Food and Southern Women

Local Georgia Food Story

This has been submitted to BlogHer for their upcoming ebook about food.
 Who knows they may like it. Wish me well.

The power of food and southern women has always been intertwined.  I married a wickedly charming man but he dragged me to the middle of nowhere. Otherwise known as Middle Georgia. The only job I could get and keep my retirement was as a Director of Nursing at a state prison. The tall, imposing, imperial deep voiced warden walked through Medical daily and called every staff member "Doc" regardless of their name or title. I found it disrespectful to our physician as well as to the nursing staff. Besides, how on earth did we know who he was addressing when he wanted something?

I decided to teach him my name. With cake. I attended the Warden's Meeting every morning which was a serious security meeting.  If someone cracked a smile in that meeting I would have needed a "Doc" myself. An Assistant Warden once threatened to have my car searched for drugs because I was "too happy". That's the sort of paranoid security type officials I was dealing with. I baked Warden Wilson a basket of miniature Sour Cream Pound Cakes. I sat next to him and grabbed him by the wrist and said "Warden Wilson, I baked you  homemade cakes. You can have them if you will call me by my name. Nurse Olive or Director. Pick one please?" He actually looked at me for the first time. Prisons are nothing if not paramilitary organizations and they have little regard for medical personnel, least of all nurses male or female. Warden Wilson slowly unwrapped a pound cake, took a bite and looked me over again.  He said, "It's almost like my Mama's." Which is high praise. He never called me "Doc" again. 

I submitted one more food story. 

Would you like to read it? Let me know in the comments.

Olive