pat willard

A Ton of Rice and Three Red Roosters
(From America Eats! papers)
Each year on Armistice Day the small Florida town of High Springs celebrates a Peanut Festival with a free chicken pilau and full day of ceremony. The 1941 program was at once typically American and Southern. Folk from all the surrounding country began arriving in High Springs early on the morning of Armistice Day. They came crowded into old automobiles and light pick-up trucks from which towheaded children dangled their legs. In spite of the area’s large Negro population, the only ones in attendance were those who assisted in the preparation of the chicken pilau.
Long before 10 o’clock the main street through the town’s small business district was lined with expectant people waiting for the parade to begin. Participants in the parade could be sen forming a line several blocks in the distance. Finally the line moved forward at a slow pace. The procession, extending some two blocks, slowly passed a reviewing stand and was led by an American Legionnaire and a cowboy on horseback. Behind them came a Legion color guard, and then the High Springs School Band, led by a shapely, high-stepping drum majorette clad in shining boots and short white satin skirt. Vying with the drum majorette for attention of the crowd were several flashy convertible automobiles bearing the colorfully-gowned entrants in the beauty contest to select the “Queen of the Peanut Festival.” The main body of the parade consisted of giggling and self-conscious school children carrying small American flags.
The parade over, the crowd broke up and hurried to a vacant lot known as the municipal park, where it formed into a semicircle around the bandstand. Assembled on the stand were the speaker of the day, a minister, several Legionnaires, a master of ceremonies, and the beauty contestants. This phase of the program was opened by the high school band playing the Star Spangled Banner. The men pulled off their faded farm hats, and the entire crowd stood nervously at attention.
The minister then delivered a prayer in which hew asked God’s blessing on American’s new efforts to established a lasting and just world peace. Following this, three local Legion officials proceeded to read an Armistice Day commentary; each man reading a few paragraphs, and then passed the test on to the next man. The crowd pricked up its ears a few minutes later when the master of ceremonies introduced the speaker of the day, the Honorable Jim Cary, candidate for Congress. The speaker divided his words between customary Armistice Day observations and peanuts. He spoke highly of the role the lowly peanut has come to play in the economy of the region, and told of a recent talk he had had with the famed Negro scientist, Dr. George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute, “who has discovered so many uses for peanuts and all their by-products.”
The master of ceremonies then proceeded to outline the coming activities. “Ya’ll go right ahead and do all the dancin’ and cuttin-up you want to,” he urged. “If ya end up in jail we can’t promise to get ya out, but we’ll be glad to crawl in with ya. Now after we leave here you’re all invited over to the peanut-oil mill–they’ve got a real show arranged for ya over there. ‘Pee Wee’ Jenkins and his Border Riders is gonna treat ya to some mighty pretty music. After that we want ya all to come back over here for a big pilau dinner with all the trimmins. There’s been some talk goin’ around that that pilau ain’t nothing but a ton of rice and three old red roosters, but I’m here to tell ya that ther’s gonna be plenty of good chicken in that pilau an I know you’re gonna like it.
“After we all git through eatin’ we want to gather around the bandstand here and pick out the prettiest girl to be the Queen of the Peanut Festival, and what will all the pretty girls in the contest that looks like a mighty pleasant job. Then this afternoon comes the big game between the Alachua Indians and the High Springs Sandspurs. You folks who think there’s rivalry between the university teams of Georgia and Florida haven’t seen nothing yet till you’ve seen these here two high school teams get together. After the game tonight there’s gonna be a big round- and square-dance in the high school auditorium with some more of that good music by the Border Riders. It’s gonna be a fine dance, so you folks want to be sure to stay over for it. I reckon by midnight they’ll all be dancin’ the Elephant Stomp and by morning the band will be playing the ‘Daylight Serenade.’”
Throughout the morning young girls have been handing out small bags of raw peanuts, which were not only eaten but also pinched open at the end and thus clamped on as earrings. In between the various events the men and women gathered in groups and discussed local matters, particularly the condition of crops and the weather, and some men engaged in games of horseshoe pitching.
Preparations for the pilau had been under way since early morning, by a group of townswomen who had volunteered their services. About 20 three-legged iron kettles were assembled in the park and two Negro men kindled fires under them and got them boiling. After being dressed the chickens were boiled in the kettles, and then the women began the task of removing the meat from the bones. Meanwhile. Hugh quantities of rice were placed in the kettles and cooked in the water left over from the chicken-boilings. When the rice was done, the chicken meat was mixed with it, and stirred by a Negro man with a board. A woman who a spoon and boxes of salt and pepper went from kettle to kettle, seasoning each to taste. Nearby, a Negro man boiled coffee in a large metal drum.
Long before the pilau was ready to serve, a line of people was twisting serpentine fashion to the far reaches of the park. No one was given more than one plate, so entire families had to stand in the line. The pilau was served on paper plates, accompanied by a slice of bread, a pickle, and a paper fork. Coffee was poured into paper cups and evaporated milk and sugar were provided.
The Border Riders, having been delayed by the necessity of putting away their instruments, sought to break into the line near the serving tables. But the town policeman quickly ushered them top the end of the line. “Sorry, boys,” he said, “but everyone has to wait their turn.”
–Stetson Kennedy, Florida Office


The guy answering the phone at the High Springs’ Chamber of Commerce office was pretty adamant on the subject.

“Never had a peanut festival here.”

When informed there might have been one in 1941, with a Federal document to prove it, he was not impressed.

“Down in Williston. There’s always been a peanut festival down there. But in October. November’s too late for the crop to be in,” he scoffed.

Williston is about 38 miles down the road from High Springs and their festival started in 1988. It sounds like a good one too, with the peanut honored in all kinds of ways (besides the usual raw, boiled, roasted and fried, they offer peanuts Cajun, hot, ranch, and garlic flavored, to name but a few, as well as served in pies, ice cream, cheeses, and milk). They also choose a peanut queen and king from among the peanut-size crowd of six year olds and under.

“Sweetheart, I’m telling you. Never happened here,” he said and hung up chuckling at the idea.

Well, all right, so there isn’t a peanut festival with a pretty peanut queen and big vats of chicken pilau being served on Armistice Day in High Springs. So let’s consider our other militaristic holiday–Memorial Day–which is celebrated in Boalsburg, a tiny village just on the outskirts of State College, Pennsylvania, with enormous style and some of the best food around.

Boalsburg claims to be the holiday’s birth place. Local residents stake this claim on the fact that, in 1864, three women in the village decided to decorate the graves of their loved ones who had fallen during the Civil War. They continued to do this each year and eventually, as the story goes, their tradition grew into the current national holiday.

We should pause here for a moment and consider the likely truth of this claim for, to be fair, there’s a little village in Virginia that claims almost the same story, and another town in Georgia where some other woman decided to decorate her relative’s Civil War grave and which is said to have led to the holiday. There are surely a few other towns and villages that swear they started Memorial Day and we should give them all their due, agreeing there are many truths (including that there just might have been a peanut festival on Armistice Day in High Springs, Florida in 1941). Because, really, what does it matter so long as we remember the soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for our country?

Still, what Boalsburg has going for its assertion is a beautiful life-size bronze tableau of the three women in their hoop skirts bending down with flowers over a grave. It is placed at the edge of the village’s Lutheran churchyard, which holds the graves of local men who have given their lives to nearly every American War. The Revolutionary War grave–the marble stone almost completed erased by time but marked by a bronze star and a small American flag–is nestled close to the old church walls; Brandon McCombre, a young pilot who lost his life in Iraq, lies far away in the last row, under a bronze memorial of a small boy holding aloft a toy plane. In between, there are tombstones marking the fallen from the War of 1812, the Civil War, Spanish War, both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam. Because it is a small town and a small congregation, family names are repeated over and over again, each generation forfeiting members to one battle or another for causes great and not so great.

The celebration that you’ll find today in the town encompasses many things: Civil War re-enactors (both North and South, the Confederates just a little more dashing–and younger by decades–than the Yankees but nevertheless their campsite delegated to the other side of the road away from the main celebration); a Lutheran evening service the day before the celebration that uses an 18th century liturgy where God is portrayed in pray and song as firmly on America’s side; an early morning foot race to open the day’s events, continuous concerts in the town’s square, a blacksmith demonstrate, a craft fair, and–most moving–a ceremony at sunset enacting the women’s walk to the cemetery and where flowers are placed upon all the soldiers’ graves as a guest speaker talks to the congregation about the meaning of the day. The ceremony and the day’s festivities conclude with the Civil War re-enactors and a Marine Reserve honor guard shooting off canons and gun salutes.

All during the day, though, there is the food to enjoy. First off, Boalsburg has this thing about soup–the townspeople offer for sale different kinds of soups–chief among them chicken corn chowder served at several booths, followed by the beef or vegetable available behind the blacksmith shop. Each bowl tastes phenomenal and is hard to put down even on what is almost always a steaming hot summer’s day. You’ll find the first bowl of chicken corn chowder for sale near the entrance to the town, in St. John’s United Church of Christ meeting room, along with several good examples of homemade pies–shoofly, apple, cherry, pecan, lemon meringue to name a few–some even made with exquisite lard or butter crusts. The beef or vegetable soups at the far end of town are notable because they are a blending of many pots; early in the day, folks bring the soup they made at home to the blacksmith shop and stir it into a common caldron where the mixture bubbles away above an open fire. The soups get thicker and more complexly flavorful as the different recipes meld together throughout the day.

Further along the sidewalk after that first bowl of chowder, the Knights of Columbus offer hot dogs and assorted sides such as potato and macaroni salad. But keep going toward the town square. Sharply at noon there is a pie contest–a good old fashion kind with neighbors competing against neighbors and any variety goes–from a fancy kiwi whipped cream to a lovely lattice-topped strawberry-rhubarb. Two elderly women judges who look as if they were born with rolling pins in their hands sit on a bench behind the pie tent where the entries are displayed and nibble a little bit of each before they make their decisions. It’s a hard fit under the tent because everyone wants to see the pies and then grab a taste of them–even the ones that lose. It takes a good hour for the decision to be made and about two minutes for the pies to be devoured and the crowd to disperse, leaving little behind but a smear of raspberry jam and a flute of a crust crushed on the ground.

After the pie contest, wander a few doors down from where the musicians are playing (watch out for those gathered to hear the music–they tend to start dancing at a snap of a note) and in the side yard of a little white house, some middle-aged men are standing around something that looks like an oil tank on wheels. It’s an oil tank on wheels, jerryrigged with a spout on one end and with smoke pouring from its sides. Most of the men hold big red plastic cups of beer in their hands as they mill around the yard or stare intently at the smoking tank. They are all members of the Harris Township Fish and Game Commission. One among them, that would be Stan Lindsay, steps forward to open the tank’s lid. A curtain of sweet smoke flutters up and reveals a glistening, almost topaz-colored roasting pig.

Stan started roasting pigs as a teenager twenty-eight years ago when it somehow got into his head that cooking a whole pig over an open fire might be a fun thing to do. One night he rounded up his friends and, being farm boys–or at least boys who knew about farms–they found a pig, took it to a field behind the high school and in some fashion or another got it to die (he won’t reveal how and there’s a little shutter to his averted eyes to stop the curious from pressing the point too hard). Afterwards, the boys dressed the pig and roasted it in what would become the prototype to the oil tank.

Now Stan and the boys who were with him that night all work for the Fish and Game Commission and each year to help support the work they do in the nearby national forests, they roast a pig and offer for sale pulled pork sandwiches. They’ve been doing it for the last fifteen years or so.

The pork sandwiches alone are worth the drive to Boalsburg. A sandwich and watching the men cook the pig, which actually starts at midnight the night before in the gravel drive behind the house because, in the early hours of cooking, the coals in the bed of the tank are liable to flare up with the freshly dripping pig fat–a situation that happened once and is recalled with humbled laughter and a clicking of red plastic cups full of beer. They now keep the tank out on the gravel until the skin and fat caramelizes a bit, which would be about 3, 4 in the morning–it’s a tricky thing to gauge, especially if you’re up that late and been drinking beer. Then they roll the tank (hence the need for wheels) around the corner and up to the side yard so the people who come to the fair can be properly enticed by the smells of the roasting pig and decide they need a sandwich. From beginning to end, it takes about twelve hours to cook a pig to perfection–that is to an internal temperature of 190 degrees.

“That’s the best temperature for pulling,” Bob Hoffman, who oversees the gang, says and nods his head rather seriously as Stan sticks a small thermometer in the pig’s shoulder. “Any lower and you won’t get the meat to pull right off the bone and if it’s any higher–like anything over 200, the tenderloin is too dry. You don’t want the fat all cooked up; you want some left at the end to keep the meat moist.”

All the men standing around the tank heartily agree with Bob and move just a little closer to Stan to read the thermometer with him. It’s decided that another half-hour would be good, then they take a drink from their cups. Red skinned from their work outdoors, the men seem like the kind of people you’d want to meet in the woods if you run into trouble. Muscular, even with middle-age bellies, they are competent with their hands, knowledgeable about tools, and fashioned the tank with an inventive V-shaped trough below the heavy-duty wire mesh grill that cradles the pig. The trough perfectly funnels the dripping fat away from the coals so the flesh never burns in a sudden flare up but slowly and evenly roasts to a fine, moist crisp. Bob, with input from the others, produces a little sketch to show the tank’s inner workings.

A half hour later, the pig is declared done and the men, noticeably looser after another round of beer, all cheer. Stan does the honor of carving the pig. He starts by running a knife down the middle of the back, then around the neck to loosen the skin (in the last two years an Asian woman who moved with her family into the community has asked–and received–the whole skin: “They eat ‘em or something–the ears, too” Bob says, a little aghast). Stan slips the knife under the skin and loosens it around the head, pulling it back like a mask to reveal the cheek meat. With the tip of the knife’s blade, Stan scoops out a little of the cheek and places it on the pig’s forehead.

“Ohhhh yeah!” an older man yells and quickly pinches away the delicacy before anyone else does.

When the skin is pulled back, the articulation of the animal’s muscles are revealed. The meat comes off the bones in ribbons, pale pink and oyster white. The other men help out by carrying over great aluminum trays for the meat and take them to the sandwich booth where they pull it into small heaping strips. As all the meat is scrapped from the pig, the arching ribs and shoulders cave in together, a graceful ruin over the smoldering coals. No seasoning was used in the cooking; no sauce has been brushed across the skin. The flesh is sweet but gamey, luscious in its soft texture.

“I’ll tell you the secret of a good pork sandwich,” Bob says as he prepares a sample.

“You can’t do that!” exclaims Stan, and the horror he displays is only half show.

Bob laughs, “The secret to a good pork sandwich is horseradish–not that weak store bought stuff, I’m talking real fresh horseradish.”

“We don’t have any left,” one of the men in the booth reports.

Bob winks: “We’ll find you some.”

After some rummaging around the booth, a container of fresh horseradish is unearthed and, it has to be said, it makes the pork sandwich a spectacular thing of beauty.