Nonfiction by Mark Hall
Times were often lean, growing up in rural South Georgia, where a Thanksgiving turkey was a luxury many families could not afford. But a holiday feast could still be had with “Alma’s Baked ‘Possum.”
Fresh out of college, I left my Southern home for a job on the West Coast. In California, I missed the simple country food of my upbringing. At the time, I helped out occasionally in the kitchen of my friend Shoen, a personal chef recently returned from a stint cooking on Cher’s latest tour. While I zested Meyer lemons for flambéed peaches with cognac and Cointreau, I chronicled my hunger for the ordinary. Instead of the nourishing goodness of Hoppin’ John, collards, and cornbread, in California even the humble burger seemed to be tricked up into something needlessly complicated. Draped with sheep’s cheese and wilted radicchio bathed in balsamic vinegar, meatless patties were delivered to the table not with fries, but with a thimble full of chilled carrot, orange, and cardamom soup, with a delicate tower of sourdough crostini perched on top.
The Southern palate, I explained to Shoen as I stirred toasted cumin seeds, is fundamentally different from those of other regions. According to Mrs. S. R. Dull’s 1928 Southern Cooking, the Bible in my grandmother’s kitchen, Southerners don’t even have the same food groups as other folks. Instead of Grains, Fruits and Vegetables, Dairy, and Meat, Mrs. Dull taught us that there are not four but five food groups:
- Cereals, wheat, flour, cornmeal, rice, bread, and macaroni
- Milk, eggs, cheese, meat, fish, peas, beans, nuts, and game
- Fats, butter, butter substitutes, drippings, cottonseed oil, olive oil, and bacon
- Sugar, syrups, honey, jelly, and preserves
- Vegetables and fruits
If Shoen’s menus of iced black bean soup with chipotle cream and chargrilled Belgian endive with Fontina and yellow pear tomatoes were any indication, however, Californians eschew the humble staples of Southern cooking. Folks from San Diego to San Francisco apparently live their entire lives without the “drippings” necessary to nourish the body.
When a ‘possum set up housekeeping in my basement just before Thanksgiving, I saw this as a perfect opportunity to demonstrate my point about the simplicity and goodness of Southern food. A neighbor loaned me what he termed a “humane” trap to capture my visitor. Three nights and as many pounds of Purina Dog Chow later, I found a dazed but sated ‘possum squeezed into a too-small cage intended for an errant squirrel.
In the meantime, I consulted Mrs. Dull for advice about its preparation. No haute cuisine Mrs. Dull’s cooking. Of ‘possum she directs: “Put 1⁄2 lime in about 1 gallon of boiling water and scald quickly, and pull off hair while hot. Scrape well—remove feet, tail and entrails—like you would a pig.”
I photocopied the recipe, affixed it to the ‘possum-stuffed squirrel trap, then left them together on Shoen’s doorstep. Her apartment was one of those in which all the entrances open onto a common hallway. As a result, mouths watering, neighbors sniffed the air and leaned in each day as they passed her door, wondering what delicacy simmered within. Shoen would not be home for some time, and to me, this was ideal. Neighbors would have ample opportunity to walk by and see the live caged ’possum waiting at her door. Hearing its faint scratch-scratch, they would move in for closer inspection, only to find those bulbous pink eyes staring up at them, along with Mrs. Dull’s recipe for “Alma’s Baked ‘Possum.” I imagined Shoen’s own walk down the hallway, arms piled high with Bosc pears, watercress, and lamb shanks. Slowly the cage would come into focus, then the ‘possum itself.
I returned home to wait by the phone. Shoen, herself a vegetarian, would free the ‘possum in the park across the street, and later, when I’d let down my guard, she would get even. Shoen can give as good as she can take, and so I set myself to imagining her revenge. But no phone call came. Had Shoen stayed out all day? I worried that the ‘possum might suffer in the cage, dehydrate, or worse, die. Should I return to check? I waited. Late that evening, my doorbell rang. On my doorstep I found several covered dishes. Atop the largest was an artfully calligraphed menu:
Bacon, Arugula & Leek Salad
Petits Pois & Prosciutto Soup
Lemon Mint Tagliatelle with Truffle Butter
Alma’s Baked ’Possum
As expected, Shoen gave as good as she took. The next morning, she phoned to ask how I had liked my supper. Only then did she reveal that “Alma’s Baked ‘Possum,” was, in fact, organic free-range turkey.
Mark Hall lives in North Carolina. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Timberline Review, Lunch Ticket, Passengers Journal, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Hippocampus, The Fourth River, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere.
