"I'm a fortunate son": Talking Southern history and good biscuits with John T. Edge
Plus: Win an autographed copy of John T.'s outstanding new book!
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Every once in awhile, I’ll drive past the house where I grew up outside Atlanta. I can still see the plum tree I used to climb, the driveway where I learned to ride a bike, the sidewalk where I’d rush from the breakfast table to catch my dad’s car as he pulled out to work in the mornings. There’s also still the remnants of a gouged-out trench running the length of the front yard where a city crew tried, very much against my parents’ wishes, to install a sidewalk and instead created one of our family’s great legends — one involving my mom basically laying down in front of a bulldozer.
Houses can be haunted by more than just spooky Victorian children, you know. They’re haunted by your own past, by the younger you, by the younger versions of your parents, the joy and the sadness that lived within those walls while you did. You know that feeling, that twinge you get when driving past your old house? Yeah. That’s your ghosts, sidling up and riding alongside you.
John T. Edge knows a thing or two about ghosts, about the hold that the past has on the present. He’s one of the preeminent scholars on Southern foodways, the study of how what we eat defines and shapes who we are and where we live. He’s the host of “TrueSouth,” the exceptional food-and-travel documentary on the SEC Network that made a head-fake in the direction of college towns and quickly struck out into deeply reverential, even spiritual territory. And now, he’s the author of an exceptional new book, “House of Smoke,” that delves deep into his past, both long-ago and recent, and tries to make sense of the contradictions and complications that come with growing up clear-eyed in the South.
Now, putting my bias right out front here: John T. is a friend, and more than that, a mentor and a guide. He was the executive producer of “Home Turn,” our NASCAR series, and his advice on how to write for the screen while still maintaining a clear line-of-sight on the larger truth was invaluable. So I knew I’d love his book, and I think you will too.
“Most of my career, I’ve spent telling other people’s stories. Like, that’s what drives me, is the curiosity about the world and about the people who inhabit it,” John T. says. “But I realized when I wrote a piece a while back called My Mother’s Catfish Stew, and so many people wrote back to me about their own mothers and said things to me like, My mother’s drug was her barbiturates. And I grew up in Texas. But I saw some of myself in your story, and it helped me figure some things out.
“That made me wake up and go, Oh, OK, you know, these things I thought were singular about my upbringing, both my relationship to my family, and then the larger relationship that I have with the South … I thought those things were singular,” he continues. “I realized that if they’re not universal, they’re at least very relatable. And when I realized that, I recognized that I had a responsibility to share that story. If I’m a writer and I have the ability to convey these stories, then I had a responsibility to share them.”
And from there, it was simply a matter of facing down the blank page. “Writing for me is a way to think,” he says. “I don’t know what I think about something until I write about it. So for me, it’s a way to take in all of the things I see and hear and taste and make sense of them.”
(As you can see, John T. is an extraordinarily skilled speaker. When your source talks in paragraphs, you simply sit back and let them.)
“House of Smoke” traces the events that combine to define John T.’s life, from the way the Civil War had a dramatic impact on the home where he grew up — man, I hate spoiling anything about books — right on up through to the way the pandemic and shifting cultural beliefs had a dramatic impact on his career and his worldview.
“I’m trying to make sense of my life,” John T. says. “I’m trying to look for cause and effect. And I’m trying to figure out what good I can do in the world. And I’m trying to figure out how to rewrite the stories I inherited as a boy from my family and from the South to make a better self and make a better South.”
So what’s his writing process like? Finding the universal in the particular, to start. “I love details,” he says. “I love sitting in a corner of a restaurant and eavesdropping and scribbling down the color of the flag that flies over the buffet and capturing the smells of a restaurant at high noon. You know, that’s the stuff of magazine writing and book writing.”
“If it doesn’t smell like anything, turn around”
Which brings up an important question: What does John T. Edge, connoisseur of all things good and joyful in Southern food, look for when he enters a restaurant?
“I do a lot of scouting for TrueSouth,” he says. “And I eat more bad meals than good ones.Because when I’m at the transom of a restaurant I haven’t been to before, I believe with great fervor that this place is going to be great. And I want to believe that. And that’s the only reason you stop, is that you’re going to find something beautiful.
“But the things that tell me as I cross the transom is, What does the place smell like? If it’s a barbecue restaurant, does it smell like smoke? If it’s a meat and three, does it smell like chicken grease? If it doesn’t smell like anything, turn around.
“But even more than that, it’s looking at the people. The people in that place, eating their meals or standing in line to order their meals, are they joyfully expectant? Do they already know what’s about to happen and that their day’s going to get a little bit better for the 45 minutes they spend inside those walls? And then is there somebody who appears to be an owner or at least the long-term manager? Is there somebody in charge? Is there somebody running the show? Does somebody really care? Does somebody look you in the eye and say, Welcome, I’m glad you’re here?”
He’s been doing this for a long time now, and in that time, he’s seen some substantial change, but there’s one that gets at him. “I’ll tell you what is harder to find these days, and that’s biscuits, like road biscuits,” he says. “Now I have to ask people, Do you make your own biscuits? Some people will say yes, because their idea of making their own biscuits is brushing some butter on top of the frozen pucks that come out of the freezer case. I find myself pantomiming, like rolling a pin, as you would to make biscuits.
“There’s a new class of Southern breakfast restaurants, like Big Bad Breakfast, which does a great job with biscuits. But the old guard that’s selling you a $2.50 sausage biscuit, and they’ll give you little packets of grape jelly to smear on it, and maybe some mustard, whatever the custom is in that place — those kinds of places are harder and harder to find, and I crave them.
“I think there are a whole lot of frozen biscuit salesmen out there trying to convince the restaurateurs of the South that they’re just as good,” he declares. “And I’m here to tell you they’re not.”
“What is the South?”
As a particularly eloquent student-slash-cultural tour guide of the South, John T. often finds himself called upon to define what this bizarre land is, what it means, what it could be and where it falls short.
“I was at dinner last night with some people we didn’t know who were seated across the table from us at a communal dinner,” he says. “And the woman says, ‘What is the South?’
“And one of the things I said to this woman is, the South is comparable in size to Western Europe. So to unspool an easy narrative that explains this place is folly. To recognize the complexity of this place is the way to go. And to do your best to look past the stereotypes that offer the easy explanation, that offer you stock figures, that’s the way I try to go.
“But if I tried to boil it down and say, What is the South?, I’d say it’s a place more cultural than geographical, wherein the past and the present intertwine,” he continues. “And I would say that, in many ways, it’s a place that, if you love it, it pushes you away and pulls you back in equal measure. And our job as Southerners, whether you arrived last week or 300 years ago, is to love our place and our people.
“The South has always been a multicultural place,” he says. “But if you didn’t look closely, it was sometimes easy to miss that. Now, by way of the bounties of immigration, the South is, without a shadow of a doubt, a place where my weekday lunch is more often tacos al pastor and horchata. Whereas when I was a boy, my weekday lunch was a barbecue sandwich and slaw and Brunswick stew and an iced tea.
“The South is a process, not a product,” he concludes. “Culture is a process. It changes, it morphs, it continues to change.”
“I’m a fortunate son”
A scholar, a writer, a TV host, a traveler along the South’s back roads … there are worse ways to live a life, and John T. knows it.
“I’ve had, by way of this book, I’ve had a lot of time to figure some things out,” he says. “I’m a fortunate son. You know, I’m 62 years old, and it’s, you know, doing more good work than I’ve ever gotten to do in my life. You know, my wife is recently retired from teaching 28 years at the University of Mississippi. Now she’s a full-time painter and collage artist. I’m just full of joy, and joy is a grounding mechanism. Joy reminds you that the small decisions made along the way, and your responses to the bad decisions you made along the way, define a life. And I’m just trying my damnedest to be kind to other people as I move through this world.”
Get your copy of “House of Smoke” today. You’ll love it, I guarantee it.
Win a copy of “House of Smoke”!
Here’s the deal: Spread the word about this article and “House of Smoke” and we’ll hook one lucky winner up with an autographed copy. Share this story, “like” it, and/or comment below — tell us a cool story about your childhood home — and you’ll get one entry in the lottery for each of those. And if you don’t win, make sure you buy the book anyway.
Song of the Week: Darrell Scott, “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive”
We always ask our guests to suggest their favorite tune for a road trip, and John T. delivered a beauty…
“I listen to a lot of Lee Baines. I listen to a lot of Randy Newman. Both people who love the South and are critical of the South at the same time,” he says. “But if you got my Spotify stats, you would find that the song I play more than any other is a song called ‘It’s A Great Day To Be Alive’ by Darrell Scott.
“That featured in our Madisonville, Tennessee episode of TrueSouth. I fell in love with that song on the front porch of Sharon and Allan Benton’s house. And it became even more important to me when my father passed three years ago this August. And it became this kind of, I don’t know, morning sermon for me.
“I’d listen to that song and sing along and try to live that day, try to live a good life. Even though I might have been sad, even though I’m full of strife sometimes, that song by Darrell Scott reminds me, it’s a great day to be alive.”
Damn right. Check out “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive” and all the other fine tunes featured in our newsletter at the official Flashlight & A Biscuit Spotify newsletter right here.
That’ll do it for this week, my friends. Back soon with more … turns out publishing a book right in the teeth of the college football/NFL season takes a bite out of your free time! But I miss y’all. More soon!
—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia
This is issue #170 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:
Home Turn, our new show for NASCAR Studios, is right here for you to watch:
Hey, my new book is out!
Crime and college football, a glorious pairing
Drinking beers at a serial killer’s last resort
My uncle knocked out Joe DiMaggio
Our first documentary, on the famous Rama Jama’s diner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
What does “Flashlight & A Biscuit” mean, anyway?
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