The Georgia blue law against selling liquor on Sunday comes by way of Indiana. A law passed there in 1816 was designed to keep people focused on Sunday worship. It was the first law passed that fueled the slow progression towards prohibition. Georgia was quick to follow suit and refused to give up on an embarrassing chapter of its history.
A young woman, maybe a hundred pounds over weight, walked in the market. Her t-shirt said, "Don't Mess with My Rebel Flag." She was barefoot.
"Havin't got any of the sticky ones?", she said from the sweets aisle.
"Honey, they ain't here yet," the clerk said.
There is a certain shock in seeing an allegiance to the old south. To me, the 'war of Northern aggression' was an embarrassing chapter in Southern history; a time without grace and of needless death. There was no intellectualism, no romance. Why did some in the deep south hold pride in something so shallow when they could rally around their greatest moments? What was the fascination with the confederacy when the south's past was literally a goldmine of heroes?
I always thought southerners ought to pick up that cornerstone of southern history; the Louisiana Purchase - that time when Americans bargained their way through the dual threats of Spain and France nipping at the South's door; the result of which united the States as a continental power; setting Lewis and Clark on a scientific fact-finding mission across the unknown.
There was an overabundance of obesity here at the market, which was also the social center of town. Pear-shaped loiterers were slooped in chairs that looked about to collapse. One gentleman, his hands filthy with dirt, his face too, showed his teeth at me. He was maybe four hundred pounds, roughly the same weight of a mature male alligator.
I asked him if people ate 'gator' here, but that was an icebreaker. I was curious about the myths and realities of South Georgian's apparent preference for game meat, sometimes called roadkill. He snickered at the questions, like he was hiding something. "Some eat snakes," he said. "Some eat armadillas. I can vouch for gator. Tastes lahk chicken. Yont'ny?"
You know why they say everything unusual tastes like chicken? Because when they are talking about unusual, they are talking about birds and lizards - snakes. Alligator does taste like chicken, because from an evolutionary point of view, they aren't that far off. Same goes for rattlesnake, or iguana for that matter. Chickens are just flying iguanas, really. We now believe that the jump from reptile to bird was just a skip; their organs and bones are quite similar - assumedly, so is their meat.
"And every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth shall be an adomination; it shall not be eaten. Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth upon all four, or whatsoever hath more feet among all creeping things that creep upon the earth, them ye shall not eat..." - Leviticus 11:41-2
You couldn't say that possum tastes like chicken, nor armadillo or catfish. But in South Georgia, I became fascinated with that myth about backcountry southerners and roadkill. I continued with my questions along the route to the islands; I was so fascinated with the response, I wanted to taste a marsupial dish - it was the ultimate southern dish of poverty.
There are hundreds of published recipes for possum. Some use dark beer, some whiskey. Another calls for Worcester sauce and Tabasco. One is so simple, it has kind of a raw elegance to it: one possum, salt and pepper,six large sweet potatoes.
