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CoTTORA Holy Cross Pilgrimage - July 2008

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About Dale Andrew White. Books by Dale Andrew White.

Florida Memories: Gator Tales II

Idella must have developed her cooking as well as academic skills there; the institute offered cooking classes, while its first students and faculty raised money for the school by selling homemade ice cream, sweet potato pie, and fried fish to workers at the town dump, adjacent to the land Bethune had been able to acquire for her school.

Idella later developed her skills as a cook for a wealthy West Palm Beach couple. Preparing to take another job, Idella was more or less abducted by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.


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Rawlings in due course drove her to rural Cross Creek, an unknown area that had a reputation for hostility to blacks. There, for the next ten years, each woman lived the contorted double life that doctrinal racial inequality imposes. They shared an ambivalent potential friendship truncated by the capricious power that the white woman could impose on the black; Rawlings loved Idella without respect, and Idella loved Rawlings without trust. They were colleagues in the kitchen, though Rawlings would only intermittently acknowledge this.

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It was Idella who tested the recipes again and again in the sweltering kitchen, which was equipped with only a wood-burning stove. The house was dependent on the hospitality of those who were denied hospitality themselves.

Been to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park? Share your experiences!

When the black novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston came to dinner, her professional stature earned her a place at the table. It was a house without the bedrock foundation of shared memories. R each course just as I did when guests were there. Then I would go in the kitchen to eat my dinner. Rawlings was capable of flashes of insight into the life she made for Idella, making gestures on her behalf that were also displays of power. She left Cross Creek after Rawlings for a third time insisted on her company during a drunken joy ride, involving her in a third nearly fatal accident.

Idella went on to live a fruitful life of dignity and purpose. She joined the NAACP, working as a community liaison, made a happy marriage, and became a teacher of domestic science. She summed up her relationship with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings with a legend from her Reddick past. In the tale, a white woman and a black woman, equals only in exhaustion and in poverty, communicate in song, although they never meet.

Part of Old Florida that is long gone. - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park

I have another thought, of countless stars in that crown. As many as the crisp biscuits Idella made from childhood on, nearly every day of her life. Throughout the months leading up to my trip, the words Cross Creek, Stumpknockers, Withlacoochee and Yankeetown continually circulated through my mind, and, like a magical incantation, conjured up the essence of Florida. Part of this vision was culinary— I imagined I would certainly have another chance to eat gator after my dashed hopes on the shores of Lake Jesup see last post. Yet the gator in my mind was not at all how one might envision the lobster, for instance, on an impending trip to Maine.

A Pilgrimage to Cross Creek by Dale Andrew White

While this makes me think I should learn more about the lobster, and should make the effort to be in awe of all animals that end up on my plate, it also highlights the fact that it takes no effort to fear the gator. Growing up in Central Florida, surrounded by lakes, I learned early on that even land is not safe, as gators can overcome humans both in and out of water. I admittedly never felt entirely secure in the backyard pool. At this time, gators were on the list of Endangered Species but steadily recovering, and my childhood was marked by their increasing presence rather than decline.

They were removed from the list in , when I was With all these former gator impressions swirling around in my head, I set off with my mom on our two-day excursion into Old Florida.


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The mosquitoes tried hard to get my attention, but the gator remained the ever-present, true protagonist of the journey. Rawlings, known for her culinary skills, was particularly proud of her gator tail steaks. Some of her specialties and favorite dishes are on the menu, like sour orange pie, prepared like the key lime version but with local sour oranges instead.

We ordered the Cracker Platter, which included fried gator bites as well as fried green tomatoes, frog legs and, rather mysteriously, portobello mushrooms.