For as long as we’re at the table, the rest of the world melts away. My kids love it when I make simple one-pot meals such as chili or Crock-Pot pot roast. Or noodles with ground turkey and vegetables. Sometimes I’ll go all out and do fried chicken and sides.
After saying grace, as we eat, we’ll each talk about our day’s highlights. It’s our little five-year-old, Tennessee’s, favorite thing to do. Some people I know call this dinner game “Roses and Thorns”: you have to say the best thing (the rose) of your day and the worst thing (the thorn). It’s a good way to get out of the “How was school?” “Fine” rut.
Also over dinner, we might play a guessing game where one of us thinks of an animal and the others have to ask questions about where it lives. It’s a really good game with little kids. And they get excited because it feels very grown-up and sophisticated to be playing a game with people of all ages. Each person can ask only one question about the animal to try to figure it out. My middle child thinks of things that are so hard that nobody can guess them. But it’s really sweet to see the five-year-old trying to figure it out, so serious: “Is it . . . an elephant? Is it . . . a kitten?”
Deacon: “Close. It’s a North American marmot.”
When Jim and the kids and I are sitting there eating and laughing, I often flash back to family meals with my grandparents, which we’d often eat out on the screened-in porch, complete with soundtrack of the screen door’s spring stretching followed by the whapping sound the door made as it slammed. Adults would sip drinks on the porch before dinner and watch the sun go down as the kids played outside, filling jars with fireflies. I like to think my kids will look back on our dinners this way, how we talked and laughed together over plates of good, filling food—but even more fulfilling conversation.
That’s me with my mom and grandparents. I’ve always loved family dinners.
My grandparents loved our stories, hanging on every word and detail. We felt appreciated and important, as though our opinions mattered. My mother laughed loudest at all my jokes—so I always blame her for making me become an actor. She egged me on, which made me feel even bolder. Her laugh gave me courage. She has the best laugh in the world.
Southern Conversation Starters
Now, heaven forbid anyone spills salt during a family dinner. You have to throw it over your left shoulder immediately, or . . .
Well, you know, most of us growing up in the South never quite knew what would happen if we didn’t abide by the superstition, but we knew it was bad.
Here are a few of the more common superstitions we were raised with. I suppose adherence to such arbitrary rules might make us seem a little unhinged sometimes, but when you’re constantly on the lookout for omens of ill fortune, it does keep the day lively!
• A hat on a bed is bad luck.
• If you sweep a broom under a young woman’s feet, she’ll never marry.
• Never stir any liquid with a knife—it leads to strife.
• Walking under a ladder is bad luck.
• If a black cat crosses your path, you’ll have bad luck unless you go home and start your trip again.
• A broken mirror means seven years’ bad luck.
• Don’t put your purse on the floor. If you do, it’s “money out the door.”
ABOUT 8 SERVINGS
Reese’s Corn Bread Chili Pie
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For a weekday dinner with family, you need something that will please both kids and adults and that isn’t too complicated to make. My favorite thing is chili pie. This is an easy one-dish dinner if you are using a cast-iron or other oven-safe skillet. If using a baking dish or casserole, cook the filling on the stove top in a skillet or sauté pan and transfer to the baking dish before adding the corn bread batter topping.
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2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
2 (1.75 oz.) packets chili seasoning
1 (14 oz.) can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 cups chicken broth
2 (8.5 oz.) boxes Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 cup frozen corn, divided
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 (16 oz.) can kidney beans, drained
Optional toppings: Fresh salsa, fresh chopped green onion, sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese
* * *
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
2. In a 9- or 10-inch cast-iron skillet or sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the onion and sauté for 1 minute before adding the garlic. Sauté for another minute and add the ground beef and pork, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon and stirring until the meat is brown.
3. Drain off any excess fat and stir in the chili seasoning, diced tomatoes, and tomato paste. Mix over medium heat for 1 minute, then pour in the chicken broth. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. While the meat simmers, make the corn bread mixture: Stir together the Jiffy mix, eggs, and milk in a mixing bowl until just combined (do not overmix). Stir 1/2 cup of the frozen corn and the cheese into the corn bread batter and set aside. Stir the remaining 1/2 cup of corn and the kidney beans into the meat mixture.
5. If using a baking or casserole dish, transfer the meat mixture from the stove top to the baking dish. Pour the corn bread batter over the meat mixture and bake in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving with optional toppings such as salsa, green onion, sour cream, and shredded cheese.
CHAPTER 8
Dolly Parton, Southern Icon
No discussion of the South is complete without a tribute to that eternal symbol of southern womanhood: Dolly Parton.
Here’s my Dolly story:
I have a vivid memory of being six years old and skipping rope on the blacktop in my first-grade PE class. My teacher, Mrs. Wright, who is still a teacher at my old school, asked me, “Reesey, what do you want to be when you grow up?” As I’ve mentioned, by that point I had considered becoming the first female president of the United States or (and?) Mrs. Willie Nelson. But now, at the ripe age of six, I had a new, loftier ambition. Without missing a skip, I said, “Mrs. Wright, when I grow up, I am going to be Dolly Parton.”
I was, in fact, convinced that I was going to be her—or at least a funny, smart, blond country music singer in her image. I could see it so clearly: I would have a variety show just like Dolly Parton, I would have her glittery wardrobe, and, above all else, I would have that voice.
Well, it wasn’t meant to be. I took singing lessons, to no avail. It’s one of the great tragedies of my life that I was born without the talent to become a country music singer. In retrospect, it’s pretty funny how bad I was at singing—and how long it took for me to take the hint. When I was thirteen years old, I began entering Nashville acting and singing competitions. I’d always win the acting ones, but I would never even place in the singing ones. Still, I continued to sing out! If nothing else, at that stage competing taught me that I always had a song in my heart and that I really enjoyed performing, no matter what sort of feedback I was getting on the vocal part.
Then I got an opportunity to go to camp in the Catskills of upstate New York with hundreds of kids who all had dreams of being on Broadway. I was soon told the following: “You . . . in the front . . . Yes, you . . . Please stop singing. Acting is your thing; focus on that.”
Finally I accepted reality. In the long run, that experience taught me that learning what I wasn’t good at was just as important as learning what I was. That is a huge life lesson.
And that brings us back to Dolly. Because it was there, in the Catskills at age thirteen, that I had to surrender my dream of being her. But sometimes dreams have a strange way of coming true ev
en after you abandon them. At fourteen, I started acting professionally, and then, many years later, I got one of the most important roles of my career: Walk the Line. That meant I had to do a lot of research about June Carter and the Carter Family.
Well, my father was a surgeon in Nashville who worked on people’s vocal chords. He never told me who his patients were, because he was a professional. But when some of his patients heard that I would be playing Johnny Cash’s wife, they offered to send me videotapes and pictures and memorabilia. One of those generous people was Dolly.
That’s right, Dolly Parton—the Dolly Parton—reached out and offered to meet me and help me to prepare for my role. She said she’d help me with any guidance she could about context for the Carter Family. Well, I was over the moon. And we set a date.
She picked me up in her car. One of her cousins was driving us. And we went to a three-hour dinner. She told me stories from her life in country music and so many things she knew about the Carter Family and especially Johnny Cash. She was incredibly generous with her time and her experiences, which really helped inform my performance. More even than the great insights she had, she gave me courage. Leaving that dinner, I felt emboldened to play the role, even though I still feared I wouldn’t be credible as a country music singer. In fact, when the film’s director, Jim Mangold, had hired me, my response had been, “Great! You’re going to get LeAnn Rimes to sing for me, right?” I had, after all, been hearing, for about twenty years, people saying “Please don’t sing.”
But, Jim felt confident I could sing on screen, and Dolly told me I could do it, so I had to have faith. I took singing lessons for seven months to prepare. Our producer, T Bone Burnett, coached me, too. He taught me that singing isn’t about perfection; it’s about emotion. He guided my performance so that even if mine wasn’t the most proficient voice possible, it always came from my heart.
Still, I confess I thought I was going to throw up every single time I shot a scene where I sang. (Have you seen the movie? There’s a lot of singing, y’all!) But I just drank a beer and did it anyway. And it all worked out okay. A lot of key moments in life are like that: You can be nervous as all get out. Just drink a beer and do it anyway.
June Carter Cash ended up being a very important role in my career. And I’ve always been really appreciative of everyone who contributed in any way to that film—especially Dolly Parton—for helping me get there.
Dolly and I have stayed in touch since, and she’s remained a very caring and supportive figure in my life. When I started Draper James, she was one of the first people to say, “Hey, how can I help you?” She even came down and shopped! And when I called her and asked, “Can I create a product that says ‘What would Dolly do?’ Because I think it all the time,” she said, “Absolutely!”
She continues to inspire me to no end. Here is a woman who came from profoundly humble beginnings, yet she has thrived and continues to be so deeply grateful to and appreciative of every person who has helped her, including every single fan. I love her positivity and her cultural outreach in the South. Did you know that as part of her far-reaching literacy program, Imagination Library, she sends free books to children ages birth to five in communities all around the country—and in the U.K., Canada, and Australia? “Who knows,” she’s said of her work, “maybe there is a little girl whose dream it is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”
Beyond being a fabulous entertainer, she’s a wonderful person. So for me, she’s the ultimate southern icon.
Honorary Southern Icon HRH the Duchess of Cambridge
Why do southern women like British royalty? I have a girlfriend whose entire Instagram account is made up of photos of the royal family. As a little girl, I used to watch everything that came on television about Princess Diana. My mother follows the rise and fall of the royals’ fortunes closely. Why? I asked her this the other day, and we decided that southern women like how the royals value family and how they’re always doing good for others. There’s also their keen attention to propriety and sense of tradition. Plus, of course, the dresses! Southern women love pomp and circumstance.
Still, I felt relatively immune from the obsession with the royals until a few years ago when I was invited to meet Kate Middleton. She had just married Prince William, and she was coming to Los Angeles for a fund raiser. I don’t even know how I got so lucky as to receive the invitation. The scream that issued from my lips upon receiving it—you would have thought I was going to die. I wake up early, mind you, but on that day I was up at 4 a.m. doing my hair. That’s early, even for me.
“I’ve never seen you this excited,” my husband said.
He wasn’t kidding. I was up, dressed, and waiting by the door by 7 a.m. Jim took pictures of me in the car. You can see rays of happiness shooting out of my face. I love Kate Middleton that much.
And she did not disappoint! She was just lovely and warm, elegant and composed. She also told a joke, and I immediately fell under her spell. She’s just as magnificent as she seems to be. She’s a very compassionate, socially conscious, deeply caring person.
What’s more, it takes a very special person to decide to commit to that kind of life, to choose to be under public scrutiny every moment. Now that she’s in that position, her entire life is in service, forever. I am so in awe of that kind of dedication.
CHAPTER 9
My Grandfather’s Garden
I know I’ve talked in this book an awful lot about my grandmother Dorothea. I do associate flowers and beautiful scents with her. She had about a dozen bottles of floral perfumes, some with cut-crystal stoppers. Her favorite scent was Joy. As a little girl, I loved to sneak in her room and dab a bit behind my ears.
Yet her husband, James Witherspoon, my grandfather Jimmy, is who I think of when I think of southern flowers. He was one of the greatest influences in my life. I worshipped him. I followed him everywhere as a child and would drop anything to play checkers with him on the porch. The tallest person in our family (a whopping six foot one . . . we are a family of shorties!), he was a World War II veteran—he’d served as a fighter pilot—and a high school principal. He’d grown up on a farm in Midlothian, Texas, and he kept farmers’ hours, waking up each morning at dawn. My grandfather was never happier than when he was working around his magnolia trees, hydrangeas, peonies, and irises, which are both the Tennessee state flower and my mother’s favorites.
When I stayed with my grandparents, from the age of three, I’d wake up early, too, so I could have the honor of helping my grandfather in the garden. We would eat Cheerios and bananas before heading out to work: mowing the lawn or painting the house. He always worked in white coveralls, coming in only for a sandwich at midday and then again around five o’clock to shower and change for dinner. Being his helper was my very first job. As I followed him everywhere, I asked a million questions about the garden, the gutters, the lawn mower, the cars. You name it, if he was working on something, I had a question, and he always had a patient answer for me.
His flower garden was his pride and joy, and he did every bit of the work on it himself. In the huge expanse of my grandparents’ backyard, my grandfather nurtured, planted, and maintained a prolific garden. He dug up the entire backyard each spring—the tired beds full of dried-out, gone-to-seed plants left from the end of the previous growing season—and would spend hour upon hour turning the soil and planning out every single thing he wished to grow for the season ahead.
From the nursery catalogs that filled my grandparents’ mailbox, he would select the seeds to plant—tomatoes, okra, green beans, and lots of flowers, too. He grew masses of zinnias for the rabbits to eat so they’d leave his vegetables alone. Each day he would walk his garden and water and check on his plants, wandering from row to row.
To this day, one of my most vivid memories is being in the garden with him, probably around the age of five, following behind hi
m with my endless chatter. He stopped and said, “Reese, less talking, more working on the plants.” I learned to stop and appreciate the plants.
Because I was paying so much attention that summer, I noticed exactly when the tomatoes turned red, and it was a thrilling day for me. At harvesttime, I walked the rows with him, picking mountains of beans, and then I’d sit on the back porch with my grandma, snapping and stringing them for hours. In the mornings, Jimmy and I would deliver fresh tomatoes to neighbors’ doorsteps.
Jimmy showed me firsthand what a life of hard work and service looks like. His garden reflected his nurturing spirit. For the rest of my life, the scent of fresh tomatoes will bring my mind racing back to those times.
Today, at my house in California, I plant roses and vegetables in a small garden. It brings me such joy, especially in the early summer when I see the first signs of growth. My kids aren’t much for gardening so far, but one day I think they’ll remember that I love flowers, the same way I remember so clearly how my grandfather Jimmy did.
Honeysuckle
Honeysuckle grows like wildfire in the South. It covers the hedges, creek sides, and garden walls. It grows wherever there is water and heat—so basically the entire South—from May to October. That sweet floral fragrance reminds me of my youth. We had a big honeysuckle bush in our side yard that would blossom every spring. My brother taught me to pinch off the blossom and pull the stem to suck out the nectar. The neighborhood kids and I could spend hours doing that. As if they weren’t pretty enough on their own, they often attract hummingbirds and butterflies, too.
Whiskey in a Teacup Page 6