#oa86

[theoxfordamerican]

ISSUE 86: No Twang of Conscience Whatever

Photograph by Todd Hido / Edge Reps

 It was almost eleven when Preacher Killen put on the gray Stetson and headed for the door. I watched as he slipped behind the wheel of his faded green Buick and turned the key, and waited to hear the engine crank. Instead it gave off a low grumble so Killen tried again, and again the car refused to start. Again and again he would turn the key and pump the gas, but there was only the sick, grinding noise. It was then that we took our walk to the Gulf station next door where the mechanic was off and the attendant knew of no others still on duty at that hour. At the motel office, the desk clerk, too, was of no help so we returned to the Buick.

 Read the rest of Patsy Sims’s hauntingly suspenseful Fall issue piece here. 

[theoxfordamerican]

ISSUE 86: A Place to Root

"Mountain Gaia" from the series Earth, Polyphonia, by Ana Kapodistria

 “Here. Here we go,” Carol said, and we shuffled to a stop. She drew my attention to the patch of yellowroot we were standing in. Carol sat down next to a plant and started to turn up the earth around it with the hand cultivator she’d been carrying (which she called simply her “digger”), raking the metal tines into the dark soil to loosen it. After a minute she set the tool aside, her hand feeling around the roots, then pulled up with her fingers a small tuber. She broke it open to show me the striking color that gives the plant its name. Yellowroot is known to be anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic—good for colds, flu, stomachache, mouth sores, eczema, and many other afflictions, Carol explained, stuffing the large part of the tuber into a potato sack. She’d promised some to a neighbor who’d been sick. The part of the root still attached to the leaf and stalk she stuck back into the tilled soil, covering it again so the plant would keep growing, and we moved on.

 Read the rest of Holly Haworth's A Place to Root, from our fall issue.

[theoxfordamerican]

Earl Brown, Vice President of the Blue Monday Shad Fry, displays uncooked roe. East Arcadia, April 2013.

 Blue Monday, continued

 I first attended the East Arcadia Blue Monday Shad Fry in April 2013. My business there was to do with a folklife documentation project for the NC Folklife Institute. I arrived at Lock and Dam No. 1 with my colleague, the folklorist Steve Kruger, around noon. Steve and I were fairly conspicuous—white guys with notebooks and cameras. Everyone was very generous and welcoming. When I asked if I could have another helping of shad roe, Earl Brown shoveled about two pounds off the cooker onto the paper plate that I was holding, which bent under the weight.

 Read the rest of Chris Fowlers’ Blue Monday companion photo essay: Things to Eat.

[theoxfordamerican]

ISSUE 86: Blue Monday

Photography by Chris Fowler

A delicate incision down the female shad’s stomach liberates a pair of surprisingly large vaguely orange lobes, redolent of lungs. Connected by a bloody membrane, each pouch contains about 300,000 eggs, and they are most commonly poached or sautéed intact. In season, you can get shad roe at New York’s Grand Central Oyster Bar, with bacon and a broiled tomato, for about thirty dollars. Hominy Grill in Charleston sautées roe in butter and serves it with bacon, mushrooms, asparagus, lemon, garlic, and Tabasco, and at Atlanta’s Empire State South, it’s cured and plated with butter and sliced radishes.

Read the rest of John McElwee's Blue Monday, from our fall issue.

[theoxfordamerican]

ISSUE 86: Flood Protection

"Les Naturalistes, 2013" (detail), by Ysabel LeMay

 John Barry Goes Coastal on Big Oil

One night in February, John Barry rode a mule-drawn float through the carnival crush of the Faubourg Marigny, an old Creole neighborhood in downtown New Orleans. Chosen to reign as King of the Krewe du Vieux parade, he flourished an oversized quill pen with an ostrich plume instead of a scepter and wore a velvet tunic emblazoned with a gold fleur-de-lis. His royal float was edged in fat black droplets of oil threatening forlorn snowy egrets, glitter-dusted wetlands flora, and too-blue water. Barry, the author of best-selling books on the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and the deadly flu epidemic of 1918, had become something of a local hero for spearheading a high-profile lawsuit aiming to make oil and gas companies restore coastal land damaged by their work.

Read the rest of Anne Gisleson's Flood Protection from our fall issue.

[theoxfordamerican]

ISSUE 86: Twenty Seconds with the King

"Dancers at Club Ebony," by Bill Steber

Almost every year since 1980, Indianola has celebrated the B.B. King Homecoming Festival. Though the date may change year to year because of King’s schedule, the event is practically a holiday. Thousands attend the one-day festival. Food trucks and street vendors appear; police look the other way as bottles of booze pass from hand to hand; lawn chairs and sun umbrellas unfurl next to large, sweaty families; coolers rattle with ice. A carnival used to come, but officials shut it down because carnies were breaking into residents’ homes. Kids who have grown up watching King play every summer take it for granted. It’s not until they leave Indianola and say they’ve seen B.B. King twelve times that the responding “oohs” and “aahs” inform them of their rare privilege.

Read the rest of Phil McCausland's Twenty Seconds with the King here.

[theoxfordamerican]

"Crowd in the bottom hunting," Panola County, Mississippi, ca. 1920s. Courtesy of James Seay

Another photo from James Seay's One Corner of Yoknapatawpha  in OA 86.

[theoxfordamerican]

General James Stone's clubhouse, Panola County, Mississippi. Courtesy of James Seay

From our fall issue, One Corner of Yoknapatawpha