Several years ago my mother wrote out a document, made copies and bound them in slim, dark-green, presentation folders for distribution to her children. They were recipes she wanted us to remember: charlotte russe with lady fingers, shortbread, quiche lorraine, stuffing and gravy, Grandmother Hill’s ginger cookies, biscuits, fried chicken, hominy grits, black-eyed peas for New Year’s Day, and pancakes (the secret of which is not so much in the recipe as in a particular, two-burner griddle with decades of memory cooked into the cast iron).
As you may have guessed, my mother is from the South—Augusta, Georgia to be precise. She moved north to New Jersey when she married my father. Along with those recipes, she brought with her a strong North Georgia accent, the first beautiful thing I ever heard. But Northern New Jersey had never heard anything like it. They say cocktail parties would fall into a brief lull at her first utterance. No conversation could proceed without someone asking, “Where are you from?” She found it exhausting always having to explain.
I think I know something of how she must’ve felt, having made my own long-distance move, and possessing of a conspicuous accent. The other day a crew of workers appeared with two jackhammers and back-hoe directly in front of our building. I went down, not to complain but to make a friendly inquiry about the purpose of the work and how long they were going to be at it. I said all of this in perfectly intelligible, correct Spanish, but with the accent (I now accept) I will never be able to shake. The foreman’s response to my questions was perfectly unhelpful: “De donde sos?” Where are you from? Really? Do we really have to chitchat about personal origins now, at 8:06 AM, here on the sidewalk, jackhammers a-blazin?
The question wasn’t meant to be aggressive or rude. He just couldn’t contain his curiosity. It happens a lot. Weehawken I said, though I’m not from Weehawken. I was just looking for the kind of place name that would illicit stupefaction and therefore bring his line of questioning to a close. It worked. There was no follow-up. They began excavating the sidewalk, leaving my accent intact.
It’s not the first time I’ve adopted that strategy, though the response I usually give is Lakehurst (the site of the Hindenburg Disaster, where I was in fact born). But this time it was Weehawken that popped out. I had visited a studio there in September. And it’s just a beautiful word to say. Weehawken. But then, Jersey is replete with beautiful place names, thanks to the Algonquin Lenapi people: Hoboken, Hackensack, Mahwah, Hohokus, Whippany, Munsee and Tammany. In any case it beats the hell out saying Estados Unidos.
My discomfort comes from being identified, pegged as an outsider, a gringo, yanqui or other. But honestly, is it really all that bad? It’s not something directed at me. I’m not being made the object of discrimination or violence. What I experience is not remotely comparable to how a Bolivian, African, or anyone living below the poverty line must feel as they negotiate the streets of this, our cushy neighborhood.
We come from where we come from. We end up somewhere else. My mother did, in ways that go far beyond geography. And so have I. We’ve both been changed greatly by our respective migrations. She’s been living in the North—or nawth, as she would say—for well over 60 years. And yet we both still (and always will) identify with where we began. Recipes, tastes, have a unique power to evoke a place, no matter how distant.
Take sweet potato pone for example. How far back it goes in our family is anyone’s guess. It is utterly delicious. The ingredients are common (sweet potatoes, orange juice, pecans, milk, eggs, butter, raisins, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon), but the taste is from another time, another world. In our family, no Thanksgiving or Christmas or Hannukah may proceed without it. Historically, it harkens back most immediately to my mother’s upbringing and previous generations going back to the Civil War—at least. Beyond that, sweet potato pone and dishes like it can be traced to slave communities in the late 18th century. Moreover, the words pecan and pone derive from the Algonquin. There are worlds in this recipe.
On a good day I can pronounce sweet potato pone in something approaching that Georgia accent. “Not bad, but not quite” Mom will say. But the words and their pronunciation—however beautiful to my ears, however significant to my biography—don’t come close to exhausting the resonance and significance of sweet potato pone. Let me know how it turns out.
Finally, here’s an instrumental version of “Christmas Time is Here”, by Vince Guaraldi. I’m playing electric guitar. Bob Telson is playing piano (the upright in my dining room). Enjoy.
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