usadeepsouth.com
~funeral butterbeans 'n cracked granite~
by Don Drane
The journalist had requested notes relating to foods served after funerals and the history of funeral food and information related to estate inventories, cemetery cleanings and burial societies. She wanted what I thought was private information that she had no right to. [Read her request.]
I wasn't so much bristling at her as I was committed to standing up for the silence of secrets. With the predominance of the internet, it's become fairly common for people wanting to write and sell books to send out such requests. If you can get others to submit enough backbone for your book, you have literally zero research to do and can dishonestly hitchhike the whole book on the thoughts and dreams of others. If they were honest, which they aren't, the footnote list would be longer than the book.
Anyway, I know a bit about cleaning up cemeteries. And I know a bit about the secret mixture that will turn a moldy-gray two-hundred-year-old marker into a shimmering white slab of screaming newness. And I particularly know I'm not about to send that information to somebody who would shove it into a book devoid of research and respect for the dead.
As I told her, first off, adjourning to the food room that holds the best fried chicken, butterbeans, buttered corn, peas, homemade rolls, apple and pecan pie in the world with the occasional banana puddin' -- that's part of the funeral. And I corrected her that you do not 'serve' funeral food. You lay it out. Typically on old folding tables, snapped upright in the corners of country church fellowship halls or in the kitchen or dining room of the deceased person's home on sideboards and buffets and Formica counters, with pure white tablecloths thrown over the tables. And multicolored dishes with spoons labeled on masking tape with people's names so they get them back. You don't serve it. You lay it out.
To speak of the ritual would be to somehow cheapen the memory of grandmothers, favorite aunts, old uncles, granddaddies, friends who died too early, mommas, daddies and coworkers. And it would be at the same while a sacrilege and a shame to chronicle all of that as if to say, "Here's how to do it." It just would not be right. No more than a book about how to give a baby a bath in a #9 washtub. Anybody who would do it won't need a written instruction. The art either comes natural or is passed down through observation from one generation to the next. But the writer could make a buck off it and more people would laugh and ridicule the custom than would relate to it, 'cause those who would relate to it would not be buying a book about it anyway.
It's a whole 'nuther story about some people who will show up at funerals knowing food will be laid out and people who always manage to be first in line when the nod is given to go ahead and shove the ladle in the butterbeans; but you know who I'm talkin' about -- the same ones who wrap up chicken thighs and rolls and slip them into their purse and tell you they're taking a piece of cherry pie to somebody sick.
And I told the inquiring journalist I don't know about estate inventories or journals of food, but I do know about cemeteries.
My friend Tom and I have cleaned more than a few old markers. We've taken some road trips with the pickup bed holding containers of special stuff to clean up markers. We also pack along baloney samwiches, fried and bar-b-qued chicken wings and some Penrose sausages. And we've struck out early on a Saturday or Sunday, soon as the sun is up. Sometimes we've looked at a map but more often we just take a road previously untaken, winding up who knows where.
Cleaning a cemetery marker is something you do quietly, with little fanfare, no announcement of your coming or proclamation when you're gone. And I can tell you it's more than embarrassing to get caught in the act. We can make a hundred year old blackened stone shine pure-granite-white with a few sprays and scrubs and the proper amount of gentle attention and sunshine. And the only payoff we have ever wanted is being left alone and sittin' on a tailgate on a country road, puttin' away four or five crispy wings and a baloney samwich on fresh white bread, slathered in mayonnaise and a bit of mustard, cut diagonally, with a proper drink of fine Kentucky or Tennessee whiskey to toast our accomplishment. We come and go and folks wonder.
We've got a plan to put up some markers on the graves of folks whose relatives have apparently overlooked the fact that they don't have one.
The Confederate Cemetery at Raymond, Mississippi is one of God's most peaceful places. One of my biggest disappointments is that I could not get some of the odd shaped pieces of broken markers to match and could not figure out where some of the broken half-slabs were meant to be in the first place. The best I could do was to prop and stack pieces in sharp, un-coordinated angular arrangements against cracked-open, raised vaults or to try to figure out as best I could where somebody might have intended them to stand a hundred and sixty years ago. Somehow I felt the person resting in peace was suddenly more at peace after I stood up those puzzle-pieces of granite and concrete. I sensed it.
I'm not offended that the inquiring journalist would ask for submissions of our memories about funeral food and cemetery cleaning. But I would be offended if I saw a book about it on the shelf. It just wouldn't be right. Some things don't need to be made into a book, especially for money.
Don Drane, a native of the Mississippi Delta, now resides in the Jackson area.
Write him by clicking here: Don’s address.
Want to read more of Don’s USADS stories?
Bottletree: Out Of Nowhere
Deep-Fried Turkey
A Not-so-fond Memory
Mulberry Street
January Soup
And for more of Don’s tales, please check the USADS article archives.
Please write Ye Editor at bethjacks@hotmail.com.
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