Al's Bar-B-Q in Trumann May Become History.

The home of what may well be the very best chicken tenders in the entire state may disappear, if a buyer isn't found immediately. Read about what you might be missing.

Country Kitchen in Pine Bluff Serves the Best Chili Cheeseburger I Have Ever Eaten.

That's no hyperbole - I've had more than my share of the messy dish and this one, featuring a hand-patted beef patty and housemade chili, served in a genuine 50s diner in the South, beats every other chili cheeseburger I've ever had in my life.

Thing is, though, I wasn't looking for this decadent dish. I was out looking for pie.

Elaine's Delta Grill - You Have To Go There To Get There.

There are out-of-the-way places we sometimes find by taking a side route or turning off the interstate. But Elaine's position between the Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers south of Barton makes it one place you can't just end up at, not without some sort of intent.

What I didn't expect to find was a classic restaurant.

Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales and Pies Are Worthy of a Pilgrimage to Lake Village.

There’s been many a time I ended up on the doorstep of Rhoda Adams, the proprietress of a local establishment in Lake Village known as Rhoda’s Famous Hot Tamales. She and her husband James run this place on St. Mary’s Street, and you can smell it a block away, the smell of spices and fried things luring you off Highway 65 if you let it. If you don’t roll down your windows and never leave the highway, you’ll never find it.

Lib's Legacy Lives at The Ole Sawmill Cafe in Forrest City.

A familiar stop in Forrest City has a legacy that goes back three quarters of a century. Let's take a look at The Ole Sawmill Cafe.

Every Day, All Day, Gene's Barbecue in Brinkley.

The long-running eatery is the jumping-off point for a day in the Big Woods, a duck hunting trip or an expedition to sight the elusive Ivory Billed Woodpecker. Gene's offers sustenance and some mighty fine tips before you head out into the world beyond.

Come Dine With Me, Let's Dine and Fly Away at the Parachute Inn in Walnut Ridge.

One of Arkansas's more unusual restaurants resides in a hangar and jet fuselage at the Walnut Ridge Regional Airport.  Take a look inside the famous Parachute Inn.

The Bulldog, Bald Knob's Classic Drive In.

Want a classic burger? Ice cream? An epic strawberry shortcake considered one of the best in the world?  You need to head to Bald Knob and try the fare at the Bulldog Restaurant.

Colonial Steakhouse in Pine Bluff Holds Fast.

Pine Bluff has seen its share of great eateries. Today, few continue to stand the test of time, and of those few the venerable Colonial Steak House stands out. Learn about the history of this beloved restaurant close to downtown, which still draws in generations of guests.

Classic Eateries of the Arkansas Delta - An Introduction.

The Delta is not a melting pot, like what was conceived of at Ellis Island for all the immigrants that came in at the end of the 19th century. Rather, with its waves of immigrants from Germany, Sicily, Italy, Greece, Mexico, China... it more resembles the mud of the Mississippi alluvial plain: soft, almost indistinguishable layers atop even more layers of French, English, African, Native American, a slurry of cultures tilled together on a land where the topsoil is 200 feet deep, where the fallow ends burn in fire and the people are sun scorched and swamp steamed, a vast sweeping flat broken only by the spine of Crowley's Ridge, all equal but struggling in the mire to eke out a good life.

Crowley's Ridge from Highway 14 near Weona, January 2014, sunset.

On this flat plain lies nothing but horizon and that ridge, which can be seen from 10 miles away, a punctuation for the eye of the traveler. Otherwise, the sweep of land is met with ditch upon ditch criss-crossing at perpendicular angles across northeastern Arkansas, while lower down the big fat swaths of the Black, Cache, White and Arkansas Rivers meet their conclusions pouring into Big Muddy, cut through with its oxbows and levees, hugging on Lake Chicot right before sliding out of The Natural State.

Fields north of Grady viewed from the Arkansas River levee,
August 2014.

On the far side from the Great River, a long cut runs south from Pine Bluff. Occluded by trees, Bayou Bartholomew marks an end and so many beginnings; once a furiously busy expressway for getting goods up north, it now sits swampish along the western side of the plain, butting up now and again with the first rise of the Ouachita Mountains and the undulating hills of the state’s Timberland region.

The fingers of the Delta stretch right up the Arkansas River to Little Rock – even to its State Capitol Building, which looks out on the long flat from the first rise in town, the first undulations of mountainous terrain behind it and on through the city’s Hillcrest and Heights neighborhoods.

To the north, the long endless plain knocks up against the first low ridge of the Ozark Plateau, just to the west of old U.S. Highway 67, its new expressway laying on the flat from Bald Knob on north, the roadbed only rising to clamber over the White River and the occasional overpass to where it still lays
incomplete, its original route still busy but quieter than its decades past, smooth and unbent up through to Pocahontas and the Black River, then calm again on its straight shot through Corning to the Missouri Border.

Sunset from Highway 49, just north of Louisiana Purchase
State Park, October 2014.

This is the land of the Arkansas Delta… still, after all these years, a harsh abode where the stubborn survive in rural towns and along endless highways. It is not romantic, nor is it the great fictional set of some extraordinary writer (though both Ernest Hemingway and John Grisham have found great inspiration here). It is the birthplace of two distinctive forms of music – the blues and rockabilly – and it has fostered generations of great musicians that have defined the offshoots of these styles, from the boogie-woogie to the jump blues, ragtime, hokum, country blues, Delta blues and blues-rock. Its native sons have included Levon Helm, Al Green, Louis Jordan – and daughters such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Its most notable resident may be a man who came from the Timberlands – though, considering his young age of immigration to the Dyess Colony with his family, many could argue that nature and nurture make Johnny Cash a pure Delta boy.

Woody's Bar-B-Q at Waldenburg.

On this long plain, cities still survive, tied together by highways pressed onto the fields, bridges fording swamps, most following the few paths that brought people across the expanse a century ago. Unlike in Classic Eateries of the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley, you’ll find few places called “Hilltop” or “Cliff” or “Mountain.”

Jones Barbecue Diner in 1964, before the construction of a
second level.

Here, barbecue and catfish reign supreme and you’ll have a hard time finding a locally produced restaurant meal on Sundays. You’re as likely to find fans of the Red Wolves as you are Razorbacks – though some will grumble about how Arkansas State University was far better served by its old mascot, Injun Joe. Some years you’ll find the landscape

Cotton ready for harvest near Pine Bluff, October 2012.

dotted by cotton to the furthest horizon – corn other years. Rice soaks in flooded dyke-impounded cloisters that turn the landscape an impossible shade of green, winter wheat comes up bright neon lime; soybeans and peanuts deepen verdant hues, and pecan groves appear roadside as the miles click under your tires.

Lackey's Tamales at Smokehouse BBQ
in Newport.

Here is the heart of the Delta, secluded from Deep South ideals of southern cliché. It is the home to rice, ducks, minnows, catfish, crawfish, sweet potato pies and deep-seated thoughts on how tamales should be created. Its isolation from the demands of popular culture have left it authentic, southern with an Arkansawyer accent, a deep regard for what comes from the gumbo soil that everyone comes from, and at the end, to which everyone is returned.

***

I didn’t grow up in the Delta. I was forcibly introduced to it by circumstance.

As a child, I grew up between the wood-knitted environment of my parents' homegrounds in Clark County and the budding urban sprawl of Little Rock. Family vacations were invariably taken to the west, either north up to Jasper and Dogpatch U.S.A or south to Texas. There were summers spent in Hot Springs. My college years, I planted myself happily in Russellville, savoring my first stretch of adulthood in the River Valley, making those Scenic Highway Seven runs up to Harrison and back or down to the Spa City, summering along Lake Ouachita and venturing as far out as Fort Smith to meet and spend time with new friends.

The summer I graduated college, I threw my lot to the wind. I was a radio broadcasting major, and I was ready to cut my teeth beyond my Little Rock hometown and see where I would land. I sent out 90 cassette tapes and resumes to places as far away as Wisconsin, Michigan, New Orleans and St. Louis. 89 of these tapes, I assume, went to program directors and news directors at radio stations. The 90th tape went to a station called KAIT, which had placed an ad in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for a news producer.

I didn’t know until I pulled up for my interview on a September day in 1995, that I had applied to a television station in far-off Jonesboro. I apologized to news director Harvey Cox for taking up his time. He asked me if I knew how to tell a story, and when I answered yes, he told me he was looking for storytellers, not “people who do TV.” That lead to three years on Crowley’s Ridge, in the largest city of the Arkansas Delta – which didn’t hold anything to the upbringing I’d had in Little Rock.

Sunset in Dumas, March 2014.

My eyes were open to many things those years: cattails in ditches, straight roads that suddenly darted at right angles to their next destination, sunsets that went on forever. Mosquitoes, oh gawd, the mosquitoes, and the mosquito-spraying trucks that went by at night; pulling catfish out

Pickles, peppers and such on the counter at Gene's
Barbecue in Brinkley.

of Lake Frierson; running through corn fields during a thunderstorm, taking shelter from an oncoming funnel cloud, or at least what looked like one; rummaging through flea markets and swap shops.

I was also awakened to a dining scene unlike what I’d left behind. While yes, I did try about every restaurant in Russellville in my time there, the fare was very much focused on the diner culture merged with a quiet college scene and rural, country tastes. Jonesboro offered something far different – especially in its wide array of Asian restaurants and its extraordinarily low food prices. In those three years, I sampled many a restaurant.

The lone Dog N Suds holdout in
Paragould.

KAIT was a great place to learn the television business, and I saw my happiest times there when I was working on its morning show. When I left work each morning, I would often head out in one direction or another to see what the world around me had to offer, sometimes driving as far as Walnut Ridge or Monette before turning back and coming home to sleep a few hours. When I really missed home or the curves of Scenic Highway Seven, I’d make a fast break up Arkansas Highway 141 to Crowley’s Ridge State Park and back, relishing the curves.

I left Jonesboro in September 1998, roughly six months after the terrible tragedy at Westside Middle School – the shooting of kids by other kids there the hardest blow to my young news seeking sensibilities. Though I visited a few times in the following year, it’d be another decade before I’d truly explore it again, and then it’d be something entirely different.

An old postcard for the still-operating Country Kitchen.

Through my eight years at Today’s THV (now THV 11) in Little Rock, I didn’t spend much time in the Delta. I was on hand for the opening of the new depot, the second part of the Delta Cultural Center, back in 2000 – and I crossed the Delta many times heading other places like

Mammoth Orange Drive-In in Redfield.

Memphis and Jackson and New Orleans. I even spent time in Pine Bluff. But until I left the station in 2007, I didn’t see much reason to get out and find what was there.

Shooting a plate of Rhoda's Famous Hot Tamales,
March 2011 (photo by Grav Weldon).

When I did, I learned a lot. This eastern third of Arkansas had plenty to explore – with its own separate ideas of identity and cuisine from the rest of Arkansas. As I got to know it better, I realized that it wasn’t like any other part of Arkansas – nor was it a mirror to Mississippi’s Delta region. Arkansas’s Delta had its own flavor and music.

After the success of Arkansas Pie: A Delicious Slice of the Natural State in 2012, History Press entrusted me to write a second book about the oldest restaurants in the state. The project got out of hand. When I realized that I was maybe halfway through with the book and well over my word limit, I contacted my editor and pleaded for a change – to make this overall effort into more than one book. 

The first, Classic Eateries of the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley, came out in November 2013, and the reception was warm. Seems there’s a real desire by food lovers to find out not only where their food comes from, but where their food traditions come from as well.

Lunch at Kibb's BBQ, Pine Bluff.
Digitally manipulated photo by Grav Weldon.

Mind you, this isn’t a story about farms and family traditions – at least, not those straight from the garden plots. There’s an excellent book by my colleague Cindy Grisham that covers the home side of Arkansas Delta cookery called A Savory History of Arkansas Delta Food: Potlikker, Coon Suppers and Chocolate Gravy – and if you’ve interested in my new book, chances are you’ll want that one, too. This new book,

Elvis Presley had breakfast at The Coffee Cup in West
Memphis before reporting to Fort Chaffee to serve with
the Army.

Classic Eateries of the Arkansas Delta, contains the stories of the folks who feed us through their diners, cafes, coffee shops, tamale stands, barbecue joints, chicken places, catfish houses and homegrown restaurants throughout this wide swatch of the western side of the Mississippi River alluvial plain. It’s a guidebook for the epicurious – laid out along highways divided by the three sections of the Arkansas Delta – Lower, Upper and Middle.

It’s an effort to preserve this particular moment in the state’s restaurant history. This never became clearer to me than on a particular weekend in March 2014, when photographer Grav Weldon and I tackled the Upper Delta over a three day weekend. Restaurants that I had begun research on just a year earlier had suddenly closed up shop, in some cases completely disappearing from the landscape. More than two dozen of the restaurants originally intended for the book have evaporated into history. Classic Eateries of the Arkansas Delta notes an effort to save that history before it is gone.

Cotham's Mercantile at Scott.
Digitally manipulated photo by Grav Weldon.

The general criteria for the restaurants: they have to have made their mark on the culinary landscape and have been around 20 years or better. I have squeezed those guidelines a little – partially because of the passing of some restaurants from one culinary state or family to another. I've also included stories that aren’t specifically about restaurants – such as that of the Gillett Coon Supper, Duck Gumbo at the Wings Over The Prairie Festival and tales concerning the history of the Delta – because they represent bits of the food culture that can’t quite be replicated in a restaurant story.

I hope you enjoy Classic Eateries of the Arkansas Delta and utilize it in your efforts to familiarize yourself with the Arkansas Delta. The many weekends of research across its span have opened my eyes and drawn me into discussions I’d never thought I’d have about preserving and protecting this cuisine and these extraordinary spots on the food map.

Postscript:  When it came time to submit my manuscript, I was way over in length and had to cut something.  There were hundreds of nicks and tucks throughout the book, but I couldn't bear taking out the restaurants featured within, nor slicing through the narrative of highways and the stories of the towns throughout the Arkansas Delta.  So I did something different.  I removed the introduction to the book.  Rex Nelson's foreword was more than sufficient for covering most of the points I was trying to make.

Here, for your enjoyment, is that introduction in its entirety.

Presley's Drive In in Jonesboro: Last Joint Standing.

In a different time and place, Presley’s Drive In was a place of summer. Started by Harold and Hettie Mae Presley back in the early 1970s, it passed first to their son Terry Presley and then to Gary McGill, a fine dairy diner that has now served western Jonesboro for more than 40 years. The décor has always been simple dairy diner, with a nod to a distant relative born in Tupelo.

My boyfriend and I lived half a mile west of Gee Street in the late 90s, and we’d gather up laundry twice a month and head over to the Magic Touch for a laundry derby… and once the first round of loads were in on a Monday afternoon, I’d walk over to Presley’s and pick up brown derbies for us both.

At the time, Gee Street was much different. There were all sorts of restaurants that lined the streets, like the Milky Way Drive In and Grandpa’s along with the old grocery store, flea markets and low-income motels. And in the summer it was all whitewashed and ancient and out of time.

When Grav and I went back to see Presley’s in March 2014, we went to collect what was left of the restaurant scene between Nettleton and Dan Avenue. We found nothing… the grocery store that still took stamps was now a Hay’s and the little diners, the lunch counters, all of them absorbed into the past -- except Presley’s, almost untouched in the intervening years, somehow escaping the passage of time.


There it stood recently painted, depictions of menu items painted on the window items and a full house of customers. I wanted a brown derby, but I was denied… this particular visit, the ice cream machine was out.

It made no difference. While he scarfed his half of a particularly excellent Reuben sandwich lovingly butter-toasted on both sides, I picked at my offered Oreo cake (light and fluffy!) and at my memories, too – of those laundry days, of very hot summer days when I decided like a fool to take the dog for a walk and puffing the breath out of my lungs while standing at the outside counter with Jeffro, my Great Dane. Not only would I get my burger and fries and a big vanilla Coke, but they’d always offer Jeffro a vanilla cone, and it’d be gone in a swallow.

It’s hard to believe better than 15 years have passed since I moved away, and yet this place is still here. That’s partly thanks to David Stallings, who purchased the restaurant back in October 2012, not long after Gary’s health got a little touchy. The menu hasn’t changed a whole lot – there are still burgers and fries and shakes and the like – and breakfast and good plate lunches, too.

In fact, many of those more unusual dishes remain on the menu – like the Pizza Steak (a traditional Arkansas Delta pizza burger) and the Spanish Burger (with taco sauce). Other dishes could have been taken out of my Tie Dye Travel adventures – like the grilled cheese cheeseburger (The Excaliburger from The Ozark Café, seen on the back of Classic Eateries of the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley) and the fried cheeseburger (also from The Ozark Café).

And then there’s something new that’s recently shown up on the restaurant’s Facebook page. Presley’s now offers a competition burger called The King. It’s seven pounds – four pounds of beef, a pound of bacon plus toppings and bun that come up to seven pounds total. You can buy it for $25 ($20 on Thursdays) – and if you eat it by yourself in an hour, it’s not only free but Presley’s will give you $100.

From what I’ve seen, no one’s managed to get that Benjamin Franklin yet. But it has brought renewed interest along the west side of town, which is a good thing.

Presley’s has served Jonesboro for more than 40 years, and if Stallings can keep ahold of it, it could go another 40. On Thursday nghts it’s Bike Night, and local motorcycle enthusiasts line up outside the restaurant. Six days a week there’s someone around to order up a burger or some of that fantastic roast beef or Mexican chicken on the specials board.

Next time I go, I hope they have the Brown Derby again. I think, if it’s summer, I’ll sit outside on a curb stop and remember the traffic that used to pass by on Gee Street.

Taking a Bite of the Gillett Coon Supper.

Gillett is a town of just 691 people along Arkansas’s Great River Road, a small community built around agriculture and southern tradition. But on one day each year, the town doubles in size in the first act of a year’s political drama.

This is not that story. As Alton Brown has so succinctly put it, “I’m here for the food.”

Every Arkansas politician of any renown has come through
Gillett at one time or another, including the most famous of
our native-born sons.

To talk about Gillett’s Coon Supper is not to reference one event, but two. The larger event happens each year as it has every year since 1933 (except during World War II) in the old high school gymnasium. The smaller event, though…

See, there was a gentleman who lived across the street from that high school. And starting back in the 1970s, he and his wife would open their home to a party before the annual get-together. That young man eventually decided to run for office, and the party became a political fundraiser. When Representative Marion Berry came home from Congress, the party became a different sort of fundraiser – one that sends two Gillett high school seniors to college each year.

The party remains a part of Arkansas tradition, though now it’s held on the Berry Farm rather than in the house in town.

Photographer Grav Weldon and I headed to Gillett on a brisk January Saturday to take in the two events. He gets a pass on never having gone before, but I don’t. Over the years there’s been every sort of reason I’ve missed out – from having to work at my television job to having a personal commitment to not being ready to head out again after having Hunter to being on the road. The biggest reason I’d not been before, however, stemmed directly from the timing – the event is usually held the second Saturday of January, and by the time I remember, I’ve failed to secure a ticket to the events. They always sell out.

We came into the Arkansas County town from Stuttgart via DeWitt with the singular direction from my friend Gabe Holstrom, to “follow the Berry signs.” The first signs we saw, though, were the Arkansas-shaped pickets for Pryor, in this case Mark Pryor, the U.S. senator who rightly used his daddy’s campaign logo as his own, a modern version of medieval heraldry passed father to son. Past that, we saw the “Berry for Congress” sign, big and blue by a gravel road, which we turned in to right after a massive black SUV before us.

Down the gravel road, still somewhat slick from the two-days-ago rain, way out into the verdant and soggy plain of an Arkansas field planted this past year with corn, a right turn past a rice paddy, a left turn onto a road headed out to a set of outbuildings.

Here there were cars parked side by side near what appeared to be a hangar – far too big to be a storage shed. Outside, three men tended a smoker, while two young boys threw rocks in a puddle.

My daughter, Hunter, had come along for the ride, and she played shy with the kids while I made introductions and found my direction. The men were lording over long skewers of bacon-wrapped meat in the chilly air.

I realized the vest that was enough to keep me warm in Little Rock with its trees and hollows and tall buildings wouldn’t stand up to the constant wind that stuttered unimpeded across the Mississippi River alluvial plain, and headed inside.

It was 3:30 on the dot. Concerned that we would be late to the party, we’d arrived on time, and within there were just a scattering of people tidying up the last minute details. These included making sure sponsor banners were in place, a bar was fully stocked and a long table loaded with food.

Of course, it was the food I meant to cover. Gathering information for an upcoming book and for this very blog, I knew the food would be what my readers would find curiosity in. I had already been warned about the coon coming tonight, and had been told to find good sustenance at the Berry Farm party before heading into town.
Grav and I darted about, checking out the edibles before the onslaught of attendees came through the door.

And my, weren’t there a lot of vittles – gourmet, yet more of a relaxed Delta gala than a high-dollar luncheon. Each item appeared to have been brought in by someone local – presented on someone’s kitchen service. There were cubes of cheese, thin slices of salami and smoked ham and a duck prosciutto that was absolutely divine. Someone had brought homemade pancetta, naked-looking and soft.

There were vegetable trays and fruit trays, a spread of crackers and a cheese ball and that strange blog of cream cheese covered in sauce you see at any gathering these days. There was a large cooler of peeled and deveined shrimp with sauce and a pile of soft rolls. There was a roaster full of venison stew packed with onions, carrots and potatoes.

And then there were the meats – not the deli meats but the hearty, bone-sticking meat you’d expect to sustain yourself in this sort of weather. From the smoker came big pork butts, which the ladies in the back would break open and shred and platter. There were big links of sausage. And there were Duck Bites.

The Arkansas Delta, after all, is known for its duck. Nearby Stuttgart is the Duck and Rice Capitol of the World, and the season is still underway. But this was no ordinary duck. I realized I had seen it already -- the skewered bacon-wrapped parcels on the smoker contained parmesan-breaded jalapeno-stuffed slices of wild duck that were only pulled off the grills when they started to char.

Gabe had told me these would go quick – and they did, even though it seemed like there might have been 50 pounds pulled from the smoke, they went quickly into the mouths and onto the plates of these individuals who came to the line, sometimes with a dollop of remoulade. And when they were gone, they were replaced with fall-apart good smoked turkey and chicken.

At 4:08 on the dot, the crowd swelled in. The first were individuals who had pulled up in their own vehicles and who’d been chewing the fat when they saw the big Little Rock Tours bus make its way through the field. They came in a rush ahead of the next rush, that of 60 men and women who had come down with another driver to take in both the events.

The empty farm hangar went from hollow echoes to a solid block of sound in seconds. They all came through the door, man and woman, a collection of suits and padded vests and ties and young men bearing campaign stickers for every flavor of Arkansas politician. After all, this is among all things a political event.

Amongst the politicians and business leaders, there were folks like me, camera and pad in hand, jostling about. The journalists, the TV crews and the newspaper folks and the radio guys, we found ourselves suddenly surrounded by subjects. Interviews commenced left and right as fellows clapped each other on the back and young ladies giggled and cameras beeped – oh, to say snapped would be an antiquity – as the crowd filed in and filled out.

Congressmen, state representatives, farmers, businessmen, mayors… they were all there. I spotted fellow Arkansas writer Rex Nelson by the buffet, ran into Arkansas Museum of Discovery Executive Director (and fellow food writer) Kelley Bass by my table, even chatted with one of my former fellow producers from Today’s THV, Monika Rued. This was a place to wave and say hi and share a glance as it got louder – yes, I see you there, you see me, we’ve been here. The room was so loud a coherent conversation between any but the most able lip-readers were left smiling and nodding.

And then a break, as if the crowd had simultaneously reached the moment to take a breath or a swig of a beverage. At the door, there was a rustle and former congressman Marion Berry came in the room. And a swarm of people formed the most disorganized circular line in an effort to get a chance to thank him for his hospitality.

The governor was there. The networks – ABC and MSNBC – were there. A progressive Country act was playing in the corner, providing a soundtrack for the whole mess. And I quickly learned that the best way to have a conversation was right outside the doors, where the serious talk seemed to be happening.

Some 220 people turned out for the pre-supper party -- and the resulting crowd brought around $20,000 into the scholarship fund.  This particular gathering could be considered nothing but a success.

But, as I said, I came for the food. And soon enough it was time to head for the other event.

We arrived at the former Gillett High School a few minutes before six. There weren’t a lot of people in town at that point, and we were able to park in the lot. I hustled over to the gym door quickly with Hunter, jogging a bit to get there as I saw the glint of metal. I had expected to see cooking on the premises, but I realized at that moment that the cooking was already done.

What I was seeing was a line of men, young and old and wearing white aprons, darting back and forth from a truck into the building with aluminum trays of food. They were swift and organized, passing through the double doors into the gymnasium’s hall in shifts. I snapped a few shots and tried to keep out of the way.

Inside, two ladies sat at a table offering caps, ties and T-shirts by the main door to the interior. Across from them, a uniformed man stood at the ticket counter. This was for people to claim their ticket – the dinner had been sold out long before.

Within, the finely orchestrated work had begun. The tables were already set with commemorative glasses, Styrofoam plates and numbered programs, 800 in all, along two-sided tables. On either side of the gym, there were tables in the concrete bleachers – I suppose, what should be bleachers but which were really just a couple of sets of benches along each side. A musician was warming up on the stage – and there were places set right up to it as well. Every inch of space seemed to be taken.

The men worked in teams – the shifts of aluminum tray-carrying guys were directed to tables, where they sat deep tins of coon, ribs and brisket. Other men were working in sets – one man holding a tray of sweet potatoes while another dolloped out a serving on each plate. The same went for the cakes, the rolls and the rice. They were working as fast as they could – the doors would properly open at 6:30, and they had to finish before then.

I spotted amongst them a familiar face – Jason Grantham, who I met a decade ago or better. Ah, yes, the THV Wedding of a Livetime, a promotion we had run the first time back in the spring of 2001, I believe. Jason and Melissa, his bride, now have three girls – who he stopped to show me on his cell phone. I pointed Hunter out where she was standing in a corner by the bleachers, holding my notepad.

The pace was picking up, with all the tins at the tables and the dolloping still going on. I noticed something about each setting. They were all identical – plate with sides, glass with cup inside, tins… what was different were what sat under the rolls. Each of the rolls sat atop a slice of cake, individually wrapped in plastic. But the cake slices were different. There were so many – golden vanilla cake, Chocolate bundt, chocolate iced (not frosted) vanilla, peanut butter, chocolate-chocolate, strawberry, spice, carrot, cream cheese-topped butter cake. So many varieties.

It turns out the cakes are all made by ladies in town. They each make a cake or three, slice it and wrap the slices before handing them over to the Farmers and Businessmen Club, which oversees putting the Coon Supper together. In fact, everything at the Gillett Coon Supper is donated or sponsored.

And then, there’s the coon. Do people really eat raccoon at the Coon Supper? Why, yes they do.
I had stepped out of the main gym for a moment. I had caught glimpse of something crazy – a young man dunking a large cheesecloth sack into a garbage can filled with water on a big turkey fryer burner. He was making coffee for a crowd in the quickest way possible. He and the ticket keeper joked about it… but I suspected from the can’s coloration that this was not the first time it had been used to boil coffee.

The ticket keeper gave me some background. Used to be, only raccoon was served – 2000 pounds of it for up to 1200 people. But over the years it had changed. No longer was the eating of the coon something that political candidates needed to try… like a freshman hazed into a fraternity. No, today babyback pork ribs and beef brisket are also offered – thanks to Jennings Osborne. The beloved Arkansas philanthropist sponsored the dinner for many years, bringing in his epic grills and smokers and serving up barbecued meats alongside the coon.

Osborne passed away a few years ago, and the Farmers and Businessman Group managed to find other sponsors. And the coon? It’s harvested by people in the community who set traps for the furry mammals. For a couple of months before the event, there will be a stand alongside Highway 1 where you can turn them in. They’re purchased for $1.68 a pound – and a normal sized raccoon will garner three to four pounds of meat. Some years are better than others. This particular year, 700 pounds of raccoon had been trapped, purchased and smoked.

By this point, a line had started to form outside, and the other journalists were arriving to find their spots. Many of them were seeking out the politicians – to share later the who’s who attending the event – such as Senator Mark Pryor, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, former congressmen Asa Hutchinson and Mike Ross (who are both eyeballing Mike Beebe's gubernatorial chair) and Representative Tom Cotton.  But Arkansas politicians weren't the only lawmakers on the guest book.  U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois was in attendance.  So was Senator Angus King of Maine and Senator Joe Donelly of Indiana -- all three of which came as guests of Senator Pryor.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I'll lay it out: the Gillett Coon Supper might as well be a mandatory campaign obligation for any lawmaker planning to make it in Arkansas.  Governor Beebe says this one was his 32nd -- and it's like as not part of the reason he keeps getting elected to office.

Grav and Hunter and I tucked ourselves out of the way in a corner while things got started.  Each person had a ticket -- either one given them in advance or picked up at the ticket keeper's counter -- and the mayor himself welcomed people into the gym and pointed them towards their seat.  Each row of tables sat 50 to a side, and helpful volunteers ushered folks into place.

I did get out amongst the crowd myself as the event filled in.  I met a lovely couple who read this blog, and asked if I might shoot a plate of coon.  They even offered a taste to Grav... who describes the flavor as such:
"It starts out nice and smokey, but there's too much smoke, and then it's just something I'm not sure I should have in my mouth."

Yes, I do chuckle at that.  Raccoon is, in my opinion, a dish best served stewed or soaked well in broth with dumplings.  It's a wild meat, of course, gray and a bit stringy.  You have to be hungry to eat it like this -- which, of course, these politicians are, very much so.



I happened to catch sight of the governor as he came in, laughing.  He was telling a reporter from one of the newspapers that this was like to be his last Coon Supper, since his days in office are nearly over.  Mr. Beebe gets this crowd, though, and he did his own measure of chuckling as he shook hands and posed for photographs.

His tenure here may be long, but it's not unprecedented.  I met one gentleman who's been coming for 56 years, and a lady who had attended or cooked at the supper for more than 60.  I also met beauty queens that squeamishly nibbled at their perfunctory piece of coon meat, grimacing for the cameras; young boys who relished the adventure of eating as many animals as possible in a sitting and young men attending with their camoflauge-and-booted girlfriends.  There was far more talking than eating, for sure -- but there was indeed eating taking place while hands were met and flesh was pressed.  Eating and listening and a whole lot of talking.



Old fashioned country music was but a note in the background as the volume swelled through the evening.  There's no alcohol served at the Gillett Coon Supper (unlike the Berry Farm party) -- for a multitude of reasons, which I'm sure have a lot to do not just with community preferences but also the lack of places to put up those that might need to sleep it off (the Rice Paddy Motel on Highway 1 only has 14 rooms) -- but there's really no need to lubricate tongues in a crowd like this.



We ended up leaving ahead of the crowd.  Hunter, bless her heart, had been patient through the evening, but when she told me she was ready to go home I was about ready to as well. And that gave us another view of what this event means to the community.  For six blocks around the school (located on the southwest corner of town) there were cars lined up on both sides of the road, with barely a car's width in-between to squeeze through.  Past the parking, the town was quiet and empty, block after block of silent homes lit by streetlamps and the ancient Christmas decorations still lining the roads.

Gillett is a town of just 691 people.  Its school today only offers classes for kindergarten through the fifth grade.  Older kids go to DeWitt schools 12 miles away.  There's just one restaurant in town -- the friendly diner at the Rice Paddy Motel, which offers a sustaining buffet often and has catfish on Fridays.

It's flat as a pancake and its downtown is a collection of lonely buildings without tenants, save the local bank.  But the sign on Arkansas Highway One says it all: Welcome to Gillett, Home of Friendly People and the Coon Supper.  And for one day each year, it's the center of Arkansas.