We were in search of fried chicken.
It was a rural and different way of checking out a menu in the 1930’s and 40’s. Pender’s Crossroads could boast about a number of things. The one that got the attention of my cousin Keith and me was the great cooks in the neighborhood.
I was about five or six and Keith was about ten years old. I believe he was the leader in this search and I just tagged along checking out Crossroads menus. About mid morning we would start walking from house to house and ask aunts, grandmothers, older cousins and neighbors what they were having for dinner (lunch). We were in search of just one who was having fried chicken Usually we found it.
Fried chicken is still a favorite of mine but back in the 1940’s everyone I knew fried in lard. The chicken we get today in restaurants and even at home is mostly fried in some variation of vegetable oil. Chicken or cornbread fried in lard takes the flavor to a whole different level. There is a restaurant in Elm City today named Oh My Lard. It just has to be good.
Over a summer Keith and I had fried chicken at most every kitchen around Pender’s Crossroads. They were all great cooks and most of them had crispy browned fried chicken seasoned with salt and pepper and fried in lard. Granny Mattie (Mammy) fried her chicken in lard and made gravy. She made biscuits with almost every meal. Actually she made regular biscuits and then she made “hard biscuits”. She would put her fried chicken in the gravy and called it smothered chicken. She died in September at age of 99 years and would have been 100 in December. I remember having fried chicken at Aunt Ida’s, Aunt Ruby’s, Miss Kat’s, Mammy’s, Granny Mothie’s, my mama’s, Granny Nannie’s and at Miss Alma Ruth’s Miss Alma Ruth used a lot of black pepper.
There was one house we didn’t stop at because we had heard adult conversations at the store about the man of that house being stingy. He was pretty well off financially but wasn’t a sharing kind of guy. We had heard he came to my grandparents store and bought just one piece of steak. He was asked how did he feed himself and his wife and their four children with one steak. He replied that he ate the steak and the children had gravy and biscuits.
When Granny Mothie fried chicken, she saved the backs, necks, heads and feet to make chicken pastry or dumplings. Her pastry with those feet and heads was savage. I can still see those feet and heads boiling away in her big pot.
My Granny Mothie owned and operated Bridgers Grocery and Farm Supply at Penders Crossroads. On a cold winter day when it was sleeting or snowing she would sometimes cook a chicken pastry on the pot bellied heater at the store She used the whole chicken including the feet and head. Customers and salesmen who came in the store were served a steaming hot bowl of this delightful dish with her homemade pastry strips and those chicken feet and heads looking savage. I remember Mr. Walter Oakey called this dish “chicken slick”.
Today we search a menu on our phones. We can Google menus from coast to coast in a matter of minutes, showing pictures of the food and prices. Back in the 1940’s it took Keith and me half a day to check the Penders Crossroads menu.
Montress Greene
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