Marcie Cohen Ferris, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina and an expert on Southern food, was raised at Blytheville, once the Cotton Capital of Arkansas. Mississippi County had been covered by hardwood forests before timber companies cut the trees and shipped the lumber north to booming markets such as St. Louis and Chicago.
"The virgin forests of Mississippi County attracted the attention of Northern companies," Ruth Hale of Burdette wrote for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. "One source says that 35 sawmills existed in the county in 1902. The larger companies shipped lumber by river barge to their Northern retail lumber yards. The coming of the railroad in about 1900 accelerated the pace of lumbering. Paralleling the lumber boom was the all-important drainage issue. In 1893, state efforts took the form of establishing drainage districts. ... The lumber boom continued until the 1920s. The western part of the country became more accessible when the Jonesboro, Lake City & Eastern Railroad Co. bridged Big Lake and continued to Blytheville in 1902. One of the first lumbermen was Robert E. Lee Wilson. He saw the value of the cleared land and by the time of his death in 1933 had amassed 65,000 acres of farmland."
With the timber gone, Wilson and other landowners turned to cotton. Thousands of field hands were needed to grow the cotton, a labor-intensive crop, and the population boomed. Mississippi County's population was 30,468 in 1910 and 82,375 in 1950. The widespread mechanization of agriculture in the 1950s led to population declines. By the 2010 census, Mississippi County had 46,480 residents.
During those boom years, Jewish merchants came to the Delta to serve the sharecroppers and tenant farmers. Ferris' ancestors were among the new Jewish residents in the 1920s. The 1941 Works Progress Administration publication Arkansas: A Guide to the State described how cotton dominated the Arkansas economy. It noted that in Blytheville, "many of the town's thoroughfares run into cotton fields." A WPA writer said of Arkansas Delta residents: "They talk about cotton, they dream about it, they wear it and, like millions of Americans, they eat foods made from cottonseed oil."
In her new book, The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region, Ferris writes: "Growing up in Blytheville in the 1960s and 1970s, I stared into the endless expanses of cotton that lay on the other side of the chain-link fences that bordered my friends' backyards on the edge of town. Homes in 'the country' were so completely surrounded by cotton fields that they looked like ships afloat in a sea of green in the early summer, and by early fall, they were adrift in a swath of white powder puffs."
A theme of Ferris' writing through the years has been that food--even more than cotton--stands at the center of this region's culture. Her 2005 book Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, was described by one blogger as a book for "the kind of person who served the Rosh Hashanah noodle kugel with a side of barbecue." In a 2004 article for the academic quarterly Southern Cultures, Ferris noted that her family "lived within the Delta world of cotton planting, fall ginning, church socials and football and the Jewish world of weekly Sabbath services, visiting rabbis and preparation for the Passover seder in the spring and the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the fall. We were between these two worlds in a complicated culinary negotiation of regional, ethnic and religious identity. Within Jewish homes in the Delta, African-American cooks and domestic workers set bountiful tables and prepared the cuisines for which the region is famous. Their meals featured elegant dinners of standing rib roast as well as down-home Southern Gentile meals of barbecue and fried catfish. Less familiar dishes served at Jewish tables in the Delta included matzoh balls, kugels (dairy casserole), tortes and tzimmes (baked sweetened vegetables and fruits)."
Living in both worlds made Ferris aware of the complex cultural mix that's the South.
Ferris titles the preface of her latest book "I Look for Food in Everything." She explains: "If only for a sentence or a scene, a description of food enriches my understanding. It is a sensual experience because, in food, an emotional world comes into view--a place of color, imagined tastes, interaction and memory. Food helps me understand the world around me, but it is also my entry to the past. Food is the center of our holidays at the farm where my husband, Bill Ferris, was raised in Mississippi. On Christmas Day, the family gathers around the dining room table. The ritual surrounding the preparation for this Southern meal is elaborate. Activity begins months in advance as casseroles and desserts are prepared and frozen by Liz Martin, an expert cook and housekeeper. She has worked in culinary tandem with Bill's mother, Shelby Flowers Ferris, for over 30 years."
Shelby Ferris died in early August at age 96. Like other great Southern cooks before her, the holiday traditions she established will live on through children and grandchildren. And the story of the region's cuisine has never been told quite as well as her daughter-in-law tells it in The Edible South.
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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas' Independent Colleges and Universities. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.
Editorial on 12/17/2014