My People

Ted Reads My People

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There is a restaurant in Nashville that I frequented often when I lived there.  It is now the first stop I make every time I return.  I get off the plane, rent a car, and head straight there.

When I am in Nashville and lunchtime rolls around, the question inevitably comes up: “What about lunch?” (or breakfast or dinner). Whether I am with others or not, my first thought is Wendell Smith’s. (53^rd and Charlotte). 

If I am with some friends or clients, I would never recommend going there.  I realize it is my recognition of and respect for differing social classes’ needs and expectations.  They would be as uncomfortable at Wendell’s as I am going to a really classy restaurant.  It is really a bonus when I know the people would want to go there too. 

Wendell’s is a meat-and-three. A piece of meat, three vegetables and cornbread or a roll. The feel is that of a very busy classic diner or deli.  One that is so busy that your arrival will be no big deal.  One that has over the last 75 years never felt the need to reinvent itself. Multiple little booths. A few tables. You walk in, find your own seat (often a challenge because the place is typically nearly full) and the handwritten menus are waiting for you on the table.  A server comes by, likely greeting you with, “What’cha all havin’, darlin’?  (Note: even if you know that they don’t know you well enough to know whether you are really a darlin, it still feels good to hear them call you one). The food usually appears in less than five minutes. 

You choose a meat, (beef, pork, chicken, catfish,) and then select three “vegetables.” You can order more than three, but you’ll pay extra. Vegetarians can order straight from the vegetable list, though they may receive a brief, curious, “Do you know this is a meat and three” second look, from the person taking the order.

The menu shifts slightly by the day and week. The meats rotate through roast beef, baked ham, pit barbecue, beef tips, baked/BBQed/fried chicken, chicken livers on toast, salmon patties with pea sauce, BBQed spareribs, Polish sausage with kraut, chicken and dumplings, pork steak, liver with onion gravy, fried catfish, beefsteak, spaghetti with meat sauce, and meatloaf.

The vegetables include sliced tomatoes, fried corn, cottage cheese, coleslaw, creamed potatoes, fresh turnip greens, candied yams, marshmallow yams, purple hull peas, field peas, pinto beans, buttered cabbage, glazed baby carrots, buttered turnips, deviled eggs, fried okra, parsley new potatoes, potato salad, pickled beets, green beans, white beans, fresh baked squash, cucumber onion salad, congealed fruit, and fresh baked apples. 

I especially enjoy knowing that the last two are officially considered vegetables.  The congealed fruit is what most people would call cherry Jell-O with canned fruit cocktail mixed in. The fresh baked apples are essentially what lives inside an apple pie, minus the crust. I can eat them both and feel good about eating my vegetables.

At lunch and dinner the place is filled to near-capacity. Old-timers who know each other by name, or nickname. First-timers are easy to spot, wearing that brief look of confusion as they try to figure out how it all works.  Cost? Somewhere between $15 and $20 for what I would call simple, delicious, classic, blue-collar, real food.  The kind I grew up with.

If, while reading the menu that I listed above, you know exactly what these dishes look like, remember what they smell like, taste like; if you found your mouth watering at some I listed, and with others saying “yuck” because you remember - you would love this place. 

And that would tell me something about you.

So why am I telling you all this?  Because the last time I walked in, a voice inside my head said, “Ahhh it’s good to be with my people.”  I was startled. Where did that come from? I had been at Wendall’s dozens of times over thirty years and had never had that thought before. 

Who are “My People?”  Simple people. Common people. Blue jeans and flannel shirts. Work boots. Ball caps. Faces worn not so gently by life. Their bodies baring witness to life’s pain, poverty, loss, struggle.  They are the people I grew up with.  My mom, dad, aunts, uncles, grandparents.  I came from those people.  Though we never ate at restaurants, we ate these foods. 

These folks are the kind of people that help neighbors because it’s the right thing to do, without being asked, without expecting anything in return.  Helping sometimes without anyone knowing, even the one being helped.  If they see a gate open, they close it. They wonder, quietly, why those who have more don’t share when they see a need. They tend to express love not through words, but through doing, especially food. 

They are people who have difficulty buying things, especially for themselves.  They prefer utility over fancy, simple over complex, Jerry-rigging or MacGyvering solutions rather than buying one.  A sensitivity to wasting or throwing something away, a sensitivity to getting their money’s worth, reluctant to ask for help, and have a strong sense of self-sufficiency.  Autonomy is a survival skill.  They have a strong sense of “making do.”  They downplay their significance, minimize and deny their contribution to success.  Prioritizing predictability and security over risk taking.   

I told a friend about my experience, and they suggested that just as ducks are imprinted at birth, perhaps humans are too. That what we grow up with never fully lets us go while quietly directing and leading us towards what is familiar, comfortable.  Emotional conditioning that people and things we grew up with intuitively know and we know others who came from the same bolt of cloth.  Research suggests that this imprinting is pretty much done by age nine, and like ducks, it is internalized, beyond our consciousness and is permanent.      

I have traveled the world. I have done extraordinary things. I have rubbed elbows with and worked with some of the wealthiest, most powerful, most famous people alive. While with them I realize that I am just visiting.  I am not one of them. I never will be.  Not sure I would want to be, because I wouldn’t and don’t know the rules, expectations and customs. 

They know that, and I know that.  Somewhere deep inside me, I know who I am.  And apparently, the real me knows where home and “my people” are.  I’d guess that is true for all of us, regardless of what was happening to and for us over our first nine years of life. 

As a schoolteacher, I always felt most at ease with the bus drivers, the janitors, the lunch ladies. I noticed them. I respected them. I gave them baseball hats from teams I coached, jackets, a nod of recognition, a gift of time, or a little joke.  Small gestures of appreciation.  Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.  As a kid, I often wondered why those with more didn’t seem to notice those with less. I was one of the latter.  Somehow it got implanted for me to do what I always wondered why others didn’t.  I suppose I promised myself that if I had the chance, I would notice.

But just maybe it wasn’t my generosity at all.  Maybe I just felt more comfortable and safer being with and around “my people.”  Maybe I was using them for my own comfort.  Regardless of the motivation, we both benefited. 

Standing there at Wendell’s, hearing the echo of my all too familiar, internal, silent voice, surrounded by familiar faces and familiar food, it felt good.  It felt good to be home. It felt good to be with “My People.” 

I’m wondering who “your people” are, and what do they eat?