by Paula Deen
Well, maybe it was that first shock or maybe not, but Trina was usually so stinking mean to me; she was such a brat. Even though she was my buddy, maybe even my idol, she was a tremendous devil child. I remember her taking my arm and digging her long fingernails into it, and she didn’t allow me to tell Momma on her. My earliest food memory is of Trina spoon-feeding me tablespoons of vanilla flavoring, and, believe me, that’s a nasty memory. I remember we’d be playing in the family living area of the motel at River Bend and she would send me all the way back to the restaurant to get her a glass of water. When I’d get back, she’d pour out that whole dang thing into the sink and say, “I wanted cold water.” And I’d have to go back and get her a big old glass of colder water. Once I asked her, “Why can’t you get some water from the bathroom right here,” and she said, “The faucets ain’t working right here.” She’d send me over to the restaurant for a Hershey’s bar, a Snickers, and a Coke, and I’d gather up all the stuff, with my granddaddy yelling out the whole time, “Get that kid outta here. She’s eatin’ up all mah profit!”
That Trina. I had a Southern princess in my life, even at that young age.
I was seven when Bubba was born, and then it was my turn to be princess. I bossed him around something awful but I loved him so because I was like his momma when our own momma was busy. And, boy, Momma was pretty much always busy.
When I was about six, Momma and Daddy bought a gas station and souvenir shop right across the street from River Bend. It wasn’t no River Bend. Paradise was done and finished for little Paula Hiers.
We lived in the back of that souvenir shop. We had no bathroom; our toilet was a big old slop jar inside a pink wicker chair. Of course we had a men’s room and a ladies’ room outside for the tourists; there was a shower in the men’s room. I remember it being cold and dirty, and when we woke up on a cold morning, we would have to go outside in that nasty men’s room to take a shower. I just hated it, hated it. So, even now, I don’t associate bathing as being a good thing; I still remember that awful men’s room. I could not stand it. And I remember my daddy saying, “This is terrible. I’m going to build us a bathroom, and I’m going to build one helluva bathroom.”
Well, he finally did, but I don’t know how many years we lived there using the public shower. When he finally built that bathroom, it was bigger than our whole living quarters, and I remember Momma’s clothes washer being in there. Our dryer was a clothesline out back. And I remember my daddy going into the bathroom and just sitting forever on the toilet; what a luxury it was for all of us. That toilet was a throne.
We never thought about it then, but we were living in the midst of what was fixin’ to be a huge social change. A small town of twenty-five thousand people before World War II, Albany, Georgia, had grown to a Deep South city of about fifty thousand and became the pecan capital of the world, as folks like to brag. Racial unrest was brewing, and in just four more years, five African-American college students who belonged to a civic organization called the Albany Movement would be arrested for a sit-in at our own Trailways bus station lunch counter. Shortly afterward, nine Freedom Riders would arrive to test the segregated train station, and Albany Movement president William Anderson would invite the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to Albany, Georgia, where he drew overflow crowds at Mt. Zion and Shiloh Baptist churches. The next day King and 264 demonstrators were arrested when they marched to City Hall. But that was all four years in the future and could have been a million years away as far as us kids were concerned.
Still, it was happening right under our noses: our local African-Americans were claimin’ their right for fair and equal treatment and some white folks were inspired to rethink old ways. Slowly, things began to change. Culture evolved as the Motown sound brought African-American music onto the charts. Still, I hardly noticed, even when the Albany-born black singer Ray Charles recorded a wildly successful song in 1959. “Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind,” sang Ray Charles, and “Georgia on My Mind” was eventually to become the state song.
Everybody would be so busy working over at River Bend and at the gas station that sometimes I would be told to stay with a real nice black woman who often babysat Trina and me. I remember this one day she had brought her little girl to work, and that child had many big, fat blisters on her hand, probably from helping out her momma. Something about those blisters just attracted me and I remember hitting those little hands with a bolo bat, and it busted her blisters good. It was pretty satisfying.
I don’t know why I did it. I have a hard time thinking I did it out of meanness. But her mother—I can’t remember if she slapped me across the face or she spanked me, or both—but either way, now I know I sure had it comin’.
Well, still, I was heartbroken, and I went running to find my Grandmother Paul and Granddaddy and my momma. And my granddaddy had the woman arrested for hitting me. The little black girl’s momma went to jail.
All this time it’s bothered me.
It was me who deserved to be sittin’ in that jail for breaking a little black girl’s blisters in 1957.
Even if we all kind of knew something was happening, it didn’t seem so grand or momentous. The civil rights movement belonged to the nightly radio news and it didn’t have nothin’ to do with us. Black folks had always been a big part of our lives in the South; I played with the kids of the black women who took care of me and they were my friends. None of us were strangers to the black community, although they seemed to live their lives, and we lived ours, separately for the most part. I would say we lived a pretty unexamined life in terms of politics or civil rights. When I look back now, I remember going to the Arctic Bear, one of the popular drive-in restaurants in town where you got your burgers and ate them in your car. On the side of the building were two water fountains: one was marked WHITE ONLY and the other was marked COLORED. The bathrooms were also marked WHITE ONLY and COLORED. That’s just the way it was. Remembering now, it just shocks me. I’m plain horrified that things could have been that way and I was so blind I didn’t get that it was wrong.
My senior class in Albany High School, 1965, was the first class in our neck of the woods to be integrated, by five black girls. They did not talk to anyone; they kept to themselves. To my knowledge no one harassed them, but no one was particularly tight with them either. There was no sense that we were in the middle of something historic. We knew having those five girls in school was some sort of a big step, but we never thought it would change anything for us.
They were so brave. Even then, I felt a little sorry for them, but you know why? For all the wrong reasons. I felt their families had to have been paid or somethin’ to convince them to put their girls in such a hard position—the only black girls in our all-white school. My parents wouldn’t have put me in an all-black school. I’m so embarrassed and ashamed to admit it to y’all that I thought that. Those families were pioneers. They were so effin’ brave, all of them, the kids and the parents. The five girls had to be majorly lonely—five small black faces in a sea of unthinking teenaged white faces. Even if the black girls had a mouthful of words, they would have never said “Boo,” let alone “How ’bout goin’ for a Coke after school?” to any of the rest of us. I so wish I could take back my actions then. If I could do it all over, I’d have dragged them all into cheerleadin’, I’d have shared my lunches with them, I’d have held them to my heart.
I didn’t do one of those things, but I think I was polite to them. That was about it for any grand social consciousness on my part. I was slow to admit it, but I didn’t pay no mind to any part of it. How could I not have made it easier for them? I get mortified playin’ it over in my mind’s eye.
My world was so small then and we kids were so full of ourselves. Bubba and Trina and I were blissfully unaware of Martin Luther King, Ray Charles, or even President Eisenhower, who hunted quail in our neck of the woods while he was president. I was thirteen in 1960. When we were sophomores in high school, we did notice that Presid
ent Kennedy was pretty cute, but it was really Jackie’s style that interested us. Times were simpler and there were fewer hidden messages; if you were at a gay party, you were having fun. A Coke party meant the drink of choice was Coca-Cola. For me, these were the good days because they revolved around family, which to this little Southern girl was the heart and the currency for everything solid and dependable and safe.
Speaking of cute—the future proprietor of Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House was really cute, but, oh my, his room smelled so bad—like rotten socks. He played baseball with all his brave heart. He was the best little player.
About the time we lived across from River Bend, our momma had an old black man who worked for her named Les. Daddy was working hard at his car dealership in town and Momma pumped gas and changed oil and worked at the souvenir shop where that creepy men’s bathroom was. So, if Les didn’t show up for work, she had nobody to watch her little boy and I would simply take the two-year-old Bubba to school with me. You just did what you had to do back then. I’d throw him on my hip, and off we would go to school. He would sit at that desk on my lap, quiet as a doll for a couple of hours, and then we would go out at recess, and I’d let him play. Then we’d come back in after lunch. I went to this little country school, and I remember in the second-grade classroom the teacher’s name was Miss Bowles. She was old (probably about forty—that was real old then to me), and she had frizzy hair that stood out all over her head. She wore glasses and those black lace-up shoes that you would think old-fashioned schoolteachers would wear. She didn’t seem real happy, but she taught the second and third grades and she had that classroom divided with the second grade in one half of the room and the third grade in the other half. She would go back and forth and teach each class.
School wasn’t my favorite activity, specially with Bubba on my lap, but, oh, how I loved lunchtime. There was a cafeteria, and those country women could cook sooooo good. On Fridays, honey, I would step on your back to get to that cafeteria. It was vegetable soup, toast, and peanut butter balls every Friday. I still make those peanut butter balls, years later. How did I get the recipe? I’m fixin’ to tell y’all this minute.
I was about thirty years old and already suffering from those panic attacks, but that wasn’t the worst of it. During one of the short periods of time when I could manage to get out of my house, I’d met one of my best friends, Becky Geer, on the street. She worked for the Internal Revenue Service, and on the spur of the moment she said, “Paula, we need some help—would you come in and do some temporary work?”
I thought, We sure need the money and, yeah, I could probably do that, and I went down there, and I got to talking to this woman. Would you believe, I came to find out her mother was the cook in Baconton Elementary School—my old school? And I said, “Oh, my God, since I was ten years old I’ve been craving a peanut butter ball.”
“Well, I’ve got the recipe,” she told me.
Pure bliss.
Ever since I got to making those peanut butter balls, things seemed as though they were trying to pick up.
But back to the fourth grade. Oh, my gosh, Fridays were so good, and not just because of the peanut butter balls. The school was probably five miles from River Bend, and so we would ride the school bus home, and every Friday the driver would stop at the little country store, and we could get off the bus and go in and buy us some candy. Why was this so important to me? Goodness knows. In five minutes I could walk into my momma’s souvenir shop after school and start eating the stuff for free. But I looked so forward to Friday and buying candy with the rest of the kids. My favorites were BB Bats. They were chocolate, chewy things on a stick, and they were hard. I loved those BB Bats.
I remember this one particular Friday in February. It was so cold. I had on an overcoat, and socks and shoes, of course, and I had to pee so bad. I went and asked the store clerk, “May I use your bathroom?” and he said, “No, we don’t have one.” And I said, “What am I gonna do?” I mean, I had to pee really bad.
So, I walked to the farthest aisle away from the cash register. I just spread my legs, and I peed on the floor. And it ran all down in my socks and my shoes, and I took them off. I was so humiliated but I walked back out barefoot and got on the bus. All age groups from first grade to high school rode the bus. When I got on, one girl said, “Paula, what are you doing walking around barefooted? It’s cold outside.” Here I was wearing this humongous heavy coat, but all I could think of saying was, “I just got hot.”
There was this big old boy who always rode the bus and he was a senior. He was so tall, and he had big old dirty hands and he was on my bus every day and I just hated when I had to get on that bus and the only seat was next to him. He was disgusting.
It never failed: when I wasn’t looking, and just before I took my seat, he’d reach over and ball up his hand except for his thumb which stuck right up. I would sit on his thumb. Nowadays, I guess they’d call that sexual abuse.
But, I’ll never forget that day—it was probably thirty degrees out—when I peed in my pants and I told everybody I was hot.
That horrible senior got a surprise when I sat down.
It was at River Bend that I first fell in love with food. Not just the eating of it, but what it meant in life: food as comfort, food as friendship, food as sensual expression. If you go to a party, where does everyone end up? In the kitchen. The kitchen is the heart and the hearth of a home. The South is all about tradition, and most of those traditions have their origins in the cooking pots and the recipes we pass down from generation to generation. My momma was an excellent cook, but she didn’t do a whole lot to develop my inner chef. I’d ask her if she would just let me into her kitchen so I could help her and maybe she’d teach me how to cook. She’d always say, “Well, come on in, honey.”
Five minutes later, she’d be sayin’, “I’m sorry, honey, but you have to go.”
Actually, now I can kind of understand it because I also like to be in control of my pots. But I would just get on her nerves so bad.
Momma cooked three meals a day—she would get up and cook breakfast every morning for Bubba and me before we went to school, and she even cooked lunch for Daddy. She cooked him a hot meal in the middle of the day, because he would always come home for lunch. Listen: I knew it was more than lunch. I always thought that was when they had their boom-boom time. You know—we would be in school, and I never ever overheard any noises or anything like that at night, so I felt in my bones that they really looked forward to their lunches together. Sharing food is the most personal way to connect and it often leads to other good stuff.
But watching my Grandmother Irene Paul was another matter entirely. Something always smelled good in her kitchen. She taught me the traditions of Southern cooking, especially the way she seasoned food with herbs, fatback, peppers, and even hog jowls. She made a memorable turtle soup, fried chicken that caused you to salivate, and fried peach pies that made you think you died and went to heaven. She was a great, inspiring cook, pure in heart, and, best of all, I didn’t get on her nerves. I spent days and days and days in her kitchen; I didn’t realize it then but I was getting an education there in which I’d eventually get all A’s. I sure couldn’t say the same for any other school I attended. It was gradually coming to me that Southern cooking was a hand-me-down art. It came from within Grandmomma Paul and it was how she showed her love, her compassion, her godliness, her neighborliness. Her staples were butter—as much as you could get your hands on—sugar, salt, pepper, hot sauce, vinegar, ham hocks, and fat of all descriptions, including lard.
I didn’t think of my grandmother as being pretty but I remember she had long gray hair. She parted it in the middle and made two pigtails, then she pinned the pigtails up like a crown. She was a presence. She’d been an incredible wife to her husband, John Paul, my granddaddy. Oh, he had dark, curly hair and he was a ladies’ man, my Granddaddy Paul. I heard he had girlfriends during his whole marriage, the fact of which my grandmother hated, bu
t she hardly ever mentioned it to the family, my momma told me. You didn’t mention stuff like that in those days. But I do remember them fighting—today, I guess you’d call it verbal sparring—probably about all those ladies’ man activities. My Grandmother Paul had balls. She got what she wanted, in the end.
He had the world by the tail, my granddaddy did. He had those lady friends. And he also had two daughters who were very efficient—my mother, Corrie, and her sister, my Aunt Peggy, who has saved my butt on more than one occasion. Last, but sure not least, he had his wife, who worked like a dog. Although Granddaddy used to drive a dry-cleaning truck, it was his wife who made him his first serious dollars in a little hot dog stand he bought for her by the airport in Hapeville, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. She produced the product; he managed the finances. My granddaddy was a very shrewd businessman but he didn’t believe in insurance. When he died, all of his money was in cash: a hundred thousand dollars, and back then, to accumulate a hundred thousand dollars in cash was major. But it was my Grandmomma Paul’s cookin’ in that little hot dog stand that did so well they were able to move on to country steak and creamed potatoes. Grandmomma told me that one day, a customer tried to get fresh with my momma, who slapped him silly across the face with one of those raw steaks. My granddaddy was also driving a laundry truck then, and Grandmomma would tell me that she would take the money bag and walk to the stand at four o’clock in the morning, and when she closed, she’d walk home with the money. Oh, my goodness, I wish I’d given a tape recorder to her because she had the good stories.