Preparing My Palate

Growing up in Greenwood, Mississippi, I was exposed to a multi-cultural environment. Surprised?

People today in most of the south think of everyone either being black, Hispanic, or white. Of course, there are also the Gujarati Indians who own the convenience stores and motels, and remnants of the Chinese population who were the entrepreneurs 150 years ago in the deep south. Many people still think that white people are considered to be the real Americans.

Ever notice those flashing signs in front of a business that says something like this: “Real Americans own this business,” or “American-owned?” We all know deep down that all Americans except the American Indian have ancestors who were immigrants.

Greenwood was once known as the Cotton Capital of the World. It was the cotton industry that brought people from all over the world to settle in the Mississippi Delta. My classmates in Greenwood were Italian, Polish, Chinese, Lebanese, Greek, Syrian and many other ethnicities. In addition to the traditional evangelical churches, the small town of Greenwood was home to a Jewish synagogue and a Maronite Catholic church where many of the Arab Americans worshipped.  

When I was growing up, there were the farmers and the planters. Farmers were generally people like my grandparents who owned 80 acres and a pair of mules. Yes, some of them had tractors, but the planters were those who owned, or in some cases, leased, thousands of acres of rich Delta land. They had those big dual wheeled tractors and all kind of mechanical farm equipment.

My family’s land wasn’t in the rich Delta, but in the hills at the edge of Delta. The biggest crop in the hills was kudzu that the US government had imported in 1883 from east Asia. Kudzu has had devastating environmental consequences earning it the nickname "the vine that ate the South." It was hard for a farmer to make a living for his family from 80 acres in the hills of Mississippi and other states in the deep South.

My dad drove a bread truck for Wonder Bread for many years, and my earliest memories were going with him on his route to deliver bread to small community grocery stores owned by Chinese Americans. All of these little stores would sell prepared food from their home kitchens which were in the back of their little stores. I grew up eating Chinese food long before we had Chinese restaurants. That’s hard to believe now as every little town has at least one Chinese restaurant and several Tex-Mex restaurants.

The only barbeque that I ate outside my home was from the kitchen in the back of Mr. Lucas’s store where they prepared fresh pork barbeque. It was takeout only and they served their barbeque sauce in fifth of whiskey bottles. I often wondered who drank all that whiskey!?

One of my favorite growing up foods was hot tamales—this was long before the migration of Hispanics to the South. These delicious tamales wrapped in corn shucks were prepared by the masterful hands of a couple of black families who sold them from wooden carts mounted on bicycle wheels on the street corners.

By the time I was in junior high school, my dad managed a food vending company owned by a Lebanese, so I learned to eat Arab food at an early age. By the time I was 15, I was selling clothes at the nicest men’s store in town, so I could afford to eat in restaurants that were owned by Greeks or at the pool hall where a meat and two was served and prepared by an Italian—long before Italian restaurants were popular in the South. I learned to love capers and anchovies. I was introduced to cheeses from other cultures, and I loved them all.

I believe that God was preparing me to live and work in a multi-cultural environment for most of my adult life. God knew all along that I was going to travel in the countries of the Arab world, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. That’s why he gave me opportunities to prepare my palate even as a child. He was preparing me to smile when I was served sheep’s head, roasted scorpion, grilled goat stomach, cow’s blood mixed with fresh milk, bat stew, fish from the uranium-enriched Black Sea, and boiled okra and onions with dog meat.

Thank goodness for the old missionary prayer: “Lord, my job is to get this food down. Your job is to keep it down! Amen.”

 P.S. Trivia: My hometown is no longer the cotton capital of the world, but it can boast of being the historic stoplight capital of the world. This town of 20,000 has the most vintage four-way traffic signals than any other city in the world. These traffic lights, which are at over 30 intersections in Greenwood, were all manufactured in the USA and have all been refurbished to their original condition. These classic traffic lights and accompanying restored buildings in downtown Greenwood have been featured in many movie productions including “The Help” and “My Dog Skip.”