The Ring Shout

How do you connect musically and culturally with traditions of past generations? Many of us in the American South are fascinated to learn how our contemporary music and other artistic aspects of culture have been shaped by our ancestors. When I experienced the “ring shout” performed in Savannah, Georgia, I connected immediately to several musical genres of the South — spirituals, gospel, blues, jazz, and others.

With features that are clearly West African in origin, the ring shout is a religious dance that combines a counter-clockwise movement, call-and-response singing, and percussion. Still performed in coastal Georgia, the ring shout is probably the oldest surviving African American performance tradition in North America. It has survived well beyond several generations of Africans enslaved in coastal Georgia and South Carolina on the cotton and rice fields who could preserve their own Geechee and Gullah cultures on the sea islands because they were so isolated from the American mainland.

The term shout, although used to describe all elements of the tradition, specifically refers to its dancelike movement. (The word shout may derive from the Afro-Arabic saut that refers to movement around the Kabaa in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, according to a linguist.) A “songster” (or song master) sets a song by beginning slowly at first and then accelerating to a faster tempo. His lines are answered by singers (known as basers) in a call-and-response pattern. The stick-man beats a simple drum-like rhythm with a wood stick, and the basers add rhythm with hand clapping and foot patting.

As the tradition developed in America during slavery, Christian themes were grafted onto the practice (much like candomblé in Brazil). (In fact, when I observed the ring shout performed at the Second African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia, I was immediately attracted to the counterclockwise shuffle, call-and-response singing, and handclapping that I had observed in Brazil at a candomblé service conducted by African descendants.)

During the American Civil War, outside observers described in detail the ring shout’s practice in coastal Georgia and South Carolina. According to the Georgia Humanities Council, the ring shout continued to be practiced even as it was influencing forms of spiritual and gospel music and elements of jazz. However, because many communities had stopped shouting as early as the 1900s, experts thought that the ring shout was no longer being practiced until they learned in 1980 about the Bolden community in McIntosh County on the Georgia coast that annually performs the ring shout on New Year’s Eve at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. (The ring shout continues to be separate from formal worship, although it takes place in the church’s annex.)

In fact, if not for this group, performing the ring shout may have become an extinct form of expression. (When the tradition became better known to outsiders, a performing group from the community that calls itself the McIntosh County Shouters was organized. The ages of their ten members range from 24 to 94.) Because all members of the group are related by blood or marriage, they have known each other since birth, and they have been interviewed and observed by historians, linguists, anthropologists, folklorists, and Gullah Gechee experts.

The ring shout has been shared by grandparents — and sometimes great grandparents — with their descendants. (In fact, at the performance that I attended, long-term member Harold Evans had been replaced by 24-year-old Brendon Jordan, grandson of baser Caretha Sullivan, as the stick-man.) To maintain the integrity of the ring shout, elders teach and practice it as they learned from their ancestors, although no two shouters “shout” alike.

As they move in a counter-clockwise pattern, each one has distinctive hand motions or other movements. The ring shout affirms oneness with the Spirit and ancestors in an expression of community cohesiveness. However, because the shout was criticized by white missionaries and some black clergy, it often occurred in the church after formal worship, in "praise houses" in the woods, and sometimes even in homes or barns. Yet the movement is “in the service of the Lord”; thus it is a forward shuffle -- the feet never are crossed or are raised high off the floor because, as the narrator at a performance explains, such movements could be viewed as “unholy” dancing.

The shout songs, once known as “running spirituals,” often carry coded references to slavery. When I observed the McIntosh County Shouters at the Second African Baptist Church (a historic church that has met at the same location since 1802 -- its history includes an overflow crowd to welcome Emancipation authorities in 1864 when the church was host to U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Union General William T. Sherman), their songs included “Teach Me, Lord, How to Wait” with references to Job and his suffering. The first verse ends:

Job said, “I will surely wait.”
Teach me, Lord,
Teach me, Lord,
How to wait.

Many congregants of Second African Baptist joined in response to the call of Freddie Palmer, a strong lead singer who became the songster when Lawrence McKiver, who had been the group’s patriarch, recently passed. In addition, C. MeGill Brown (a Savannah native), pastor of Second African Baptist Church, showed his connection by being a joyful participant in the call-and-response.

According to the Georgia Humanities Council, the ring shout has survived in coastal Georgia because the Bolden community has been relatively stable, and several elder practitioners have been deeply committed in continuing the tradition and encouraging its practice by a new generation, and the value of the tradition has received significant external recognition. For example, the McIntosh County Shouters were featured on the HBO documentary Unchained Memories in 2002. In 2010 they received the Georgia Governor’s Award in the Humanities. The book Shout Because You’re Free by Art Rosenbaum further documents this tradition.

Knowledge about the ring shout is also being expanded by websites. For example, a recent presentation in Washington, DC, is on YouTube (57-minute video). This performance with a narrator is basically the same program that I observed in Savannah (without the introduction by the Director of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Arts Services Manager for the Georgia Council for the Arts). Several short videos are also on YouTube, including a 39-second video showcasing the forward shuffle and a slightly longer one focusing on a baser.

According to the McIntosh County Shouters, they are like other cultural heritage organizations that help people “to remember and celebrate their shared experiences, traditions, identities, struggles, and aspirations.”

Eating Family Style

How many bowls and platters are needed on a table to make a meal? At Mrs. Wilkes’s Dining Room in the Historic District of Savannah, Georgia, the number is more than 20. Authentic Southern food is the menu, and dining tables are crowded with more food choices than most guests can taste.

Like the early times of many Southern cities, Savannah’s early days include boardinghouses that offered simple rooms and hearty meals for laborers, teachers, bankers, and other workers that urban life attracted. When Mrs. Wilkes started her career in 1943, she agreed to only help in the kitchen of the boarding house where her late husband, Lois H. Wilkes, was staying. This part-time job grew into a thriving business that was built on word-of-mouth endorsements by customers.

The couple later bought and restored the home in 1965 as part of a Savannah Historic Foundation project. Although boarders are no longer taken, hearty home-cooked meals in the downstairs dining room honor the tradition of Mrs. Wilkes, who died in 2002 and once said, “We don’t need any recipes anymore. We just know what it takes to make food taste good.” In fact, four generations of the Wilkes family have continued her legacy of serving fine Southern food. However, the passing of Mrs. Wilkes has caused one major change: guests no longer wait for her blessings before scooping generous portions onto their plates.

The menu changes daily. Although several meat choices are available, Southern vegetables are the attraction of each table that is set with all the platters before any guest is seated. They may include black-eyed peas, butter beans, cabbage, candied yams, collard greens, cornbread dressing, creamed corn, green beans, macaroni and cheese, cucumbers, okra and tomatoes, rutabagas, rice and gravy, squash, and baked beans. The bread choices are biscuits and corn muffins. Finally, the meats include fried chicken (proclaimed by many to be the best in Savannah), beef stew, and meatloaf. Of course, sweet tea is available. When everyone at the table is ready for dessert, a server offers a choice of banana pudding or peach cobbler — the only time that a server interrupts the conversation except to offer more tea or water.

Food is still served family style, and the platters are continually passed around the table. Although locals drop by when they are hungry for a home-cooked meal, most guests are out-of-towners (and even the famous join the other guests at a table as a White House blog illustrates). If you don’t know everyone at the table, you soon learn who they are and where they are from. The conversations usually center on dishes that are favorites and family memories that they bring to mind. No one leaves as a stranger.

When you go, plan to wait outside until a table that seats up to ten is ready. Finding a line of people on the sidewalk in front of the dining room confirms that you have arrived at the right location; checking the street address (107 West Jones Street, an avenue paved with cobblestone and lined with live oak trees covered in moss) is unnecessary. In fact, the sign for Mrs. Wilkes was not placed in front of the dining room until 1987.

Beware: Mrs. Wilkes accepts no charge cards, takes no reservations, and is open only for lunch (11 to 2) on weekdays. The wait can be more than an hour. When I arrived, the wait was 85 minutes. However, departing guests provide words of encouragement to those in line and confirm that the food is well worth the wait.

The best part of eating at Mrs. Wilkes? You are treated like a member of the family. When the meal is over, guests are asked to take their plates and glasses to the dishwashing area as they leave. Then the process starts again as the table is cleaned and a cart of bowls and platters piled high with yummy food is brought from the kitchen for new guests.

Is This Dining Experience Southern?

If you are searching for an authentic Southern dining experience, where should you go? Many people head to Savannah, Georgia, to find The Lady & Sons, the restaurant Paula Deen has operated for several years. But is the experience truly Southern?

Paula Deen has charmed millions with her folksy stories and her culinary talents on the Food Network since 2002. Once the teller in a bank, she changed her career after a bank robber put a gun to her head. She is the hero to many fans because, divorced and unemployed in 1989, she started The Bag Lady, a catering business with her sons – and her last $200. Eventually the catering business evolved into The Lady & Sons Restaurant, which opened in downtown Savannah in 1996 and most recently has landed at 102 West Congress Street (in the old White Hardware Building, a renovated 200 year-old three-story building plus basement with 15,000 square feet of space) where it has been named Georgia’s Small Business of the Year.

Although John Berendt, popular author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, proclaims that The Lady & Sons is “indeed the very heart of Southern cooking,” I beg to differ. The heart is missing; only the cash register remains. Although the food is tasty, the experience is not Southern. Considering a visit to Paula Deen’s restaurant to be dining in the South is like thinking that a trip to Busch Gardens is a visit to Europe. Although when I visited recently on a Sunday and the choice was limited to only the buffet, it was the experience of most guests because the buffet is so popular. (Except on Sunday, the daily menu includes a broader assortment of appetizers, sandwiches, entrees, and desserts.) My recent visit also reminded me of an earlier visit several years ago when a group of college students and I had eaten lunch there.

First, Southern dining is hosted by a real person. At The Lady & Sons, you instead are greeted by a cardboard replica of Paula Deen, even though the Lord admonishes us not to make a graven image (check Exodus 20:4) “of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath" (thus, the heavenly nature of Southern food prohibits any image); however, for some the graven likeness of the lady is the high point of the visit. It’s amazing how many people enter and immediately want to take a picture of either themselves with the cutout or the mannequin alone. Sometimes the flashes of cameras and phones taking pictures are so frequent that you feel like you are on a dance floor with strobe lights pulsating to a silent rhythm.

Next, Southern dining typically offers local food. Imagine being on the coast of Georgia and literally blocks away from a waterway as rich as the Savannah River and not offering any seafood on the buffet. Yes, fried chicken is always on her menu, a Kentucky colonel guarantees that it’s a Southern staple, and my family always served fried chicken on Sunday – and only on Sunday. However, something is wrong when the buffet choices never include any local seafood.

Another significant difference between Southern dining and a meal at The Lady & Sons is “linger time.” Of course, no one jumps in to Grandma’s kitchen or sits at a favorite aunt’s table and expects to have permission to leave in less than 30 minutes; however, that is the experience of most guests at Paula Deen’s: Most “hit the buffet” (more than once) and are on their way in less than 40 minutes. With almost 330 seats, The Lady & Sons does not offer an atmosphere that encourages guests to “linger” and converse (a true characteristic of Southern dining). In fact, when my college class visited, I was surprised how speedily they “gobbled” their lunch and were ready to leave (some in less than 15 minutes). Perhaps the noise level of the dining area made them uncomfortable.

Finally, the desserts for the buffet diners are too scrawny. How can any self-respecting Southern cook limit a dessert to the smallest dish (when the buffet itself is unlimited)? At The Lady & Sons, guests who select the buffet may choose among three sweets: banana pudding, peach cobbler, or gooey butter cakes. (Most guests whom I observed chose banana pudding – clearly, an acceptable choice). In addition to offering such small servings, the gooey butter cakes are suspect. Even The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook proves how removed from Southern cooking the cakes are. Who prepares a family favorite based primarily on cake mix? Although Paula Deen proclaims that “Southern cooking comes from within,” sometimes it comes from a box. The gooey butter cakes are made by combining yellow cake mix with one egg and a stick of butter.

However, the popularity of The Lady & Sons is overwhelming. It has cast off its humble beginnings after many years like the cicada. Every day a hostess starts to take names at 9:30 a.m. for lunch and dinner on a first-come, first-served basis; the preferred times quickly are taken. To receive a seating time, guests must appear in person, although groups of more than ten can make reservations. In addition, the Deen store appears to be more popular than the food.

Paula Deen’s restaurant offers tasty Southern food, but it’s no longer Southern dining. The change is so lamentable. It’s like watching an infomercial and then comparing it to a serious news report – both have a lot of words but the experience is entirely different. One leaves you empty, and the other is satisfying. Love, y’all (well, isn’t that what a cardboard Paula would say?).

Civil War Music: Themes for Yesterday and Today

Civil War music usually doesn’t enjoy the same popularity as other musical traditions of the American South. However, prominent Southerners such as Martin Luther King, Jr. have frequently used lyrics of Civil War songs to connect to our shared history as they emphasize ideas. Much like country music, blues, and gospel, music of the Civil War era can portray haunting themes of the American South with powerful language, alluring rhythms, and familiar characters.

Although Civil War music doesn’t often enjoy being the central focus of musical productions, it did when the Theater of the American South in Wilson, N.C., selected Civil War themes to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. “The Civil War in Song and Legend,” one of the productions, featured more than 40 songs of the Civil War era. It also showcased the musical talents of Bill Schustik, who bills himself as an American troubadour and often performs as a one-person show.

For this performance, Schustik was accompanied by the 17-member Unity Choir of St. John AME Zion Church (organized in 1868 as the first African-American church in Wilson) that sang harmony as well as lead vocals, and its soprano soloists provided a sweet contrast to Schustik’s rich baritone. In addition, The Many Thousand Gone Youth Chorus added 12 local youthful voices as they boosted the rhythm with toe-tapping beats.

During the performance at the Boykin Cultural Center (built in 1919), Schustik played a variety of folk instruments such as the banjo, guitar, dulcimer, drum, harmonica, and Jew’s harp. (Choir director Bill Myers also played the flute and melodica.) As Schustik moved among the instruments and changed from one musical style to another, he wove stories with his song selections to tell the history of a nation – divided between North and South – and personal narratives of the men and women who lived through or died in the Civil War.

Some songs such as “The Vacant Chair,” written to commemorate the death of soldier in 1861, were popular in both the North and the South. This song hauntingly depicts the loss at the family table:

We shall meet but we shall miss him.
There will be one vacant chair.
We shall linger to caress him,
While we breathe our ev’ning prayer.

Other songs such as “Goober Peas” acknowledge the tough duty of a southern soldier who often had little to eat except boiled peanuts (or “goober peas”), which frequently served as an emergency ration:

Just before the battle, the General hears a row.
He says, “The Yanks are coming, I hear their rifles now.”
He turns around in wonder, and what d'ya think he sees?
The Georgia Militia, eating goober peas.

“Lorena,” an antebellum song with Northern origins, was a favorite of soldiers of both sides because it expresses the longing for a wife or sweetheart back home. In fact, one Southern officer lamented that the song reduced his soldiers’ effectiveness because the mournful lyrics made them too homesick:

A hundred months have passed, Lorena,
Since last I held that hand in mine,
And felt the pulse beat fast, Lorena,
Though mine beat faster far than thine.

“Taps,” which concludes many military funerals today, was used by both Confederate and Union forces, although it was arranged by Union Army Brigadier General Daniel Butterfield in July 1862 to replace a previous French bugle call used to signal "lights out.”

Contraditions are inherent in some songs, such as “The Ballad of Shiloh Hill,” which is about the Battle of Shiloh (a biblical name that means “place of peace”) in southwestern Tennessee that resulted in 20,000 casualties in April 1862:

It was an awful struggle and will cause your blood to chill;
It was the famous battle that was fought on Shiloh Hill.

'Twas on the sixth of April, just at the break of day;
The drums and fifes were playing for us to march away.
The feeling of that hour I do remember still,
When first my feet were tromping on the top of Shiloh Hill.

Some music has definite religious connotations. “Nearer, My God, to Thee” was played by the Confederate army band as survivors of the disastrous Pickett’s Charge in the Battle of Gettysburg returned from their failed infantry assault on July 3, 1863. Another example is “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” often used today as a patriotic song and included in many church hymnals; it which was created in 1861 by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe when she wrote new words to a military marching tune. The song’s lyrics appear in sermons and speaches of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- most notably in his last sermon “I've Been to the Mountaintop,” delivered in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 on the night before his assassination. King's final public words, in fact, end with the first lyrics of the song, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The Civil War playlist is rich and includes boastful, mournful, and raucous songs. More noteworthy is how lyrics and songs are used today to represent a nation healed of Civil War divisions still seeks to attain a more perfect Union, an objective evident as the two-hour show ended with Shustik singing the little-known latter verses of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

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For more resources on the Web related to Civil War music, consult the following:
American Civil War Music
Songs of the Confederacy
Music of the American Civil War

Polar Plunge: A New Fascination with the Ocean Coast

Southerners have always by fascinated by the ocean coast — the rolling waves, foamy surf, abundant wildlife, sandy beaches, warm water (usually), and occasional hurricanes.

For many Native Americans such as the Algonquians, the coastal areas offered everything needed to sustain and enjoy life. Explorer John White, famous for his expeditions before the 1600s to the American South for Queen Elizabeth but failed colony on Roanoke Island, recorded much about coastal life in his watercolors preserved today in the British Museum of London (and displayed a few years ago at the N.C. Museum of History).

Imagine the reaction of the Algonquians if they could learn that Southerners have a new activity today to enhance their appreciation of the ocean coast — the polar plunge. Although the plunge is not an event for everyone, those who do participate — and raise money for their noteworthy charity — have gained more attention recently. A good example is the polar plunge conducted annually in New Hanover County of North Carolina for the Special Olympics, the largest program of sports training and competition for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.

Held in February, when the water temperature is often below 50 degrees F., at the Boardwalk in Carolina Beach (south of Wilmington), this plunge attracts hundreds of participants willing to throw their bodies into the cold winter ocean to benefit a charity, prove their stamina (even if for only a few seconds), and earn publicity in the process. In addition to news reports, the moments of fame are preserved on YouTube and social media sites (the plunge itself even has a Facebook page). In addition, the festivity of the plunge is enhanced by other events: face painting, classic car show, ice carving, and costume contests.

To “plunge,” a participant has to raise at least $50 ($30 for students). Companies, churches, and schools form “polar bear clubs” to raise money for the honor of plunging together as a group or dragging someone into the frigid waters. (Teams must have at least five plungers.) In addition, corporate sponsors are indispensable in promoting the plunge and achieving its success. (The plunge in Florida even boasts SeaWorld as a sponsor.)

For the Special Olympics team of New Hanover County, this event is its only fundraiser. (The plunge in February 2011 raised more than $40,000.) The proceeds support more than 600 Special Olympians who train throughout the year in eleven different sports (such as soccer, bowling, tennis, swimming, and softball) and compete in local, regional, and state events.

Although some polar plunges are not held on the coast (such as the one in mountainous Watauga County of North Carolina where the plunge is into Duck Pond and Florida’s plunge into the wave pool of SeaWorld’s Aquatica in Orlando that is “iced down”), what could be better (and more authentic) than plunging into the frosty rolling surf of the Atlantic Ocean? If only an extra reward was offered for a plunger who also captured something to eat from the ocean like the Algonquians.

Explorers in the 1600s after White also seemed fascinated by the ocean that borders the American South. For example, John Smith, who established the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, recorded that his party “escaped the vnmercifull raging of that Ocean-like water” [spelling is original British]. Perhaps they should have been as less intimidated as the plungers.

If the Algonquians of the 1580s, noted by White for their water-oriented lifestyle, could observe today’s Southerners, what would they say? Perhaps they would admire the region’s creativity for using the ocean coast to sustain and enjoy life.

Storytelling in the South

The rich tradition of storytelling in the South unites residents and visitors in a common love of relaying fiction and sometimes fact. Often combined with music and drama, storytelling in the Southern tradition is rich in culture, history, arts, humor, and outdoor activities and emphasizes the importance of community and the power of family.

What Is Storytelling?

Storytelling, an art that predates written history, is one of the earliest forms of human communication. Although the importance of storytelling is often underestimated, the late Southern writer Reynolds Price expressed: “A need to hear and tell stories is essential to human beings, second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter.” Storytelling obviously is not limited to the American South as the National Storytelling Network illustrates -- almost every state has an association. However, the power, intimacy and skills of storytelling in the South are unsurpassed.

Storytelling is not simple. It requires imagination, narrative, and interaction; in addition, if often depends on non-verbal communication and expressions. In fact, storytelling can be a high art form. For example, East Tennessee State University offers a master’s degree in storytelling. Other regional universities also offer programs, such as the storytelling project of Florida Atlantic University that seeks to advance the knowledge, appreciation and application of storytelling through classes, workshops, and outreach programs. Some programs focus on specific objectives, such as The Storytelling Project at UNC-Greensboro that focuses on teaching tolerance to kids of all ages (one story at a time) and uses storytelling to foster respect for diversity.

Types of Storytelling

Unlike the South, in some regions storytelling fell out of favor, particularly as the written word and printed material were used to share information. If storytelling survived, it was typically limited to library story hours and young children. However, the South is well known for its many stories where stretching the truth is not a vice — sometimes:

• Tall tales, often known as Jack tales that are very popular in Appalachian folklore, are familiar traditions. Usually centered on a weak, sometimes foolish, but usually kind character, these tales are oral traditions (as opposed to written). Many also trace back to sources in England.



• Folk tales with a moral often have animals as main characters. Probably the best known stories of the South are the Uncle Remus tales recorded by Joel Chandler Harris (1845-1908), who was born in Georgia on a plantation where he served as an apprentice. The stories represent dialect tales that Harris had heard from slaves before he became a well-known writer for the Atlanta Constitution. Such tales often feature a trickster animal (Br’er Rabbit) that disobeys normal rules and succeeds through wit rather than strength or authority. Connected to storytelling traditions with roots in Africa, these animal tales, seemingly stories of simple entertainment, suggest more complex lessons about the value of cunning and escape from submission.
  


• Myths and legends, brought forward from native American, African, and European traditions, are also common in the South. Ghost stories, such as “A Christmas Haunting,” are also prominent, and their characters are not limited to humans, such as the legend of Joeabb the frog.



• Other family, church, and community tales are often great attention grabbers.

Storytelling Circles and Networks

Storytelling, by preserving the heritage of the region, serves as a bridge between families, generations and areas; reaches across barriers of age, gender, wealth and race; and provides the foundation for meaningful connections that in others cultures may be lost. Obviously, the South would be the preferred site for an international storytelling event, and it’s the home of the International Storytelling Center, located in Jonesboro, Tenn., which conducts a festival each October (attended by more than 10,000 people). It also sponsors “tellers”-in-residence from May to October.

Many states in the South have statewide guilds and local storytelling circles. North Carolina is a prime example with a statewide guild, circles in cities such as Asheville, and groups with a specific cultural focus such as the N.C. Association of Black Storytellers. In fact, North Carolina is also the home of the Storytelling Arts Center of the Southeast, which sponsors a regional festival each spring with workshops and performances, a liars’ showdown (with a maxim of “where lying through your teeth is an art”) in January, and a fall festival in October with music and storytelling. Another example of a state with a strong storytelling network is South Carolina. Often these networks and events capture the attention of regional media as illustrated by the festival report of the North Carolina statewide television network.

When I participated in the Liars’ Showdown, my tale of a talking collard plant (that lied) was representative of the traditional Southern tall tale. Held at the Storytelling Arts Center of the Southeast in Laurinburg, NC, the event featured storytellers from throughout North Carolina (including Asheville, Cary, Hickory, Marshville, Monroe, Raleigh, Saint Pauls, Waxhaw, and West End) as well as South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. Other participants told tales about a Greyhound bus that flew to Africa, false teeth in a mud puddle that ate fried chicken during a tent revival, moon rocks found in a cow pasture, and a boy who could swallow an ocean. The regional talent is almost as good as the national storyteller such as Suzi Whaples of West Virginia who receives top billing.

The rich tradition of storytelling has an unlimited future in the South. Although it predates written history, storytelling will never be out-of-date even in the era of digital communications. Because it features imagination, intimacy, and interaction that the Internet cannot offer, storytelling – with its strengths in combining culture, history, arts, and humor and emphasizing the importance of community and the power of family – will be a significant part of Southern culture for a long time.

It's Time for Snow Cream

Has it snowed for more than two hours? If so, what are you waiting on? It’s time for snow cream.

Few people remember how to make snow cream today because everyone has ice cream in the freezer. But better than ice cream is an old-fashioned, homemade creation of freshly fallen snow flavored with a little dairy, vanilla, and sugar. In the South, snow cream is treasured because snowstorms are infrequent and often breathtaking.

The directions are simple. In a large bowl, combine evaporated milk, vanilla, and sugar until smooth. Then slowly stir in snow and keep adding snow until the mixture is thick — you want it thick. The result is thinner than ice cream but very tasty. Don’t save; don’t freeze (although you can). Eat at once.

What are the secrets? Use evaporated milk because it gives a creamier texture than milk. (Because the snow waters down the taste, the richer you make this mixture, the better.) Some folks also chill all ingredients (and the mixing bowl) first; this keeps the snow from liquefying rapidly and watering down the flavor. In fact, if you can, stir the snow into the mixture outside where the chilly temperature should keep the snow almost intact.

The most important step is to collect only clean snow. If young kids help you with this project, stress the importance of making sure that the snow is clean and using only clean snow. My family always insists that we can’t use the first flakes of a snowfall. We make sure that the snow is clean by waiting until it has snowed at least two hours and more is on the way. (The last snowfall more than passed the clean-snow test.)

Another idea fairly obvious: Collect the snow where birds and other animals have not visited. Take only the freshest snow – collect it from the top of the snow that has fallen and while it is still coming down.

Other options: Some folks like to add one or two beaten eggs to the mixture before the snow is stirred in. If you can’t eat raw eggs, skip that option (or use an egg substitute).

The rewards are immediate. Gather the young and young-at-heart, enjoy a homemade creation that connects many generations, and tell a few stories about the old days. Then watch the forecast for another snowfall so that you can repeat this experience.

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Ingredients

1 can evaporated milk (12 fluid ounces)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup white sugar
1 gallon snow