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View From Your Table

Lunch at the Old Country Store, on the side of Highway 61, in the Mississippi Delta. I drove up last week to meet my friends Philip and Barbara Bess for lunch. Philip is the well-known professor of architecture and design at Notre Dame. He regularly takes his students on architecture tours of the South. When […]
Lorman, Mississippi
Lorman, Mississippi

Lunch at the Old Country Store, on the side of Highway 61, in the Mississippi Delta. I drove up last week to meet my friends Philip and Barbara Bess for lunch. Philip is the well-known professor of architecture and design at Notre Dame. He regularly takes his students on architecture tours of the South. When he can, he stops at the Old Country Store for a soul food lunch.

It’s funny, but what most people outside the South call “soul food” is just Southern country people food. Country white people eat the same thing, or at least they used to. I grew up with this stuff: fried chicken, mustard greens, field peas, cornbread, and so on.

Phil and Barbara were celebrating their 40th anniversary. Arthur “Mr. D” Davis, the proprietor and fried chicken impresario, serenaded Barbara with a Motown classic. Unfortunately I couldn’t get both Barbara’s face and Mr. D’s in the same shot. But what a great moment!:

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Here’s an external shot of the store:

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And here’s a clip from Mississippi Public Broadcasting, featuring Mr. D:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a9d9xpTx1g?rel=0&w=525&h=330]

That’s some good food there. While we were eating, a friend of mine from St. Francisville (90 minutes to the South) walked in. He said he had been in El Dorado, Arkansas, on business that day, and wanted some fried chicken before he got home. Well, the Old Country Store sure is the place! He was headed out after lunch to search out the ghost town of Rodney. Ah, the South…

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