Baton Rouge Jail
Ted Scott
The Baton Rouge Jail, late March in 1957. The highpoint of my stay was the second night, when I dreamed about food.
I dreamed of a meal at Aunt Elsie's small farm in Athens in East Tennessee.
I was 10 or 11, and we were all there, my cousins, our parents, my sister and me, and our beloved
hostess, my Great Aunt Elsie.
There were all of my favorites, green beans cooked
with a little pork and that special seasoning
that I never taste anywhere else,
except once at a small restaurant in Roxbury,
that drew me in with its smell.
There were big thick red slices of tomatoes
fresh off the vine. There was also fried okra,
and smooth sweet mashed potatoes
dripping with butter and swimming in gravy.
There was sweet yellow corn just picked, and cooked on the cob,
and delicious big pieces of southern fried chicken,
and a cold tall glass of sweetened ice tea.
And those fluffy hot homemade biscuits and rolls.
At the end there were piles of thin sliced watermelon with seeds,
and the wonderful buttery chocolate pie that all of us craved.
The smells were so good that only the taste could be better.
I hated to wake up from the dream. I already knew what my breakfast would be. A cup of chicory, a small bowl of unsweetened grits, and two pieces of dirty white bread. But I knew it would be the best meal of the day, and I was hungry and ready to eat.
Ted Scott once was a physicist, but now reads and writes memoir, poetry, and short fiction. His work can be found in Boston Literary Magazine, Fear of Monkeys, Foliate Oak, The Journal of Quantum Electronics, and a variety of anthologies. He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife, but can sometimes be found windsurfing on Maidstone Lake in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.
