Ears, Smokes, and the Ghosts of Farish Street

Salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I’m frustratedly enduring olfactory

hallucinations as I begin the short drive to the promised land. I know that I cannot smell

my bounty from five blocks away, but my mind is playing tricks on my nose, and the

memory of the smell is beguiling. The engine whines and purrs, scoring my Toyota

Solara’s roll into a parallel parking spot in the sun, and obscuring the last few bars of

Steve Earle’s “Mississippi, It’s Time” emanating from the stereo. I enjoy a few more

precious seconds of air conditioning and mumble a lyric or two to myself before I

journey inside. Sure, it’s hot out here, but heaven awaits just a few yards away.

It’s 1:28 on an oppressively humid Saturday afternoon in Jackson, Mississippi,

and I have just pulled up to the curb at 509 North Farish Street. Around me are the

crumbling facades of what was once the city’s African-American business and cultural

hub, the Farish Street District. What remains are empty storefronts, a couple of

churches and restaurants, and a jazz club or two. We call them “juke joints” around

here, but they’re jazz clubs nonetheless. The symptoms of crippling poverty take on a

human aspect, as homeless men try to avoid the blistering sun. Farish Street was once

known as “Little Harlem,” and was Jackson’s version of Beale Street. It is now slated to

be the next gentrification project in a city not exactly known for healthy race relations.

Less than a quarter-mile away, thousands of mostly white and affluent

Mississippians gather under the stately oaks of the capitol grounds for the annual

Mississippi Book Festival, a celebration of Mississippi’s literary heritage. And while I

must admit that what brought me, a somewhat affluent white man, to Jackson on this

day is the Book Festival, what has kept me here to the present is a $1.50 pig ear

sandwich.

This ain’t my first rodeo. I know the deal. I keep my head down, walking quickly,

and carefully push through the narrow door into the Big Apple Inn. There’s a line

formed, three men along the wall to my left, and I make my way to the back while my

eyes adjust to the relative darkness. I stand between the unplugged jukebox filled with

Teddy Pendergrast and Barry White records and the Pepsi machine (where all

beverages available for purchase are to be found). The old stereo sitting against the

back wall in what constitutes the kitchen is playing Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved A

Man (The Way I Love)” and the ladies slinging chow are talking with the customers

ahead of me about how somebody had better wrap up Patti Labelle in bubble-wrap

because this Angel of Death ain’t playing with nobody, and they can’t handle losing

another diva for a little bit. If you squint, you can almost see famed bluesman Sonny

Boy Williamson sitting in the corner; he lived in an apartment above the Big Apple. You

can almost hear Medgar Evers holding court; his office while serving as the NAACP’s

Jackson field secretary was upstairs, as was Fannie Lou Hamer’s, and they often held

NAACP meetings in the restaurant below.

I turn to the menu sign and take it in, front-lit by a dusty bulb in a fixture made to

look like a cowboy hat, as though I hadn’t already decided what I’m getting before I

turned the car off. People have legacy orders here, which they rattle off like their

address or social security number. Deviation therefrom is inconceivable once the magic

combination has been discovered. The crowd has winnowed, and I step past the

ancient coin-operated, weight-scale-shaped machine advertising “Character Readings -

Your Future?” into the small space reserved for the head of the line. It’s my turn to

engage the lady behind the plexiglass, who greets me with the coded invitation to order,

to which I give my well-rehearsed countersign: “Hi – I’d like a half dozen; two smokes,

hot; one smoke, mild; and three ears, hot, please ma’am.” A half dozen refers to hot

tamales - the tamale’s Mississippi Delta cousin, braised in a spicy broth instead of

steamed, and commonly featuring ground beef instead of pork or chicken. A smoke, for

the neophytes among us, is a sandwich of smoked ground pork sausage. They come in

hot, mild, and “no hot” varieties, but hot or mild are the only acceptable versions. An ear

is exactly what you think it is.

The man who opened the Big Apple, Big John Mora, famously never turned away

free food, and when grocers gave him boxes of pig ears because they were unable to

sell them, he was determined to find a way to make them tender enough to eat. He

found, after a great deal of experimentation, that merely boiling them for two days (!!)

would reduce them to a soft, pliable, porky delicacy. Nowadays, they use a pressure

cooker.

This is a vestige of a food culture grounded fundamentally in hardscrabble

economics. “Waste not, want not,” writ large. Income inequality has become a cause

celebre of late, but it has always been a part of life in Mississippi. In the poorest state in

the union, the laws are often written to ensure that the relatively rich get richer, and the

poor get babies. With more mouths to feed and fewer dollars with which to do so, the

vulnerable embraced the unpondered. The hungry poor survived by finding fiscal

responsibility in the efficient elimination of waste. This is the source of such delights as

souse, trotters, oxtails, and indeed, the venerated star of our story, the lowly pig ear. By

filling growling bellies with tasty victuals for pennies on the lower-class dollar, the people

often targeted by the economic realities of living in Mississippi have been able to

scratch out a way of life. But what’s more, they have created a truly wonderful cuisine,

akin in philosophy to the fighter with a chip on his shoulder. Another man’s refuse is the

backbone of a culinary viewpoint with dignified simplicity.

Each sandwich made to order, it takes about forty-five seconds total. The lady

behind the griddle has it down to an art: inverted top bun, offset spatula smear of

sausage or fork stab of pig ear onto bun, swipe of mustard, spoon of slaw, spoon of

sauce, bottom bun on top, slide spatula under inverted top bun, scoop onto wax paper,

ninja-quick fold. Nine bucks, for two sausage sandwiches with mustard, slaw, and hot

sauce; one with just mustard and slaw; and three pig ear sandwiches with mustard,

slaw, and hot sauce. The half dozen hot tamales run me six. Fifteen bucks total. Fifteen

freakin’ bucks. I paid the lady and proceeded to grab my loot and head out the door,

with a nondescript paper bag, a clamshell, and a lunatic grin. I jump in my car and drive

a few blocks to a shaded parking spot in sight of the capitol grounds, and get out to ogle

my bounty, spread out like contents of a treasure chest on the trunk of my convertible.

The wax paper struggles to contain the fatty delights within, as evidenced by the

grease leached into the structure of the brown paper bag which leaves an imprint on the

trunk of the car. No matter – I’m a man on a mission. The ears come first, of course,

although I save one for last.

I tear into the slightly-greasy-in-the-best-possible-way square slider bun

overflowing with oinking, oozing, porky goodness. The ear, having been cooked down,

has the texture of strips of braised lengua – soft but not completely without resistance –

and the flavor of pure pork fat. Its mouthfeel is similar to the best oxtails you’ve ever

tasted – fatty and rich. The slaw, mustard, and hot sauce combine to cut the richness

with bright acidity and a creamy sweetness that brings to mind Carolina-style

barbecue’s use of similar elements. The bread soaks up what the rest leave behind.

The smokes are spicy (even the mild ones) and sharp. Ground small and cooked loose

on a griddle top, it looks like a sloppy joe, but hits like Joe Frazier. The slaw and sauce

do their jobs well, evening out an otherwise super-strong sausage punch. Perhaps best

of all, some of the sausage is almost crispy, giving some texture to a sandwich which

otherwise is soft on soft with slaw.

As I swoon, mouth stuffed and brow beginning to furrow sweat, I take stock of my

surroundings and for the first time, really take a good, long look at the capitol, a building

in which bill after bill after bill have become law after law after law which have served to

perpetuate the conditions which gave rise to the Big Apple Inn and its delicious food. Of

course, I am delighted that the Big Apple stood its ground in the midst of chronic

underfunding of infrastructure and economic development in the Farish Street District.

Generations of Jacksonians are, and will continue to be indebted to Geno Lee and his

father, grandfather, and great-grandfather for believing in the vision of Farish Street and

remaining invested in the African-American communities of Jackson.

People in need know that, when times are really bad, they can come see Geno,

just as they came to see his father and grandfather and great-grandfather before. They

know that they can get something to eat if they need it. This is not to lionize Geno and

those who came before for feeding the hungry, although they certainly deserve

recognition for it. Rather, I mention this to draw into sharp relief the relationship between

The Big Apple and the community in which it has thrived for decades – that of

symbiosis. These people need The Big Apple as much as they are needed by it.

The conditions in spite of which they have achieved success and notoriety – they

have done well enough to open another location – are striking, and in the poorest state

in the union, the question remains: while it is amazing that the Big Apple has been so

resilient, why should that have been so necessary, for so long, in the first place?

I reach for the last sandwich, only to realize that it was a crumpled-up ball of wax

paper and my heart sinks – in my mad rush, I had lost count, and had been anticipating

the crescendo of The Final Ear. Disappointed, my fingers sticky with slaw residue and

pork fat, I sadly clean up my mess as I consider driving back over to the Big Apple for

another go-round – the hot tamales are for lunch tomorrow (although I doubt they’ll

survive the forty-five minute drive home).

The Big Apple Inn 509 N. Farish St. Jackson, Mississippi 601-354-9371