An Acquired Taste

The place that changed my mind about a despised Southern dish

- RICK BRAGG

I LIKED JUST about everything my mama cooked back when I was a boy. Her little kitchen on Roy Webb Road piled hot biscuits up to the moon and poured forth rivers of white milk gravy. There was always, always a pot of beans bubbling on her stove. That was what I believed true wealth to be. We banged through the screened door, wild-eyed and starving, and were fed like kings.

Well, almost always. About once every week or so, it was sauerkraut-and-wienie day, and I wept. I mean it. I really cried.

“Someday,” she told me, “you’ll like it.”

“No, not now, not never, nohow,” I said, running off to pout.

Why would this woman who claimed to love me ruin a perfectly good hot dog by chopping it up and drowning it in a pan of soured cabbage?

“Someday…” was all she said.