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calendar   Thursday - January 16, 2020

Memories Of The Heartland

I saw this today at Instapundit, but I’ll repost it anyway.

Memories of Knoxville: Steamed Hoagies and the original Fresh-O-Matic

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“No one likes the button”



Grab yourself a big mug of coffee and something to nibble on, sit back and enjoy this 40 minute read. No politics, no snowflakes, no modern technology. Just a nostalgia trip about food, a salute to the small entrepreneur, and a big long story of how things used to be and in a few places still are.

This piece of writing should win some kind of major award. It’s that good.



We lived in South Knoxville, in a mid-century subdivision full of bad drivers — a dicey mix of old people and teenagers. I was always careful to stay off the shoulderless road, keeping my little sister corralled on the safe side as we tramped along on so many sticky Tennessee summer evenings, our light-up sneakers collecting cut grass. About a quarter-mile down the hill from our house sat a low cinderblock building shaped like a brick, its white paint speckled with adornments in always-fresh Volunteer orange. It was the first place we were allowed to go by ourselves.

The Korner Market & Deli was not a quaint country store. It was a purpose-serving place, anchoring the neighborhood in a way that was becoming dated even in the early 1990s. I learned the word “loitering” as soon as I could read, sounding out the hand-lettered rules on the side of the building while my mom ran in to grab an emergency bag of hotdog buns, or Cokes and Winstons for my visiting grandparents.

I worried the quiet corner store I wandered to as a child might have folded in on itself, crumpled by chain restaurants, or reduced traffic, or modernity in general. But when I revisit the neighborhood for the first time in a decade, the Korner Market still sits down the hill and around the curve from my childhood home, thrumming neon and fluorescence into the early winter darkness. I push the door open, the bell clangs, and I’m hit with that same old smell of scrubbed-down, Marlboro-glazed linoleum. There’s a sweetness, and a whoosh, and it’s me and my sister, two sticky-fingered baby ghosts pushing past me, scampering out into the evening buzz of cicadas, our mouths crammed full of Bubblicious. I twist around, expecting to see the high crown of my grandfather’s mesh cap as he waits for us in the parking lot, or the beat-up purple Saturn I drove as a teenager winking its one headlight, ticking as the little engine cools. Back inside, an awkward 13-year-old me winces as she peels her bare legs off one of the vinyl stools fixed along the counter; the 21-year-old heaves a sweating sixer of High Life proudly up to the register. In this abruptly flooded plane of memory, it is always summer, and every me exists at once.

PS - Krystal’s is a southern restaurant franchise, kind of like a White Castle that also does breakfast, along with grits, biscuits, and gravy. I’d never heard of them, but if I ever get down to Georgia again I’ll stop in.

PPS - Comment at Insty relating how a very Appalachian local explained the steamed sandwich thing: “Well, mainly is because REDNECKS AINT GOT NO TEETH.” and he smiles at me with a mouthful of black stumps. “Ain’t none of us can eat your Yankee bread.”.

PPPS - “dark” rolls are pumpernickel, made with coffee and cocoa powder. Makes for a strong flavor and a heavy duty bun that can handle the steam. 


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/16/2020 at 11:51 AM   
Filed Under: • FoodMiscellaneous •  
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