Although the term “shotgun wedding” is used as a metaphor for a forced or unlikely union in many parts of the country, in the Delta, a famous shotgun wedding involved an actual shotgun. A non-PETA-approved, ten-gauge shotgun was in the hands of Otis Bilbo Landreth (of the correctionally challenged Landreths) the night he and his twin sons, Wayne and DeWayne, banged loud enough to wake the dead on the ancestral front door of Young Buck From a Fine Old Delta Family. Young Buck had made the mistake of taking Mae Landreth to not watch a movie at the old Joy Drive-in Theater (pronounced: thee-a-ter) on Highway 82. The Joy was aptly named—being possibly the most amorous patch of land in the entire Ark-La-Miss, it had brought unbridled joy to many. Couples often became so engrossed in not watching the movie that they drove off with the sound phones still attached to the car window. Some of the more fabled Delta gad-about gals proudly displayed collections of trophy sound phones in their faux–French provincial bedrooms. As a rule, Mae Landreth tried to be a Christian. She had never taken home a sound box. But she did get carried away and succumb to the charms of Young Buck the night they went to not watch Old Yeller. Buck dearly loved Old Yeller, a Disney movie for children, because it reminded him of his own dog, Gus. But he already had seen it many times. Mae did not acquire a sound phone that night, but a memento was definitely on the way.
Otis usually went to bed with the chickens—as we say down here—or at least he did before he got tight as a tick and shot the birds dead. That it was well after midnight when he paid his call to Young Buck’s only showed Otis’s total dedication to the task at hand: making his daughter an honest woman. Or, as Big Otis put it, “a honest woman.” The minute Young Buck opened the door, he knew he was in big trouble. He was right. The Landreths dragged Buck to their pickup truck, tied him up, and took off down a long, winding road. Buck knew this might well be his last night on earth. But he had to make one desperate attempt to escape. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he whimpered. The Landreth boys were not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier; they unsuspectingly pulled into the very next service station and untied Buck. As soon as Buck grasped the key safely in his trembling hand, he asked the attendant, “Would you call the police if I broke this plate-glass window?” The attendant was so rattled that he nearly dialed Sheriff Lester before Buck picked up a chair and hurled it through the window. Before the twins had figured out what caused the commotion, Young Buck had locked himself in the men’s bathroom, where he remained until the sheriff knocked on the door. Of course, Buck was stunned beyond belief that the sheriff had the nerve to actually arrest him. “Do you know who mah daddy is?” he asked incredulously. Still, central lockup beat spending more time with the Landreths. Even so, Buck was hardly off the hook—when Buck Senior learned the cause of the midnight disturbance, he was adamant: Any son of his was damned well going to act like a gentleman and Do the Right Thing.
A quiet wedding was hastily arranged. Such weddings were traditionally celebrated in one of three places: the justice of the peace’s, at home, or in the minister’s house. There was no question of a big church wedding. There was no reception, or at most there might be a small and forlorn gathering. People spoke of the proceedings in hushed tones. And was Young Buck’s life ruined by his impromptu nuptials? Not a bit. Buck and May—she changed the spelling, after a few gentle hints from her mother-in-law—have been happily married for many years. Sometimes Doing the Right Thing turns out just fine.
A shotgun wedding need not be a disaster. As old Mrs. Wilton Estill, a pillar of Greenville society, also knows. Like Buck and May, Mrs. Wilton Estill and Wilton, a young buck in his own right back in those days, had a very quiet wedding. Some couples like to wait awhile and settle in before they have their first child, but the Estills rushed into parenthood, adopting Wilton Jr. before their first wedding anniversary. Whenever tactless (or forgetful) people commented that the boy was the spitting image of his daddy, Mrs. Estill smiled enigmatically. She knew that a reverse of the usual difficult situation awaited her: How do you tell a child he’s not adopted?
We do not mean to give the impression that all shotgun weddings are successful. That would be irresponsible on our part. Some are nightmares. For example, there was a couple in Arkansas that Had to Get Married. No sooner had they moved into their new trailer than the wife began cheating on her husband. He quickly found out, possibly because she made no attempt to hide it, and retaliated by wiring the trailer with explosives. He then crouched behind a tree and waited patiently—which is easy to do if you’re unemployed—for the unwary Galahad to come a-calling. When he was sure his rival was far enough into the mobile home that escape was unlikely, he pushed the lever and blew the whole shebang to Kingdom Come. This clearly is an example of a shotgun wedding that did not work out well.
It’s amazing that there aren’t more tragic stories like this in the Delta, given the prevalence of secluded rendezvous spots. Old Farmer Pickens used to say that his “place” produced more babies than bales of cotton per acre. The land under the bridge over the Mississippi River was a close second to the Pickens farm for attracting frisky young couples. Olivia Morgan Gilliam’s older daughter, however, insists that, despite the availability of venues, shotgun weddings were rare in her day (the 1950s). According to Little Olivia, two factors served to save many Delta girls from Making a Mistake: First, there was an overwhelming fear of causing a scandal that would absolutely kill your po’ mo-thuh and daddy (just as soon as they got through killing you in a shotgun non-wedding). Secondly, and perhaps more effectively, there were the Delta’s vicious mosquitoes. It is very difficult to reach a pitch of passion when you are being set upon by these sadist guardians of female virtue. The Joy Drive-in was perspicacious enough to pass out “mosquito coils” (tiny devices that were lighted and placed on the dashboard), but Farmer Pickens and the levee board weren’t so thoughtful. As a result, many Delta girls who might otherwise have shown themselves to be of easy virtue had big (and sometimes deserved) church weddings.
A Delta girl might enjoy a little sport, but she always tries to maintain the family honor. When Little Olivia went home with a bad beard burn one afternoon, she didn’t dare use the front door, which Papa guarded like a hawk. Instead she insisted on being driven down the alley and climbing over the fence. She was shocked to find big Olivia Morgan in the kitchen, not her natural habitat. “What is wrong with your face?” she asked with alarm. Little Olivia was so guilt-stricken that she felt she could not add the mortal sin of lying to the sin of necking. “I was making out under the bridge,” she shamefacedly admitted. Big Olivia Morgan looked hurt. She drew herself up. “You are lying to your mothuh,” she said, “and that is not nice. What would people say if they knew you lied to your mo-thuh?” An ability to deny the obvious (or a tendency to be so vague and out-of-it that vulgar reality rarely rears its ugly old head) has assured a placid passage through life for many older belles. Even so, the vaguest of mothers were not too off in la-la land to tell their daughters that “nothing good happens after midnight.”
While we have had our share of quiet weddings featuring a groom whom Mo-thuh might not have specifically chosen for a lifetime of dining on Aunt Belle’s Wedgwood, there is also the exact opposite of the shotgun wedding. We refer, of course, to the unhappy circumstances when some unfortunate is jilted. For some reason, this seems to happen most often in Bolivar County, indicating that people there may be even crazier than in our beloved Washington County. Please understand, we don’t mean that in a pejorative way. It is a compliment. Delta people take pride in having eccentric relatives. We are competitively crazy in the Delta. Lissa Clark has always maintained that, if you don’t have a weird old relative locked in the attic like Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre, you aren’t really from a nice family. Sadly, Lissa’s efforts to lure her own aunt Betty into the attic failed and the old dear continued her habit of cooking naked in the mirrored kitchen. But they are a lovely Delta family, as you can obviously tell.
There are many lovely Delta families in Bolivar County, which is next to our county, and which has developed the most eccentric matrimonial practice in the Delta, a twist on mere jilting: returning to a previous sweetheart at the very last minute possible—or sometimes after the last minute possible. When Sistuh Sturdivant became engaged to a nice young man from Memphis, her mother could not have been more pleased. Mrs. Sturdivant, a leading light in both the Dames and the Daughters (are not some bosoms God-created to wear the paraphernalia of the Daughters?), set about planning the Delta wedding to end all last Delta weddings. She ordered invitations from the finest stationer in Memphis. The engraving was so deep, you practically needed to be rushed to the emergency room for stitches if you gave an invitation the finger test. The write-up received prominent display in the Memphis paper. Everything was perfect. But then Sistuh got to thinking. The more she thought, the more she knew she was still in love with her true love from high school. She was about to make a Big Mistake. She was not alone in her thoughts: Mr. High School Honey was also pining for her.
It was late in the day, but Mrs. Sturdivant quickly employed the kind of resourcefulness that has made the Delta female such an object of awe. She kept the church date and the caterer. She did not cancel the order for libations. She did, of course, order new invitation cards from the Memphis stationer. But not new envelopes. She simply (or not so simply) steamed open the original envelopes and switched invitations. It was suggested that this might seem strange, as everybody already knew about Sistuh’s impending nuptials from the Memphis paper. “Oh, good heavens,” Mrs. Sturdivant pooh-poohed. “Nobody remembers what they read in the paper. Who’s going to notice that we have a new groom?”
One couple in Jilting County, which is what we like to call Bolivar County, was slower to realize where true love lay. It seems that after a lavish wedding they boarded the train for New York. It was quite a surprise when they returned after one night and got their marriage annulled. Both quickly married their high school sweethearts and lived happily ever after. A double jilting is pushing the envelope even for Bolivar County.
Sometimes, of course, the shotgun doesn’t go off. A couple on Lake Washington, from whence our part of the world was originally settled by families from Kentucky (also known for well-bred, if not in-bred, eccentricity) were pillars of the Episcopal church. They had also been pillars of the sixties. The era, alas, had left its mark. One day in a haze, the mother took it into her head that the daughter, a local beauty, was going to marry into the richest family on Lake Washington. She started baking up a storm, and made the wedding cake. Unfortunately, Mother had neglected to inform the richest man on the lake that he was going to be her son-in-law. Fortunately, the cake froze well.
The shotgun wedding has fallen on hard times. Lax morals killed it deader than a do’nail (that’s doornail to Yankees). A young girl who became PG (as our grandmothers, unable to utter the word pregnant in public, called it) recently, did not slink into the minister’s study for a quickie—a quickie wedding, we mean. “We want to do this wedding just as big as if Marilyn wasn’t with child,” the mother said. She took her daughter to Memphis to try on pregnant brides’ dresses. (They really exist.) It was a big wedding, and everybody had a nice time, unimpeded by the knowledge that a christening party was already in the offing. Only grandmothers are still endowed with a sense of shame. When one Greenville lady’s grandson, who lived on the other side of the river—that would be anyplace west of the Mississippi—took the mother of his children to the altar a scant three weeks before the blessed arrival, the grandmother told everybody in town that young Francis and his bride had been secretly married for a year. “But Mama,” the old lady’s daughter demanded, “why on earth would anybody get secretly married in this day and age?” The grandmother smiled enigmatically. “Who knows?” she purred. “Aren’t these young people crazy?”
The essence of good manners is putting others at ease. Being haughty or snobbish is bad manners. You must always pretend that whatever is served is just about the best thing you ever put in your mouth. Fortunately, little cocktail smokies, which may be just about the tackiest thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, are delicious. We like to imagine Mrs. Otis Bilbo Landreth serving them the first time she entertained the Bucks. We call this the gourmet version because it calls for red currant jelly instead of the usual grape. (Believe it or not, this recipe is in many of the nicest Southern cookbooks. And they all say “serve from a chafing dish.” How else would you want your wieners?)
2 packages “Little Smokies”
One 10-ounce jar red currant jelly
1 small jar mustard
Combine all ingredients and heat thoroughly. Serve in a chafing dish to keep hot. Long bamboo skewers are necessary to retrieve the smokies. The bad news is that these things are always served with toothpicks! Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing Mr. Landreth uses toothpicks for. Proper etiquette: Pretend it isn’t happening.
Makes thirty.
This would be perfect for the small, awkward reception after a shotgun wedding. Easy to prepare (even in a mobile home) and surprisingly tasty.
Shape ground beef into small meatballs. In an ovenproof dish, sauté the meatballs until brown. Drain off the fat and cover with the following sauce. Sauté until brown. Drain meatballs and set aside.
One 12-ounce bottle Heinz chili sauce
One 1-pound box brown sugar
1 small bottle vinegar
1 small bottle water
A small bottle of vinegar? Fill the emptied Heinz chili sauce bottle with vinegar, and you have a small bottle of vinegar. Do the same for the water.
Combine all ingredients. Pour the sauce over the meatballs. Cover and cook at 300° for 2½ hours in a very slow oven. Remove cover and cook for an additional 30 minutes (or until thick).
Makes twenty.
This recipe comes from Mary Dayle McCormick, who with her husband, Hugh, runs Greenville’s beloved McCormick Book Inn. Mary Dayle says to make twice as much as you think you’ll need. You will eat half yourself, before you manage to get your delicious White Trash stored in sealed containers and ready to be delivered to the party. “If you want to get cute, you can add those pastel sugar bead thingies to match your theme colors,” Mary Dayle said. “Also, another thing to keep in mind—if you’re wearing white and you make a mess of yourself eating White Trash, nobody will know. You’ll just be a little sticky and possibly woozy from all the empty carbs. Folks will just think you’re a little drunk, not a pig.”
Spread a few feet of aluminum foil, shiny side down, on the counter.
Melt 24 ounces white or vanilla bark candy, according to directions in a big bowl (careful—it’s easy to burn if you’re impatient).
Mix together 2 cups plain Cheerios, 2 cups plain Wheat Chex, 2 cups small pretzel knots, 1 cup almonds (nuts can be raw or toasted but can’t have a speck of oil on them), and 1 cup pecans.
Add the dry stuff to the melted stuff and mix gently but thoroughly.
Spread out on the foil to cool.
When cool, you can break up the really big chunks by scrunching them up in the foil.
Quick and easy—just like the kind of girl who has a shotgun wedding. Served religiously by all church groups in Greenville, but the Baptists, who love marshmallows, get the halo.
1 can (18¾ ounces) pineapple chunks, drained
2 cups Cool Whip
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup mini marshmallows
¼ cup maraschino cherries, halved
3 tablespoons milk
3 bananas, sliced
½ cup chopped nuts
Mix all ingredients, gently. Canned fruit is fragile! Let sit overnight in the icebox. This salad can be frozen. Serve on a lettuce leaf—iceberg, of course.
Serves eight.
So called because it relies heavily on itty-bitty marshmallows, the signature food of the Southern Baptist. Ecumenical note: The Baptists aren’t the only ones in town who dote on Holy Roller Salad—we’ve all been known to enjoy it. But the frugal Baptists are the only ones who also serve it as a dessert.
1 can (32 ounces) pineapple chunks, drained
1 cup pineapple juice (saved from above can)
3 cups orange juice
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
¼ teaspoon almond extract
3 apples, diced
3 cans (11 ounces each) mandarin oranges, drained
1 cup mini marshmallows
½ cup shredded coconut, fresh or frozen is best
1 cup nuts, pecans preferred but sliced almonds or walnuts will work
2 bananas, sliced (optional)
Combine the pineapple juice, orange juice, and confectioners’ sugar in a medium saucepan.
Heat until the sugar melts. Cool. Add extract.
Mix the drained fruit, marshmallows, coconut, and nuts.
Pour the cooled juice over fruit. Refrigerate.
Just before serving add the sliced bananas, if desired.
Serves eight.
Just right for a shotgun wedding reception—it will perk up the guests, even if the bride is on the wagon. Because, you know, you can’t drink alcohol if you’re PG. However, if it is being served at a non-shotgun wedding, you might want to consider having punch “girls” (some not quite fitting into the girl department). When the punch girls were young, they wore rosebuds or tiny floral tributes (some wore wrist corsages). They presided over only unspiked punch. It would not be appropriate for a young girl to pour anything with alcohol, though they had most likely fetched a drink or two for their parents at home. The older punch girls pour the harder stuff and tend to be drawn from the “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” category. Most likely she is a cousin of the bride for the day. She wishes she were pouring martinis for her husband.
½ cup sugar
1 cup water
1 can (6 ounces) frozen orange juice concentrate
1 can (6 ounces) frozen grapefruit juice concentrate
1 bottle (28 ounces) cold ginger ale
½ cup grenadine syrup
Bring sugar and water to a boil. Cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and when cool add the juice concentrates. Chill in the icebox until it is good and cold. When ready to serve, pour the above mixture in a punch bowl. Add ginger ale and grenadine. Serve at once.
This recipe serves twelve but it is easy to increase.
12 cups sugar
6 quarts water
12 cans (12 ounces each) frozen orange juice concentrate
12 cans (12 ounces each) frozen grapefruit juice concentrate
24 bottles (28 ounces each) cold ginger ale
4 bottles (25 ounces each) grenadine syrup
Coke (the kind you drink) parties used to be a wonderful way to entertain teenagers and older pre-teenagers—another way of civilizing girls so that they wouldn’t grow up to be the kind of girl who has a shotgun wedding. These were casual morning affairs, and there were always elaborate contraptions to hide the bottled Coke. There were little knit stretchy things, coasters, and the like. Some chose to ice their Cokes in the silver punch bowl. The food was much simpler, but always delicious. Those were the good ole days for sure. We’d never heard of Brie en croute.
1 loaf Bunny Bread (that would be white)
1 jar (13 ounces) smooth peanut butter
¾ cup vegetable oil
Preheat the oven to 200°.
Remove the crusts from the bread. Toast the crusts at 200° (slow oven) until they are brown and crispy. Allow the crusts to cool and then roll with a rolling pin into fine crumbs.
Cut bread into strips (three or four per slice) and toast in the slow oven until dried out… an hour or so, but they must be dried out. Mix peanut butter and oil until blended.
Spread the bread strips or dip them in the peanut butter mixture. Be sure they are coated. Then, roll to coat in the toasted crumbs.
Makes seventy-five pieces (with sticks cut thin).
To be upscale, use Captain’s Wafers instead of saltines.
Saltine crackers
2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans
1 bag (6 ounces) butterscotch chips or Heath English Toffee Bits
Preheat the oven to 400°.
Cover a jelly roll pan with aluminum foil. Place crackers “bumper to bumper” to cover top of pan. In a medium saucepan melt the butter. Stir in the brown sugar. Bring to a boil and cook 2 minutes. Pour over the crackers, making sure each one is coated. Bake at 400° for about 4 minutes. Combine nuts and caramel bits. Sprinkle over the hot crackers.
Put the pan back into the oven until the chips are just melted. Spread evenly. Chill. Peel from foil and break into pieces.
Makes about fifty to sixty pieces.
Think of it as caviar, only maybe not beluga. We love our indigenous caviar with cornbread cutouts. Make cornbread thin (bake on a jelly roll pan) and cut with a cookie cutter or into small squares.
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 tablespoon Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
½ teaspoon Tabasco
2 cans (16 ounces each) black-eyed peas, well drained
1 yellow onion, thinly sliced
In a saucepan, combine all ingredients except black-eyed peas and onion.
Boil for a minute and pour over the peas and onions. Refrigerate overnight. This is better the second day. Keeps almost indefinitely
Makes ten.
You know it’s a child bride when you get this, particularly the version with peanut butter.
Let’s start with the best-case scenario.
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1 jar (4 ounces) capers, drained (reserve a few for ants)
1 green onion, thinly sliced
Tabasco
Celery cut into 3- to 4-inch pieces
Mix first 3 ingredients and a splash or two of Tabasco. Chill overnight, if possible, so that the flavors can mingle. Spread the cheese mixture in the celery and put several capers across the top.
Honestly, we attended a wedding reception where they had tons of food, and slap-dab in the middle was a silver punch bowl filled with this! We didn’t see people turning up their noses, either. We know it’s tacky, but we dare you to say it’s not delicious.
2 cans (10½ ounces each) Fritos bean dip
4 avocados, peeled and cubed
1 lemon
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
Tabasco
1 cup sour cream
½ cup mayonnaise
1 package (1.25 ounces) dry taco seasoning mix (McCormick or Lawry’s),
1 bunch green onions, chopped tops and all, to equal 1 cup
3 tomatoes, chopped and strained to equal 2 cups
2 cans (3½ ounce each) chopped ripe olives, drained if necessary
8 ounces extra-sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded
Sliced jalapeños, optional
In a 3- to 4-quart bowl: Cover the bottom and up the sides with the bean dip. Mix the avocados with the juice of one lemon, salt, and pepper. Add a few dashes of Tabasco. Spread this over the bean dip. Blend the sour cream, mayonnaise, and taco seasoning. Spread on top of the avocados. Cover with the chopped green onions (use tops and all). Layer with the chopped tomatoes. Top with the chopped olives. Cover the dip with shredded Cheddar.
Top with a few sliced jalapeños (optional).
There’s no telling how much Wish-Bone dressing Southerners have consumed one way or the other over the years. If you can’t buy or hunt the lovey-dovey doves, you’d probably better not substitute. Time to start looking for a Delta hunter to wed?
Dove breasts
Wish-Bone Italian dressing
Jalapeño pepper slices
Lawry’s lemon pepper seasoning
Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning
Bacon, thinly sliced
Cover the dove breasts with dressing and marinate overnight.
Just before grilling, put a slice of jalapeño between two dove breasts. Sprinkle with a good shake of lemon pepper and Tony Chachere’s Cajun seasoning.
Wrap a piece of thin bacon around the breast and secure with a toothpick. Thick bacon will not cook properly, so buy the cheap stuff.
Grill over charcoal, turning often.
These don’t take long. You must watch them, as they will burn before you know it.
While fixin’ this, you might want to listen to Junior Walker and the All Stars’s classic “Shotgun.” It combines shotguns and romance—just like this chapter. Cut across the tenderloin of venison. Cut slices about ½ inch thick. Soak overnight in dressing. Continue to follow the same instructions as for dove.
If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn’t move, monogram it. And, if it did move and you shot it, stuff it. Southerners love to stuff things. We have passed the point of the stuffed chicken that squirts all over you when you cut it. But the stuffed figs, dates, and apricots remain just as popular. (See recipes on here.)
In England, when you’ve called somebody on the telephone, you say you’ve knocked them up. Gayden calls these Knock-Up Crackers because she knocked up Mary Mills Abington for the recipe. Good to offer with drinks. We warn you: These are addictive.
1 envelope Hidden Valley Ranch ranch-style dressing mix
1 cup Wesson oil
1 tablespoon dill weed
1 tablespoon garlic powder with dried parsley
1 box Kroger’s oyster crackers
4 dashes Tabasco
Stir the first four ingredients into a mix. Add Tabasco. Then pour in the oyster crackers and cover. Mary Mills uses a Tupperware salad bowl and cover. Turn every 30 minutes or so. When all the mixture is absorbed, put the crackers in Ziploc bags. They will keep for days on end.
This is a good recipe if you are entertaining your new mother-in-law. The secret is to do everything ahead of time—even if you have to dust your plates before letting your new mother-in-law near the dinner table.
10 chicken breasts
One 10¾-ounce can cream of mushroom soup
One 10¾-ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 cup chicken stock
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms (canned only if you must)
¾ cup sliced almonds
¾ cup sauterne
Preheat the oven to 325°.
In a large skillet, brown the chicken in batches. Reserve the drippings.
Arrange chicken in a large oven-to-table casserole.
Using the same browning skillet and drippings, add the 2 soups and the cup of stock. Mix until smooth, and heat. While warming, add the onion, mushrooms, and almonds.
Stir and then add the sauterne.
Cover the chicken with above mixture. Cover tightly.
Bake at 325° for 1 hour. This can be made ahead and reheated. And it’s actually better if you do. Serve with rice.
Serves ten generously.
Faster than the wedding… almost.
Six small peeled tomatoes
One box of Stouffer’s frozen corn soufflé or spinach soufflé
Hollow each tomato and drain.
Lightly salt and pepper the inside.
Slighty thaw the frozen Stouffer’s.
Fill each tomato with soufflé. Remember they rise.
Bake at 350–375º until golden brown.
Garnish each with a sprig of dill.