausage for breakfast. Brandy-soaked french toast. The wait staff is A+ just friendly and knowledgeable and chill. The ambiance is perfect. Fresh yellow paint pops with wine-colored accents. The tables are rustic for that farm feel. The art fits just right. It’s like a slightly more high class Bottletree Bakery with a little less character.