The Dinner Party Pat Conroy Missed

If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn’t show up~Dr. Seuss

It’s not that there probably aren’t better pies out there—although I am sure there’s no better crust. It’s not even that the blueberries were Violet Beauregarde-plump and the color of a Moroccan night.  It was about the memories wafting off it.

You see, I have these friends….

Carol, the pie czar who whipped the cream into submission and hand patted the crust into the perfect vessel for delivering those blueberries; her sommelier husband, Gary, who takes care of each one of us by throwing in just the right amount of pithy reply that keeps us from filling with too much hot air; and Kathy, who delivered the stand-up and praise-the-little-baby-Jesus prayer to kick off the whole evening are scientifically proven to be the best dinner companions.

No, really.

In a “Food, Culture and Society” journal article called “When I’m doing a dinner party I don’t go for the Tesco cheeses,” the researchers go on for pages about social and cultural capital, middle class hierarchy and the displaying of social and emotional connections. They found a common theme for most dinner parties was about displaying cultural competence and generally dependent upon women for their success. 

Check. We’ve got that.

Scholars Warde and Martens talk about how food plays an important role in the maintenance of friendship. Hunt’s anthropological research on friendship and home entertaining also connects food to good feelings, social connectivity and significant impact upon individuals’ life chances.

Yep, yep. We’ve got that.

Carol, Kathy and I are at various stages in our careers as journalism professors and Gary is a database replicator genius who has built and sold a company so impressive, he would tell you about it, but he’d have to kill you afterwards.

We are all living the dream as we do every time we get together. We have enough in common and just enough differences to fuel conversation to last course after course of our “Big Chill meals.” Our dinner parties are the right combination of people, conversation, intimacy and, of course, food. On this night we began with a sweet potato soup that Carol threw together because she had found sweet potatoes in her pantry and had bought the sweetest onions, because she heard they rivaled Vidalias, but she didn’t believe it. The main course consisted of fresh Salmon we bought from Gay’s Fish Market just down the street. We also had squash, green beans and corn from Dempsey’s U-pick farm in Frogmore. The aforementioned and now legendary blueberry pie topped off the meal. (Tonight we will be having shrimp fajitas, homemade tortilla chips and guacamole with a homemade mixed berry sorbet as a finish.)

We are all pretty good cooks in our own right, but Carol J. Pardun is a genius. I half believe she and Gary have the beach house on Coastal South Carolina simply to prepare fresh seafood, fruits and vegetables to beguile their guests.

And we have been beguiled.

They entertain on their intimate screened-in porch that overlooks a lagoon where several wildlife inhabitants provide dinner music and the ocean breeze drifts in from the starboard side.

It all belongs in one of Pat Conroy’s ever surprising passages he writes about his beloved South.  So much so, that the enterprising young Pardun managed, by some strange twist of fate and rowing club membership, to get Pat Conroy’s email address.

In an email to Mr. Conroy, Carol made a humble, yet enticing offer for the author to join us for dinner one night this week as we are all Southerners, writers, cooks and fans and are having dinner one island over from his home on Fripp Island.

Seeing as how Carol is world famous in some circles herself and we all know of his culinary delight, we just knew he would join us….

He didn’t.

You see, we briefly tried to step outside our intimate dinner party and imagine ourselves as dinner companions to a different set; but scientifically speaking, we might have altered the universe in a way that tarnishes the ease of conversation and the down hominess of the meal—A butterfly effect that we just might not want to set on its alternate path, no matter how much we love Pat Conroy.

But Mr. Conroy would have been entertained. And he would have eaten well. We are convinced we would somehow make it into his next book. However, in the end none of us really wanted to miss even one magical moment of our evening meals in our own storybook narratives.

Or share our portion of the blueberry pie.

Julian's Journal

I am sure we all have heard of "Flat Stanley," the educational character that elementary school students send around the world for people to take pictures and send back to the students to teach them about geography. I personally have never received a "Flat Stanley," but I was lucky enough to receive a journal from a third grader in Oregon. The object of the exercise from young Julian Garcia was to write in the journal about your city or region, then send it to someone else. I received the journal from my college roommate Natalie Whittington in Maryland and then sent it on to Gina Jones in Tennessee. We all also sent postcards to Julian's teacher so they could keep up with where the journal travels.

Below is what I told Julian and his classmates about Dubuque and Iowa.

Dear Julian,

I feel so lucky to have received your journal and to have the opportunity to tell you about Dubuque, Iowa! I have just moved here from Murfreesboro, Tennessee so I am learning so much about Dubuque and Iowa and the Midwest myself!

First let me tell you about JULIAN Dubuque. He traveled up the Mississippi River and stopped along the bluffs in Iowa in order to mine lead. Lots of Indians and German immigrants all lived together along the river in order to get rich from the mines. Some of their houses still sit on top of the bluffs and look across the river where they can see Illinois. If they turn slightly left, or North, they can see Wisconsin. Dubuque sits right on the spot on the map where Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin all come together and where the Mississippi river makes a big turn to go up toward Minnesota.

I am a college professor at Loras College, which is a small Catholic College. It is the home of the first Catholic dioceses west of the Mississippi River.  It also has the longest continuously running theater group west of the Mississippi. They are called the Loras Players. I like teaching school in Iowa because the state has the highest literacy rate in the nation (99%).

I also volunteer at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. It is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute. At the museum you can learn about how important rivers have always been to transportation, energy development and commerce in the United States. Dubuque is very proud of its part of the river! In fact we call ourselves “America’s River Town.”

While Dubuque is very much a river town and has huge bluffs, which makes it very hilly, if you travel just a mile outside of town, you get to the Iowa prairie, which is very, very flat and you can see for miles. Because there is nothing to stop it, the wind blows really hard sometimes! Most houses in Iowa have basements because we average 34 tornadoes annually!

There is a lot of farmland in Iowa. We grow lots of corn around here! Most of the corn Iowa produces goes to making Ethanol-a clean burning fuel for your car, recyclable “corn husk” plastics and farm animal feed. Actually, Iowa produces more corn, pork and soybeans than any other state in the country!

During presidential election season, lots and lots of politicians like to visit Iowa because of the Iowa caucus. Basically that just means neighbors get together and  talk about politics and presidential candidates. It marks the beginning of the big race to the presidency for most candidates. Politics have always been important in Iowa.  After the Civil War, Iowa was the first state to give the vote to African Americans.

Finally, there are lots of interesting people from Iowa.  President Herbert Hoover, who was the 31^st president of the United states is from Iowa, also Buffalo Bill Cody, a frontier scout and wild west showman; Grant Wood, who is a famous artist; and Ashton Kutcher, the movie star.

Thank you for sharing your journal with me! I am going to send your journal next to my friend Gina Jones, who lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which is very close to Nashville, Music City U.S.A.!

Dr. Marcie Hinton

Wandering about, looking for spring

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.  ~Lao Tzu

As I work for a Catholic college, I did not have a proper spring break this year. Easter is so late that we take a “spring pause,” but then have an Easter break. My spring pause was for 2 days last week. My parents came for a visit in search of spring in the Heartland.

They didn’t find it.

Don’t get me wrong, a few bulbs have burst forth from the permafrost ground, hinting at crocus, tulips and daffodils, and there was quite the thunderstorm all of which suggested spring might arrive at some point in the future.

In preparation for this event called spring, my dad, bundled in a long sleeve T-shirt, fleece, boots and gloves worked, huddled in the garage, on a huge table that now sits bright and shiny in my gray, frosty backyard.

Mom and I shopped.

Both parties were working in an effort to create a space in my backyard that will invite friends, neighbors and passersby to partake in spring Southern hospitality in the heart of Dubuque, Iowa.

In an effort to stave off cabin fever and cold weather blues in my first winter in Iowa, my mind has been reeling with plans for a shabby chic garden, with bright blues and greens sparkling amid mint juleps and shrimp boils for my Midwestern friends.

My vision includes a mixed glut of folding bistro chairs clattered around the Jerry Hinton original table. Chairs full of character I intended to buy across Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois on the cheap in antique shops where perhaps Charles Ingalls-designed chairs might reside (remember when he worked in Burr Oak, just an hour and a half north of Dubuque?)

Turns out there are no antique stores in Dubuque despite lots of rumor and supplication.

I had been given vague directions from just about everybody about a warehouse which housed architectural salvage pieces “down there on Jackson, near where the feed store used to be” or the antique store “near Kmart where Judy’s cousin works.” 

After an hour of driving up and down Jackson looking for any sign of the architecture salvage store we gave up and went in search of Judy’s cousin’s antique store thinking she might know of said architecture salvage store.

Judy’s cousin, Joan, who actually works in a consignment store where the many purses and side tables were circa 1992, seemed to recall a man named Ken who used to have a store on Jackson, but was now in Galena, Illinois.

Excited about HAVING to go to Galena—about a 20-minute trip—Mom and I head across the Mississippi River to the historic community, which exclaims it is the oldest city in Illinois. Another claim to fame is they turned down the offer to be a railroad hub, which a little town 2 hours north, called Chicago, quickly volunteered to accept within in its city limits.

Mom and I had no problem finding a fantastic lunch that used all local products from the beef and the barbeque sauce we had for an entrée to the popcorn that was available as an appetizer.

After lunch we wandered up and down Main Street, finding a few antique specialty stores—one specializing in toys another in pretty pink linens, vintage clothing and hats (stacks and stacks of hats)—but no architecture salvage shop.

A quick stop by the visitor’s center, where spring had actually sprung with a row of orange crocus between the concrete parking lot and brick wall of the train- depot-turned-visitor’s-center, put us on yet another hunt for the infamous Ken. The very friendly staff at the center, told us Ken used to have a store in Galena “where the Henley’s General Store” used to be, but he now had a place out state route 20 in Elizabeth, Illinois, in the heart of Jo Daviess County. They gave us directions—go straight out route 20 about 12 miles where we would find an Antique Mall and then Ken, 8-ish miles beyond, on just the other side of Elizabeth.

True to our directions, the Antique Mall rose above Eagle Ridge as a peak in the middle of miles of barren winter farmland. It was small compared to those stretches of Kentucky Antique Malls we were used to, but there were neat, relatively clean booths that harbored farm implements, milk jugs, my beloved Peanuts’ Gang glasses, and, yes, two fantastic wooden, folding bistro chairs—One a fresh spring-bud green and the other awaiting a coat of sea-glass blue.

Encouraged by our cheap garden chairs and the hint of sun shining on the top of the ridge, we worked our way further down Route 20 in search of Ken. Through the sparsely populated, but eternally hopeful downtown Elizabeth, we drove.

And we drove, and we drove.

Our faith in the Galena Chamber ladies fading, we passed over one more hill until alas, an “Antiques” sign clattered, hanging by one chain, in the winter wind. The old house standing behind the sign certainly could have been construed as housing an architecture salvage store.

As we parked and made our way up the walk, we stepped over broken fence pickets and passed overturned planters until we found ourselves standing beneath a portico propped up by what looked to be an antique plank circa 1482. At the front door we were greeted by a runny, handwritten sign just above a doorbell and just below one of those homemade light decorations, where you glue plastic cups together, butt to butt, around a colored light, until you have a ball of…well…lighted plastic cups.

“Ring the door bell, then give me a minute,” the sign read.

We complied and we waited, although my mother causally edged her way out from under the portico, just in case.

Finally a grinning, gray-haired man with a waft of old, and perhaps overcooked, fried-chicken scent, opened the door.

“Ken!” my mom enthusiastically greets the man.

“No,” he says.

After a delightful conversation about our western Kentucky accents, his high school, football coach who was from Paducah, Kentucky and a fruitless inquiry about where Ken’s store might be, we hastily dug through what must have been generations of gas station china, broken picture frames and well-worn toys.

With one last inquiry about any antique store he might know of in Sharpton (where we now were, having driven far, far away from Elizabeth) we gave up on finding bistro chairs or Ken and his infamous architecture salvage store and took ourselves back across the ridge and the Mississippi clutching the only two garden chairs in the whole of the Midwest.

My shabby chic garden party might have to wait another month or two on the weather and the chairs, but I do have a terrific table, two perfect chairs, and a drive across the Mississippi and Illinois’ Eagle Ridge, which wasn’t a bad way to wile away my wintery spring pause.