Memoirs
Biscuits and Dad
Memory for me, is wrapped up in food. There are very few memories from any chapter of my life that don’t include food.
In particular, I remember a trip with my dad. Daddy let me get TWO biscuits from the gas station restaurant that morning. These were not any crappy dried out sad biscuits. These biscuits were made with lard and love and old Black women who knew how to COOK. You could get a tenderloin biscuit, with a deep fried piece of steak in it, a bacon biscuit with succulent crispy deep fried pork, even a fatback biscuit! They had these fascinating red hot sausage links too. I never had one and I still wonder how they taste.
That day I got a sausage biscuit and a jelly biscuit. There was no way my 8 year old self could eat all that, but sometimes Daddy was indulgent. It was early, not even full daylight, as we pulled out of the gas station and headed for The Lake. We were goin’ fishin’. Daddy had a wooden boat with two bench seats and an outboard motor. When the optometrist I saw called me an Evinrude, I knew he was talking about a motor (motor mouth) because that’s what Daddy’s boat had!
I don’t remember catching fish at all that day. Maybe we did. Maybe we didn’t. What I remember is that we fished late into the day, and Daddy pulled up on the bank of an island. He made us a fire and pulled out all the best camp food. We weren’t camping, but it sure felt like it! We had cold Pepsis and hot dogs over the fire, Lance “Nip Chee” Sandwich Crackers and Little Debbie Oatmeal Sandwiches. It was the best meal of my young life!
On the way back we ran out of gas. That I do remember clearly. We had to use the trolling motor and it was well past sunset when we finally pulled into the boat ramp. Dad loaded the boat and we opened the door to the smell of that jelly biscuit, waiting for us to eat it on our way home.
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