FRIED CHICKEN A LOVE STORY

No Southern dish feeds the soul like this one

- by RICK BRAGG

THE HOSPITAL rests atop a long, sloping hill. I've made the climb a thousand times to see my people here. It gets steeper every year. A gray-haired man driving a hospital jitney watched me labor up the incline and offered me a ride.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I am old, I am tired, and I am grouchy," answered.

"They do go together," he said.

Inside, a queue of solemn, weary visitors moved slowly down a long hallway toward the cafeteria. I had just enough time to grab something to eat before visiting hours commenced, so I fell in step behind them. I was about halfway down the hall when I noticed a change. The pace had started to quicken. Footsteps seemed lighter. Worried faces softened, I swear, into actual smiles. I am too old to be mystified by much of anything, but this evaded me. Then I heard the answer, so simple, passed from person to person down the line. "Fried chicken day" was all they said.

And suddenly, there it was, golden, fogging up the glass on the buffet. It was so hot it burned my fingers, the crust crisp and thin, and the juice ran when I cut into the meat. I ate the last crumbs with the tip of one finger; I think I might have sighed.

People down here like to say their food feeds the soul. Well, in a hospital cafeteria in Anniston, Alabama, over a leg and thigh, it sure seemed that way to me. Good fried chicken can do that in a way few other things can, said Terry Bradford, who's been head chef for 14 years at Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center and has observed it too many times, on too many worried faces.

"You see it when they take a bite..." There is just something almost mystic in it, a blessing that is found sometimes in the least likely of places.