In those days, a “special” Sunday breakfast was fried sausage, ham and bacon, fried eggs and potatoes fried with chopped onion, green pepper and a little jalapeno in bacon grease. Serve that up with some cathead biscuits, grits and sawmill gravy and you could just about kill yourself eating, it was so good. It’s no wonder so many folks went to sleep during church.

Except for the occasional beef or pork roast or turkey, and grilled steak, our meat was usually fried. Pan-fried chicken, chicken fried steak, pork chops, veal cutlets, fried fish -- my mouth waters just remembering it. Now that I think about it, just about everything that we ate was fried, with the exception of mashed potatoes, rice and gravy, beans and peas, and greens. Even those were fried occasionally if you think about potato cakes, re-fried beans, fried rice and mustard greens and spinach “wilted” in a little hot bacon grease for a salad.

About 20 or 25 years ago, I was a regular at a watering hole, long since gone, called “Vera’s Barmaid Wanted Lounge.” Wayne, another of the regulars, had just returned from an extended stay, working up in Maine. He had found a bargain on lobsters and brought about three dozen back with him for his friends at the beer joint to enjoy.

Besides being the owner, Vera was usually the chief cook around the beer joint. Upon seeing the crate of live lobsters and learning that we were expecting to eat them that night, Vera proclaimed she’d never even seen a lobster up close before, much less tasted or cooked one.

Most of the regulars at the bar were more “eaters” than cooks, so Vera, aware that I knew my way around a kitchen, asked me if I knew how to cook lobster. I told her she could fix them just like she’d fix crab or shrimp or crawfish, meaning of course steamed or boiled. Being an experienced beer joint owner had made Vera somewhat of a skeptic, so she wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not.

Finally, Wayne remembered he had a business card from the place up in Maine where he’d bought the lobsters. He rang them up on the house phone after Vera made us all agree to chip in to pay for the long distance call. Wayne talked a few minutes with the people on the other end and then handed Vera the phone. She talked briefly and we heard her say, “These boys down here tell me I should cook them lobsters like I do shrimp or crabs or crawfish, is that right?” Apparently the folks in Maine told her that was right, because after a few pleasantries she hung up.

Vera recruited a couple of the boys to carry the crate of lobsters over to her house behind the beer joint and directly a couple of the old biddies that hung around the joint drinking beer and talking with Vera came in and went over to the house to help her fix the lobster.

We got down to some serious beer drinking and story swapping and completely forgot about the lobsters until about 9:30 or 10 o’clock when the biddies and Vera came over and began setting up the table to serve the feast. (Vera didn’t believe in serving the food too early because she was afraid we’d eat and then quit drinking and go home, which of course stopped the ringing of her cash register.)

First they loaded up the table with the fixin’s: fried okra, fried onions, potato salad and hush puppies. Then came the entrée -- yep, cooked just like shrimp, crawfish and soft-shelled crab -- FRIED lobster tails. Only time I’ve ever had fried lobster before or since, but as I remember, it was pretty good, especially on a belly full of beer.

Yes sir, we Southerners can fry up anything. Lobster, dill pickles, ice cream. And I heard that the hit of the Texas State Fair this year was fried Twinkies.

I’ve cut back on a whole bunch of that good ol’ fried stuff nowadays, trying to keep my cholesterol numbers down so that damnyankee doctor of mine won’t cut me off altogether. But I do manage to get me a good bait of something fried at least once or twice a week . . . just like my love for nanner puddin, the craving for fried stuff comes from my genes and my upbringing.