It’s tamale time

LITTLE ROCK — Winter has descended on Arkansas, and my thoughts have turned to tamales. I enjoy tamales any time of the year, but they seem better when it’s cold outside. Three years ago, the Arkansas Educational Television Network had the debut of a program titled On the Tamale Trail. AETN crews followed journalist Kane Webb, political consultant Bill Vickery and me through the Delta regions of Arkansas and Mississippi in search of the best tamales we could find.

Kane paced himself. Bill and I didn’t. I’m not sure how we ate so many tamales in a two-day period. That’s not to mention that we “chased” the tamales with a steak at Doe’s in Greenville on the first day of our two-day excursion. AETN reruns the program from time to time during pledge drives. I know when it airs because the emails start pouring in, asking me where to find the best tamales in Arkansas.

Delta tamales are different from Mexican tamales. I like both. My Mexican-American mother-in-law won’t eat Delta tamales, but I consider them to be in a separate category from those you find in Mexican restaurants.

“So what is this food, so often associated with Mexico, doing in the Mississippi Delta, you might ask,” writes Southern food expert John T. Edge. “Isn’t this just an aberration? Like finding curried conch in Collierville, Tenn., or foie gras in Fort Smith, Ark.? It’s not that simple. Tamales have been a menu mainstay in the Mississippi Delta for much of the 20th Century. Indeed, along with catfish, they may just be the archetypal Delta food. Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson sang about them in the song ‘They’re Red Hot,’ recorded in 1936.”

Those from outside Arkansas seem perplexed when I tell them that our state has a long tamale tradition. Old-timers in my hometown of Arkadelphia still talk fondly about Joe Villa, who died in September of 1963 just five days after I turned 4. The Southern Standard, a weekly newspaper at Arkadelphia that no longer exists, published a lengthy article on Villa following his death.

Written in a simpler and less politically correct time, the article stated: “Joe Villa was an institution of a bygone day in Arkadelphia. He and his large family came here many years ago from Old Mexico. He denied any kinship with the famous bandit Pancho Villa, and his life in this city certainly showed he had none of the undesirable traits of that other one. Joe was a hot tamale specialist, and he made the best there was to be had. Joe’s tamales were tasty, and you bet his utensils were clean and the ingredients pure. Joe reared and educated a large number of children on his tamale sales to his fellow townsmen and townswomen and certainly to the boys and girls.

“One of the local churches got Joe enlisted and all his children into Sunday School. None of the dozen children, more or less, of Mr. and Mrs. Villa ever became a juvenile delinquent or gave any trouble. This Mexican family was law-abiding and decent in every way. Several of the boys played on the athletic teams at Arkadelphia High and acquitted themselves creditably. Anybody who follows the right kind of road in this life like Joe Villa ought not to have much trouble finding the pearly gates open when he arrived up yonder, nor have too much trouble orienting himself in that new community.”

Villa was born in Mexico in 1877, married a native of Laredo, Texas, and moved to Arkadelphia in 1910, where the couple raised a family of three sons and seven daughters. An ad in the 1921 yearbook at what’s now Henderson State University read: “Hot Tamale Joe. You know me, girls. Ice cream sandwiches and hot tamales. Delivered a la carte. Joe Villa.”

Late last year, my phone started ringing with the news that George Eldridge, who owns Doe’s in Little Rock (which became as famous as the Greenville original when staff for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign began hanging out there), had opened a restaurant in rural Woodruff County called The Tamale Factory. It’s in his horse barn at Gregory, which is 10 miles south of Augusta, and is open each Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m. In addition to tamales, there are steaks and shrimp. It has become a popular place in that part of the Arkansas Delta.

Arkansas’ tamale heritage isn’t confined to those of Mexican descent such as Joe Villa. Joe St. Columbia of Pasquale’s in Helena is Sicilian-American. Rhoda Adams of Lake Village is black. Pasquale St. Columbia, Joe’s father, came to Helena from Sicily in the late 1800s.

“Pasquale never met a stranger and made friends fast,” Joe says. “He was jolly, friendly and talkative. Because they could understand each other’s languages, the cultural exchange between Pasquale and the Mexican immigrants he met and befriended was easy. Pasquale learned to prepare and eat tamales from the Mexican farm workers. He shared his recipe for Italian spaghetti and, in turn, they taught him to make the traditional Mexican hot tamales.”

Further south in Lake Village, Adams has become so famous that Little Rock executives occasionally come down in private jets for lunch. Now in her 70s, Adams began making tamales four decades ago when her husband’s aunt suggested that it would be a good way to make money. Her husband bought her a machine to craft the tamales, and the mother of 15 children went to work. She’s another in a long line of well-known Arkansas tamalemakers dating back to Pasquale St. Columbia and Joe Villa.

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Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.