Fried Chicken: A Southern Addiction

by T-Bone, certified chickenologist

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to eat fried chicken.

Heroin couldn't be worse. Besides Pop Tarts (Kellogg's, are you reading this?), I am addicted to fried chicken. Those who know me know both addictions well. I am not proud of this reality of my culinary life. But I face my tasty failing with a roll of Bounty in one hand and a chicken wing in the other.

I have gone to great lengths to get my fix of our flowered, featherless friend – strolling the streets of New York at midnight and having to settle for a bastardized Chinese version of my beloved bird, or driving LA's freeways looking for El Pollo at odd hours. I have chickened my way across the South more than once and have the chest pains to prove it.

In case you didn't know, God did not send manna to the Israelites. He sent fried chicken. That's what kept them wandering for forty years in the wilderness.

On film shoots, I look for that little chicken shape on signs. On road trips, I ask about fried chicken establishments - and breaking an enshrined man-law, I will ask for directions. When it comes to the real white meat, I take no chances.

Last week, while driving to UNC, Mr. Gene and I stopped at the Nottoway restaurant on I-85, south of Richmond, to chow down on their particularly famous version, served up and washed down with one of the finest specimens of sweet iced tea I have ever soaked my tongue in (and Southern sweet  tea is an whole 'nother blog).

Mr, Briggs and I flew into a small Louisiana town once at midnight for a week of shooting, and we had the cabbie run by Popeye's on the way to our late check-in. Even with my fixation, it's not a good idea to eat a bucket of fried chicken that late. We paid the colonary price later. But I'd go back. Life is filled with sacrifice.

I come by this fried chicken Jones honestly. In high school, there was a small restaurant in my hometown of Andalusia, Alabama, called "The Little Kitchen." Wednesdays was all-you-can-eat fried chicken day. Some of us from the football team always went there to test that all-you-can-eat promise. Harris won the prize. He ate 48 pieces of fried chicken at lunch one day in the spring of 1975. He went on to be a star linebacker at Auburn.

Fried chicken first. Star linebacker next. Coincidence? I think not.

My mother makes some of the best I have ever eaten. But then again, every mother in the Deep South can claim that prize. I have tested this theory enough to have a PHD in KFC. I can honestly say I have eaten what would pass for fried chicken in every single place on earth I have ever been.

Speaking of KFC . . . When my oldest son, Abe, was about ten years old, we went into a Kentucky Fried Chicken (it was just turning into KFC at the time).

We walked in the door and Abe noticed a huge poster of Colonel Sanders in the entryway. The old white-whiskered, Southern gentleman was sitting in a yard chair under a big magnolia in front of a plantation with a subtle smile that said, "Fried chicken made me rich." Under the framed picture was a small gold plaque that read: Colonel Harland Sanders.

Abe stopped and looked at the image and blurted out, "Hey look dad! It's Deion Sanders' grandpaw!"

I looked at his face in shock. He looked totally serious, as if he'd just discovered some deep truth of the universe. And then I saw the people in the restaurant. It was packed. Not one Caucasian in the place. They all turned to look at the two white people who looked totally out of place at the moment.

An old African American woman near the door smiled at Abe as she ate her fried chicken and said gently to no one in particular, "Lord, honey, I sure hope that's not true."

Comments

[Southern Man]

Deion Sanders. I am still laughing. I will never again look at a KFC without thinking of this story. It would be so cool to put a pic of Deion in front and see what people said.

You should indeed write about sweet tea.

[Mahala]

*snort*

I just bought a bucket of KFC and a Carvel cake for Mama for her birthday.