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I went to the grocery store in the itty town nearest my bitty town to buy some smoked meat to cook mustard greens with. There was smoked pig tails, smoked neck bones, ham hocks and salt pork on the shelf, but it was all going fast. Just about everybody cooks greens of some kind for Thanksgiving.
I stopped by to say "Hi" to Edna and Pearl, the girls who work behind the counter at the drug store in back of the grocery. A little black lady named Queen Esther, but called "Miss Queenie" by everyone stopped to pick up a prescription. She said she was gonna have 'coon and sweet taters" for Thanksgiving. She asked if we'd ever had 'coon, to which there were three vigorous shakes of the head "NO."
"Y'all don't know what you missin' then. My husband when he were alive loved him some 'coon till the doctor took him off wild meat. He didn't like no rabbit or deer, but 'coon be different. It be the cleanest pink meat. I'm gonna bake that 'coon with some sweet taters round him."
Edna says "Where did you get the 'coon?" Miss Queenie said somebody come by sellin' 'em, already skinned and dressed. She said "My young'uns ain't comin--they don't like 'coon anyways. Young folk nowadays don't eat it. Y'know you usta could get a 'coon for two or three dollars--now they be $10.00!" Pearl said sadly "Yes'm, everything's gone up, ain't it?"
Then we all went about our business, and I'm thinking where else but the deep south could you hear a conversation like that? Oh Lordy, my roots are sunk deep in the red clay of rural Mississippi, for better or for worse.
susil
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