Where I grew up in the rolling hills of Kentucky, there was an acre out back with fresh vegetables in all the right seasons that got canned and stored for winter months and ground scatter of berries and small apples and other fruits in the fields near and far. Some things that were made at home weren’t as fresh—my father still savors fried Spam, pig knuckles and other spicy pickled things—yet the table was mainly harvested by hand. In my early teens, the Scout troop had what I realize now was an indoctrination trip to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where we learned a lot about the athletic program there and just a little bit about how much prouder an American would be who had served. I made a terrible, guilty discovery, however: the mess hall potatoes we were served at two meals. Exotically textured—if memory serves, they were made from flakes and were strictly starchy—the potatoes were like nothing I’d had in home cooking. The memory of that summer rushes back every time I pass a Popeye’s, where I’m tempted always to have the box of chicken strips, which disappoints at every outlet I visit, but the side of mashed potatoes, with supposed “Cajun” gravy satisfies, a big schoop pressed into the top, filled with a drib of gravy, a quick whiff of green pepper when you peel the plastic lid off the Styrofoam container, a hint of indeterminate meat in the mix. Folding the gravy in with a swirl of spork, the first bite is slightly salty, slightly peppered and ever so slightly hints of when I was a boy. (Ray Pride)
