Letter From America: Dining In The Dark
There could be a surpise in store when you ladle soup into your dish while the lighting is dim, as Ronnie Bray reveals.
Read more of Ronnie's good-humoured columns by clicking on Letter From America in the menu on this page. Read also chapters from his autobiography, A Shout From The Attic.
I suppose there are certain advantages in dining in the dark, or semi-dark, but the night Gay and I dined in the dark at Loudon in Tennessee didn’t produce any: in fact, it proved to be quite the opposite. I’ll say one thing for Tennesseans, and that is they understand the nature and extent of hospitality. A quality to which some folks add ‘Southern’ to prevent any misunderstanding of exactly how grand and broad it is.
We were invited to a dinner at Church and turned up well turned out as the occasion required. We had met most of the people and had taken them as readily into our hearts as they had taken us into theirs. To say we dined with friends would be a massive understatement. We were feted as if we were somebody, and then some. Possibly on account of our advanced ages, we were let into the front of the line to get our dinner from the long trestle tables that sat along the centre of the multi-purpose room that served as chapel on Sundays and recreation and cultural area on all other days.
The decorations were out of this world, made from strings and strings of tiny silver lights that were hung around the dining tables set up like booths around the periphery of the room. It was cosy and intimate, and just a touch magical.
The dining areas were bright without being glaring, just muted enough to make us all look younger than we were and hide wrinkles, worry lines, spots, pimples, and old duelling scars. We could see where to put our utensils on our plates to catch our food, and see other guests with sufficient clarity to recognise them and engage them in spirited conversation.
However, the area where the food was laid out for people to select what they wanted and leave what they didn’t, was overcast with shadows that made for a little difficulty in identifying everything as it was and not as we thought it was, and this is what led Gay and me into a little foolish error.
Being sent in at the head of the queue meant that we could not tap into the wisdom available from previous diners – there being none ahead of us - and so in the dimness of the selection area and with our ancient eyes not being as sharp as our forks we did our best to get what we wanted. What we both decided we wanted was a dishful of the delicious looking mushroom soup that lay at the centre of the table, and so we took dishes and ladled them full of the gloopy sweet smelling substance satisfyingly settled in the soup tureen.
Breaking its crusty pliable surface with the ladle sent its satisfyingly savoury smell scattering into the region of our noses, and confirmed our wisdom in choosing it. We each scooped generously, leaving little for followers, but having come to learn that there is always plenty held in reserve in the kitchen so that no one need ever go without. Therefore we did not stint ourselves.
It isn’t easy balancing a main plate laden with Southern goodies and a full soup bowl and bearing them to the eating place, but we managed it, just as we had done do often before and would do again. It is a matter of dedicated practice not unconnected to gluttony.
We had almost finished the soup, which was delicious, if rather more viscous than usual, but the South is full of surprises so we paid no mind to its density, when we heard a voice in the gloom from somewhere near the table ask plaintively, “Where has all the gravy gone?” Gay and I peered at each other through the soft fairy-light’s amber glow and smiled at each other.
I asked with an innocent air and in my best English accent – which guarantees instant forgiveness of all peccadilloes in America – asked, “Was that gravy? We thought it was soup. I’m awfully sorry.”
We were forgiven and the dinner continued with no one apparently the worse for missing the gravy. When we went to drive home, out car tires had not been slashed or deflated, and there were no rude messages written on the windows in lipstick questioning our ancestry, so we knew that the Southern Code was still in operation in East Tennessee.
We did enjoy the dinner, but now, when dining in dimly lit places, we seek a wisdom beyond our own when confronted by something, the nature of which we ‘think’ we know, because one can never be too careful, and not everyone has the same forgiving graciousness as our warm and affectionate Southern hosts.
Copyright © 2006 Ronnie Bray
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
~Albert Einstein
