I've been an inveterate newspaper reader for decades. When I was growing up, one of the things I always looked forward to this time of year was the column by Helena native Richard Allin about the oyster loaf, which was a tradition in his family. Allin, who died in October 2007 at age 77, wrote the "Our Town" column for the Arkansas Gazette and later the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Allin's oyster loaf recipe called for slicing the top from what he described as a "long Pullman loaf" of bread, hollowing it out, brushing it with melted butter, toasting it and then filling the loaf with fried oysters, lemon wedges, olives, ketchup and mustard pickles. The recipe for mustard pickles consists of cucumbers and onions pickled in a mustard sauce along with turmeric and celery seed.
Shortly after I wrote about the Helena oyster loaf last Christmas, I received a call from Carol Allin, Richard's widow. She confessed, "I never much cared for the oyster loaf, but some of the Allin family members over in Mississippi still prepare it each Christmas."
Richard Allin once wrote: "The tradition of eating the oyster loaf on Christmas Eve got started, in my family at least, many years ago when my grandfather would stop by an old Helena restaurant-delicatessen and pick up a couple of these specialties. In those days, that particular restaurant made its own bread, a type of which was the long Pullman loaf, named, I suppose, because it had the same dimensions as the railroad car. By the time I was invited into the family, it had become the practice to make the oyster loaf at home, although still using the restaurant's singular bread. . . . The tradition of the oyster loaf perhaps came up the river from New Orleans. A chilled white wine goes well. So does beer. This is a Christmas Eve dish. If you eat it at any other time, you do so at your own risk."
I've always been drawn to these six words written by Allin: "So many good traditions have passed." I'm a traditionalist at Christmas. That's why there's always fruitcake, mincemeat pie, tamales, pecans, oranges and grapefruit in our house this time of year. They're holiday traditions. When I was a boy, the traditions included an Arkansas cedar tree and mistletoe. My father wasn't one to sing carols, buy expensive gifts or put on a silly hat. He wasn't into Christmas parties. He loved spending the Christmas season at home with his family and was determined that my sister and I would enjoy it as well. His primary weekend activity this time of year was quail hunting. I knew Christmas was approaching when he would carry a saw on a hunt along with our 20-gauge Browning shotguns. While hunting on the Pennington farm in the Ouachita River bottoms near the Clark-Dallas County line, we would saw down a cedar tree and bring it home. Like most people, my wife and I now buy our Christmas tree at a lot. It was grown commercially, likely in a state far away. But an Arkansas cedar still smells like Christmas to me.
Cutting down the cedar tree wasn't the only extra activity on those December bird hunts. We would use our shotguns to shoot mistletoe from oak trees and use the saw to remove branches from holly trees that had plenty of red berries on them. All of that would be hauled back into town and used to decorate our house. A few days later, a ladder would be brought out of the storage room so my father could put colored lights on the big cedar tree in the front yard. I vividly remember coming home from school one day and being greeted with the disturbing news that one of our beagles had torn up a Frosty the Snowman yard decoration of which I was particularly fond.
My mother would be busy in the kitchen on Christmas morning while my dad made sure there were fires burning in both fireplaces if it were cold. After stoking the fires, he would sit down, smoking a pipe filled with Sir Walter Raleigh tobacco while surveying the scene--the cedar tree, mistletoe, holly branches, gifts wrapped under the tree, his children and later grandchildren in their pajamas. After opening gifts, breakfast would consist of fried quail, grits, biscuits and preserves made from wild blackberries my father had picked the previous summer.
I was blessed to have my four grandparents live into their 90s. Ernest and Leanna Nelson lived on Olive Street in Benton. W.J. and Bess Caskey lived on Erwin Street in Des Arc. We sometimes would pile into the car after the quail breakfast and go to Benton, where we would open gifts and then eat baked hen and dressing. At about 3 p.m., we would head to Des Arc. There would be even more gift opening and supper. It was heaven to have three gift openings and three good meals in one day. Tired from all of the activity, I never had a problem falling asleep in one of the upstairs beds above the kitchen in Des Arc.
Sometimes we would wait until Dec. 26 to go to Benton and Des Arc. On those Christmas afternoons, my dad would ask, "Want to get out of the house for a couple of hours and get the bird dogs some exercise?" We would cross the Ouachita River, seeing children in front of country houses playing with their new toys as we made our way east toward Dalark on Arkansas 7. We would walk the edges of soybean and cotton fields until dark. After getting home, we would put the dogs in their pen, clean the birds we had killed, and shower. My father then would end the day just as he had started it. He would make sure the fires in the fireplaces were burning brightly before sitting down, lighting his pipe and cracking pecans.
Each family has its Christmas traditions. For me, an Arkansas Christmas is the smell of a freshly cut cedar, wet bird dogs, pipe smoke and the smoke from a wood-burning fireplace. It's the taste of fried quail and blackberry preserves. It's the sound of a 20-gauge Browning firing and a saw bringing down a holly branch. It's a fruitcake ordered from Collin Street Bakery in Corsicana, Texas, a mincemeat pie made by my sister, grapefruit shipped from Florida, oranges shipped from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and pecans and tamales from the Delta.
May you experience your own uniquely Arkansas Christmas.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 12/24/2017