Mouthful of heart and soul
Bob Newhart has a wonderful old bit where he claims that if you gave enough monkeys enough typewriters, sooner or later they would write all the great books.
Whether they would come up with great comedy bits is another matter. You have to think that art isn’t merely a mob effort. All it really takes is the right monkey.
I used to think that if there were no booze, there would’ve been no great books. What sun is to citrus, hooch is to the recesses of the literary mind. That’s not to say aspiring authors should drink. Neither, though, should they completely rule it out.
Admit this, at least: You have to live a little to write really well:
“Wine comes in at the mouth, and love comes in at the eye. ... I lift the glass to my mouth, I look at you, and I sigh.”
To me, Yeats’ words are nearly perfect. There’s no app for that. To write like that, you have to bleed a little, live a lot.
You also have to live a while to create an artful fall soup. The world’s best soup, and I am prepared to duel at 30 paces to defend this, is made in a family restaurant on Lake Avenue in Pasadena. Pure poetry.
There is no lake on Lake, just the steaming vat of gumbo at Big Mama’s Rib Shack, less than a mile up the hill from Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles.
With me so far? Well, that’s a minor miracle.
Admit this too: All happiness begins with the mouth. A smile. A kiss. The perfect quip.
Point is, if the mouth is happy, so is the mind, and that most overrated of organs, the heart. The mouth is not an organ, but it should be. A mouth is just a mouth, the origin of all happiness, that’s all.
If you’ve never had gumbo, I feel for you, for that’s a little like never experiencing a sunset, or a roaring fireplace, or a Newhart routine.
To call gumbo a soup really shortchanges it, deprives it of its sacramental qualities. What chicken soup does for Jews, gumbo does for Southerners.
In the South, gumbo recipes are heirlooms, handed down from one generation to the next, guarded like diaries.
Basically a stew, gumbo begins with the roux, sort of a sainted pre-gravy, made by whisking together grease and flour at temperatures 3 degrees north of napalm, till it’s hot enough to melt Donald Trump’s hair.
Added to this, virtually any leftovers: chicken, shrimp, sausage, vegetables. Filé, the dusty powder of sassafras leaves, is a key ingredient. A little voodoo helps as well.
The result is a steamy, muddy, rich bowl of happiness, served over white rice.
At Big Mama’s, I stormed the kitchen in search of the secret, and Anita McWhorter, the Gumbo Princess of Southern California and Perhaps the World, chased me out. She was gracious enough in that Southern way not to kill me, but no way was she going to give me the secret family recipe.
It was handed down to her half a century ago by Big Mama herself.
The legend of Big Mama begins in Georgia, where Emma Sue Miller McWhorter (Big Mama) met her husband, James (Candy Jim), then moved to Chattanooga, Tenn., where they ran a series of restaurants. Eventually, Big Mama would follow her son, Dargin, out to Pasadena, where he was pursuing a boxing career.
With Big Mama advising, Dargin and his wife, Anita, took the lead and ran joints in Altadena, then Old Town, even Las Vegas. But since 2002, the focal point has been this roomy restaurant in the working-class section of Pasadena.
“It’s the best soul food around,” says customer Yamia Dawson, who comes all the way from Granada Hills. “It’s worth the drive.”
The menu has changed with the times, says Dargin, now 77. They’ve worked at making the dishes more healthful, yet still transcendent.
“This food came out of slavery,” he says. “Then after slavery, black people still worked the hard jobs, so you could sweat it off.
“But we had to make it healthier,” he says.
Hence, there is no grease in the roux anymore, which is a little like taking the duck out of Peking duck. I don’t know what they sub. Magic? Extra voodoo? Anita won’t say.
In any case, this gumbo is a work of art, the culmination of inspiration, hard work and a rich family history.
I raise a spoon, I look at you, I sigh.
Big Mama’s Rib Shack
Where: 1453 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena
Phone: (626) 797-1792
On the Web: www.bigmamaspasadena.com
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