Pronto Pollo Chicken Products
When I was a young child, I would spend the summers with my widowed grandmother in Collins, a small Mississippi town. It was still making the transition from rural farms to small town. As a result, the streets were unpaved and many of our neighbors, and us, still had an outhouse in the back yard.
There were several things unique about my grandmother, one of which was her name. She is the only person I’ve ever met with the name Argell.
I’m sure at some point in her life she was young and beautiful, but when I knew her, she had long ago given up that fight and she was just my Big Momma. She wore a loose fitting shift that, back then, was called a house dress. I don’t know why, ’cause you were just as likely to meet someone in the street wearing a house dress. On her feet were over sized, unlaced mens’ shoes. The shoes were cut on the side with a razor to give her bunions breathing room.
When she walked, she always moved quickly and leaned forward, as if into a stiff wind. Wherever she was headed the person she would meet at the end of the trip was bound to receive a serious piece of her mind. She had no time for fools and was never known to bite her tongue. Not that she was dreaded, but folk always straightened up whenever she was around.
I loved her, even though she was quick to administer corporal punishment to me and the rest of the trouble making children. I, and all the kids in the neighborhood, knew that she would “tan those little legs” with a convenient switch.
In addition to the outhouse in the back, we would be fattening up a hog or two for the fall and we always had chickens and a chicken coop. Best of all in the very back, my Big Momma would plant over an acre in vegetables. In the Spring, my Aunt Savannah’s husband would come up to the house with a mule and tractor and plow the ground. Big Momma would then plant corn and okra and peppers and collards and tomatoes.
Oh the tomatoes! They were an ode to summer. None of these green little knots found in my local grocery store. These tomatoes stayed on the vine till they were red and ripe and tightly packed with flavor.
The tomatoes were the main ingredient in a light summer supper of tomato sandwiches. With a few quality items, we would have a sandwich that could be featured in the most upscale eating places.
Back then we had available to eat, only three kinds of bread, cornbread and biscuits and light bread. Light bread was our name for white bread. The “light bread” as I remember it, was a pale yellow and very dense. Perfect for the juicy tomatoes. We’d slather both sides of the bread with a generous amount of Duke’s mayonnaise and pile on thick slices of tomatoes that were still warm from the summer sun. Salt and a goodly amount of cracked black pepper would finish our sandwich. To accompany this perfect summer sandwich, we’d have big mason jars of super-sweet iced tea.
We would take our supper and eat on the front porch and watch the sun going down. I would occupy the porch swing and Big Momma would rock in her favorite rocker. We would not talk, just concentrate on the just right melding of the flavors of tomato and mayo.
Whenever I come across some good tomatoes in the summer, I try my best to recreate that sandwich. I never quite hit the mark. I know the flavorful tomatoes played a large part in the sweetness of the memory, but the sharing of the meal with my beloved Big Momma played an even greater part.
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