Deep Fried Kudzu

Weekly notes on Southern art, architecture, food, and travel

As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.

Affiliate links are sometimes used. That means that if you purchase something via one of the links, it costs you nothing extra, but may generate a commission, offsetting the cost of DFK… e.g. as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Also: remember that Bookshop is fab because they’re giving orders to indie booksellers. Grateful for your support. xoxo!

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Robert Johnson’s Come on in my Kitchen in newly-restored audio

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Here, the monument for Rezin P. Bowie, brother of Jim Bowie and inventory of the Bowie knife, from a 2007 visit I made to the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Port Gibson, MS

Born from a Duel: A history of the Bowie & other knives in Louisiana, from 64 Parishes:

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Tujague’s, from a 2016 visit — the sign has since been restored and is now on display at SoFab.

Meet the Neon King of New Orleans at Garden & Gun — Nate Schaeffer’s shop here.

“By the 1950s, New Orleans had more neon than Las Vegas. Canal Street had six hundred signs within a few blocks.”

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I missed this from late last year, but Dezeen reports on this development for a school in Uniontown, Alabama:

Architect Danish Kurani has developed a prototype for a “connected” classroom, designed to enable expert teachers to remotely provide lessons to students in rural communities.

Kurani completed the first iteration of the Connected Classroom at Robert C Hatch High School in Alabama’s rural Black Belt region, in partnership with nonprofit Ed Farm and the State of Alabama.

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Domilise’s, from a 2012 visit

Todd Kliman’s Submitting to the Beast: A father and son in New Orleans—feasting and flaneuring at the Oxford American

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Lake Pontchartrain, 2023

The Library of America’s Story of the Week is “The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain” by Margaret Fuller:

I think the LoA’s link to the actual story may be routing to an incorrect page — this one seems to be right. And here it is as PDF.

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BIG’s design for Nashville’s upcoming Tennessee Performing Arts Centre can be viewed here.

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In the latest New Yorker, I noticed an ad for The Folio Society with an image of books including To Kill a Mockingbird. Theirs is illustrated by Nate Sweitzer.

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At Christie’s, A tale of two Matildas: how the Gray Stream family assembled one of America’s finest collections of Fabergé, jewels and more
Unseen for more than a century, Imperial Fabergé masterpieces, custom Cartier designs and Diego Rivera paintings are amongst the treasures lovingly collected by Louisiana businesswoman Matilda Geddings Gray and her niece Matilda Gray Stream. Links to the June auctions are at the bottom of the page.

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xoxo!

Southern Accents
Cullman AL, 2023.

I’ve been reading How Flowers Made Our World (here on Bookshop, here on Amazon) by David George Haskill, a book that really has me thinking about magnolias.

Here’s what’s super fascinating: magnolias are so old that when they evolved, bees weren’t…

…Well, how to say this the right way? There weren’t bees yet.

Which, I realize this isn’t how the world works — not everything showed up at the same time — but imaginging a time before bees (and butterflies, and hummingbirds) is not the easiest thing.

So 95 million years ago or so, dinosaurs were strolling around magnolias.

What do magnolias do to be pollinated? Enter: beetles and flies. Those were the primary insect pollinators back then, so this helps explain things like how magnolias evolved to make things easy for them. The blooms are large and bowl-shaped (and thick so as not to be trampled by beetle legs crawling), and the blossoms smell great because beetles rely more on scent than sight.

While some trees started with wind pollination, the magnolia and its beautiful flowers stays with the beetle. And so incredibly interesting, the magnolia traps beetles (in a really nice way that they actually enjoy, because it’s so comfortable) overnight to ensure the beetle has the opportunity to do its job in the time it takes for the flower to go from its female to male stage. Depending on variety, magnolias do this different ways.

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BTW, other chapters in the book discuss goatsbeard, orchids, grass, seagrass, rose, tea, and pansy.

As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.

Affiliate links are sometimes used. That means that if you purchase something via one of the links, it costs you nothing extra, but may generate a commission, offsetting the cost of DFK… e.g. as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Also: remember that Bookshop is fab because they’re giving orders to indie booksellers. Grateful for your support. xoxo!

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The Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery was just named to the National Trust’s ‘America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places for 2026’ list

above, from a 2009 visit

They say:
The building housed a wide set of iconic institutions, including the Majestic Café, the Malden Brothers Barber Shop, and the rooftop Afro Club, which hosted performers including Billie Holiday, B.B. King, Little Richard, and Tina Turner.

..Reuse ideas include a reopened Majestic Café and barber shop, community-serving office space, restored hotel rooms, and a revived Afro Club that would serve as a cultural venue. Rehabilitation of this scope will require a combination of public-private partnerships, historic tax credits, and philanthropic investment. Revitalization of the Ben Moore Hotel would illuminate the hotel as a symbol of African American perseverance and enterprise and allow for public interpretation focused on Black travel during Jim Crow, Green Book sites, African American entrepreneurship, and Montgomery’s broader Civil Rights landscape.

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A post shared by Crystal Bridges (@crystalbridgesmuseum)

On June 6 & 7, Crystal Bridges will celebrate the opening of an additional 114,000 square feet of artspace.  The new space was also designed by Moshe Safdie. I’m SO looking forward to returning later this summer!

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from a 2014 visit

This may be the last year of the 1919 Casamento’s in New Orleans

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A post shared by Trahan Architects (@trahanarchitects)

I haven’t been out to see it yet, but Dezeen does a post on Trahan Architects, which completed the 4620 sqft Chapel of St Ignatius and the Gayle and Tom Benson Jesuit Center at Loyola University last year.

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xoxo!

Southern Living ran a piece last week on legendary catfish cabins. One, I don’t know — Hagy’s Catfish Hotel in Shiloh TN — but the other two I know well: Ezell’s Fish Camp in Lavaca AL and Middendorf’s in Akers, Louisiana.

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Ezell’s belongs — truly a fish camp, the way it has been forever. Incredible catfish and what tastes like my own great-grandmother’s coleslaw recipe, served in those ’70s salad bowls with good Lance crackers.

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Middendorf’s fries those super thin filets of catfish, which is different and just so terrific.

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And to add to my list, Taylor Grocery in Taylor, Mississippi. You really need to get there at opening, and it’s all pretty terrific, though the atmosphere is what really puts it over the top (which is what any of these places should be: atmosphere-heavy).

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There are two places in the catfish pantheon that are gone but not forgotten:

Red’s Catfish Cabin in Cragford, Alabama

And Robert’s Catfish in Hartselle, Alabama, where they handed patrons a bag of feed to toss feed to the catfish in the pond after supper. As a kid, this was thrilling in such a sweet and goofy way.

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A little iconography

The great Catfish Cabin sign in Athens AL

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The Mike Shine Catfish mural in New Orleans

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David Bates’ The Cat Man at the Memphis Brooks

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This monument in Wintergreen Cemetery in Port Gibson, MS:

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Fisherman 1992 by Frank Fleming at the Birmingham Airport

Considering (mostly) Victorian-era figural bas relief cemetery monuments in Alabama cemeteries — although many of these may have come from northern sources, there were certainly some local marble cutters who specialized in this kind of very detailed work.

And for these examples, one can only imagine what they must have looked like closer to their carving. Following, some that come to mind (I’m actually going to do these figural ones in two parts over the next week or so, — leaving florals out for another time later on).

If you’d like a closer view, click on any of the images and use the magnifier tool in Flickr.

Enners Family, Riverside Cemetery, Demopolis AL

Old Cahawba, Alabama (above and below)

The Billingsley monument and cemetery gate, Marion AL:

The corresponding family gate is of Father Time — more on him in another post shortly.

Emma Herbert Monument in Pioneer Cemetery, Greenville AL:

George Cook monument in Pioneer. He and Emma above were married.

Athens City Cemetery, Athens, Alabama:

Greenwood Cemetery, Montgomery:

Old Cemetery, Dayton AL:

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Not at all Victorian, this monument done in the same spirit with different material for Queen, at the Coon Dog Cemetery in Cherokee AL: