Pretty Good Cornbread

Use a cast iron skillet for best results

Once, many years ago now, I lived in a little place in Alabama. I don’t say town because I think it might be overspeaking to say that; there were no borders I knew of, or mayor or aldermen, no fire station or police, not even a gas station.

But there was a school, a great big brick beauty, with a blizzard of monkey bars and swingsets, and a baseball field and three churches that carried the name.

Alabama, Polaroid 600 (2007)

The road I lived on wove up and down what seemed to me at the time to be a mountain. At the top, the very highest point, the TV stations had placed their antennas, so people all over Alabama could hear about how hot it was going to be that weekend, whether they should go outside or not (when I was little, the air was very bad from the steel mills, and the TV would tell you not to go outside if you were very young or very elderly), whether Alabama whupped Auburn or not.

Alabama, Polaroid 600 (2020)

Because of the towers, it was called Tower Drive. And in the gaps in the kudzu and trees at the top, you could even see the fireworks over Vulcan on the Fourth of July. We would drive up there and park with other folks from where we lived and watch the soundless stars exploding in the sky.

My parents were married there, in this special place, in 1973. The church was right down the street from where we lived and from where I played ball. In the summer we would ride the bus there for Vacation Bible School. Because we walked to school—it was only three houses down from where we lived—riding the bus was a treat, something special, and there are joyful whispers of it at the back of my head. But I no longer remember that very well, although I suspect if I walked the concrete block hallways of the church again the smell of the place, the feel of the walls underneath my hand, would perhaps remind me.

Polaroid SX-70 (2022)

A little while ago my mother gave me a book of recipes from one of the churches. It keeps giving me glimpses of this place which is and is not. (If you want to hear more about the recipe book, press your finger on the thing right below this line, but maybe it is kind of sad, even though it is all true (but maybe it is sad because it is very true)).

ESCAPE VELOCITY

One of the recipes caught my eye and on New Year’s Day of 2023 I made it, and have tinkered with it just a smidge; last night it made some very, very fine cornbread. It just takes a little of your time, and maybe if you make it, you will remember bus trips and ballparks of your own time growing up, and keep the place I lived in memory just a little longer.

SANDUSKY CORNBREAD
(Adapted from Pretty Good Cornbread, by Dorothy Hubbert, of Sandusky Methodist Church)

1 egg
1 1/3 cup buttermilk¹
1 1/2 cup self-rising corn meal
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Coat the sides and bottom of your best cast-iron skillet in butter. Place it in the oven and set it for 450 degrees.

Then beat the egg into the buttermilk. Next add the melted butter and the corn meal. Mix it all together. Pour this mixture in the the fire-hot skillet; it will sizzle in a truly satisfying way, making an automatic crust on the bottom and sides. It’ll be ready in about 18-20 minutes.

“PRETTY GOOD CORNBREAD” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, a newsletter devoted to art and life in the South on instant film. If you like it, consider sending it to a pal. Just like anything, some weeks are better than others. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.

1. NON-NEGOTIABLE; THIS IS AN INGREDIENT, NOT A SUGGESTION