From the managing editor, December 2019

In early October, friends were remembering the anniversary of the birth of Asheville writer Thomas Wolfe. 

Laura Hope-Gill, director of the Thomas Wolfe Center at Lenoir-Rhyne University, posed this question: “In honor of Thomas Wolfe’s birthday, tell me your experience(s) with Wolfe’s words.”

I grew up in Asheville, and on occasion as a boy I was infrequently left alone in downtown—I was an original latch-key kid—waiting on my mother to drive in from her job in Black Mountain to pick me up after school. I was expected to sit in the library on Pack Square, but being a curious child I often took off, especially if the weather was good, to walk the city. Occasionally I would go to the Thomas Wolfe house, located a couple of blocks away. I didn’t go in; I just stood outside, looking at what Wolfe’s mother called the Old Kentucky Home, which she ran as a boarding house.

I think what I took away from those pilgrimages was the realization that people from my community could grow up to be writers. Later, reading how Maxwell Perkins whipped Wolfe’s writings into books suggested that people can grow up to be editors.

I chose a Wolfe quote that I decided has a varied meaning, as you will see: “There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves.”

This line means so much more if “a beautiful woman” isn’t necessarily what you immediately think. It can be one who gets up every day, does what must be done, and smiles as she shares life with those around her, no matter how hard the day has worn on her.

When I read this line I think of my maternal grandmother, born of Buncombe, middle-aged as World War II called two sons and a daughter into service, a constant in my childhood, of love and consistency and support and peanut butter fudge. As she became stooped, unable to walk the 400 yards she usually did several times a week to visit her son and her daughter and a grandchild—me—she still took joy in the simplest things, such as making us food to nourish our bodies. On those walks she also made sure to bring a treat for the dogs, something for Lady, Uncle Ellis’ pup who loved to chase cars, and something for Tony, our Airedale who watched for her to come slowly walking up the path out of the woods near ‘the turn-around place,’ which was our rather obvious name for the part of the driveway you backed to, to turn the car around to leave. The dog treats were a piece of gristle off of a chicken leg or a piece of fat from some beef, and they loved her for it.

“Let me heat some water for coffee” was one of the first things she said in the morning after I had stayed over the night before. (Running away to Nana’s was what I called it. I would pack a tiny suitcase and run across the road to sit with her to watch Lawrence Welk and Wild Kingdom.)

When I was in school and mom and I would arrive back in Riceville well after dark on a winter evening, we always stopped to bring her groceries, bring in firewood, and just to check and see that she was OK. She almost always had cooked something for us to take home—something to kick-start a meal; beans slow cooked all day or a pan of corn bread.

Mom—her youngest child—always canned things in the late summer, busy in the hot kitchen, preparing the green beans or bread-and-butter pickles for the Mason jars. Was there a church dinner or a picnic with friends? Mom would boil gallons of water to prepare fresh tea, steeped with those industrial-size tea bags in a big Revere-ware pot, then poured into recycled Ingles milk jugs for transport. She labeled the jugs—SWEET and NOT SWEET.

Anyone who came into Mom’s house had to side-step around stacks of stuff—magazines, sewing, newspapers, recycling—but she always wanted to feed you. She always had something she could prepare quickly to fill your stomach.

I think it was just a constant in their lives: Food is of value, and preparing it for loved ones is a sharing; a loving. It probably was the same for Wolfe, as they all came from the same lovely region of Appalachia. 

You’re important to me, so come eat.