Wait, Why They Call You 'Fig'?

Raisin' Up Catfish: Twenty-nine

Lunch time, or ‘dinner’ as many in the South still call it commenced at the bold stroke of noon each day, no matter what job might be half-finished. Bone and Vernon usually headed off to Bone’s farm house, a couple of miles east and north for a hot meal, ably cooked up by Bone’s lovely wife, Betsy (Vernon’s tolerant mother-in-law), and usually with the assistance of Patsy, Bone’s youngest daughter andVernon’s wife. 

Zak, Mose and I (and occasionally, Pudge and Sweetback, whenever they’d been called in for a few days to help with seining and load out), piled, slapdash into one of the farm pickups (definitely not their pristine, white-upholstered Chevy if we were at all muddy, which was practically always), to make a run over to Miss Mae's humble country store. One sweet hour of respite; freedom, a little rest and some store-bought grub. Jackson Fish Farms had an account. Miss Mae had a deli case and made up sandwiches to order. A buck-fifty a day; that was our credit limit for lunch. Anything more came out of our own pockets.

Inside her diminutive cinder-block dwelling, relishing the dim-lit tranquility of flickering fluorescent lights and swamp cooler air conditioning, and surrounded by the thousand smells that haunt all backwoods, roadside stores, we wandered Miss Mae's few aisles and stared into her refrigerated deli case searching for answers, new each day; ravenous pilgrims on a holy quest to re-stoke those flagging furnaces that would power our labors on into the evening.

Zak invariably ordered first since his ritual almost never changed.

"Afta’noon Ma’am," he'd shuffle his feet and bow slightly to smiling Miss Mae, avoiding eye contact, asking for 'the usual,’ a thick slice of gelatinous head cheese slathered with mayonnaise between two slices of Wonder bread.

While she methodically made up his order and wrapped it carefully in wax paper, he'd shuffle over to the cooler to select a Nehi, ‘Big Orange,’ a bag of Quick-Fried Cheeto's and a banana Moon Pie, though he did occasionally splurge for Hostess Snoballs, which required a few extra coins out of his own pocket. It was always the pink ones.