White Trash Cooking, Twenty Years Later

Southern Quarterly, Winter 2007 by Edge, John T

The story of the wake was Mickler's best piece of writing, in which a woman named Chestine flails about at her neighbor, grabbing her dress "like a bulldog," and Naireen Sikes, known for wearing "the tightes clothes you ever witnessed," makes the "best damn perlow" in "the scrubs." Meanwhile, respect for Mickler's mother is conveyed by deviled eggs, served in such quantity that "everybody's hen had ta been a layin double."

Sadly, "One Side of a Conversation Between Gracie Dwiggers and Rosetta Bunch About Edna Rae's Wake and Funeral, Told Over the Phone" was one of Mickler's last efforts. Sinkin Spells, hot Flashes, Fits and Cravins was published on Monday, 14 November 1988. Mickler died of AIDs the very next day.

John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi. Originally published, in a different form, in the Oxford American, Winter 2006.