okieinexile
Well-Known Member
Peas for Prosperity
By Bobby Neal Winters
My most cherished New Year tradition is the consumption of black-eyed “peas for prosperity” in the New Year. There aren’t very many people in Kansas who share this tradition with me, and that took a bit of getting used to.
In fact, one of the first instances of culture shock I suffered upon moving to Kansas was the realization that when someone said they were having peas for a meal, they were thinking about a different kind of pea than I was. Some of you might have such a rigid concept of pea yourself that you might be confused as to what I am getting at now.
When I was growing up and heard that we were having peas for dinner, they were invariably black-eyed peas, though Crowder peas provided a suitable substitute upon occasion. Those other kinds of peas were always referred to as “English peas,” as though we were wanting to put some distance between ourselves and them.
The “English” in front meant they were for a fancy sort of people we sometimes met or those folks who were putting on airs, and they were invariably presented in a white cream sauce and pearl onions or new potatoes just to rub in how fancy they were. Black-eyed peas don’t need cream sauce. They can make it just fine with a little salt pork and cornbread.
Like I say, learning that there were folks walking around loose who when they said, “We’re having peas with dinner,” meant the English variety shook up my world view, so I developed a test, a shibboleth if you will, to discern whether I was talking to one of “us” or one of “them.”
“What color are peas?” I would ask.
The responses I got came in three varieties.
The first two are similar. The person being interrogated would look confused, as though it had never occurred to them there could be a question and then would answer, with a bewildered expression either “brown” or “green.”
If they said “brown,” I would welcome them as a brother and explain the test to them. Their eyes would open wide as the shock of realizing there were people to whom English peas were the basic pea came to them.
On the other hand, if they said “green,” they would be filed under “Yankee” and never be enlightened. It doesn’t do to give too many of your secrets away to the enemy.
However, there was a third sort of response which was, “Brown, Brother Bobby, brown” and usually accompanied by a warm smile and a healthy handshake.
As I’ve grown more worldly and sophisticated, I’ve suffered from a loss of innocence. It has been a shock to discover not all Okies give the right answer to my question. Some, mainly from around the increasingly Godless metro areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, will say “green.”
I suppose there are degrees to being Okie, just like anything else. The deepest level of Okie knows that peas are an entrée, not a side-dish.
The deepest level of Yankee will not even acknowledge the black-eyed pea to be a pea and insist upon referring to it as a cowpea. They consider cowpeas to be food for cattle and not fit for human consumption. You don’t need much imagination to figure out what they think of “us.”
It might be the humbleness of the lowly pea that connects it to prosperity. If you full of black-eyed peas, you’re not as likely to go spending your money on a New York Strip steak.
As a boy, there was many morning my Grandma Winters brought black-eyed peas by the bucket for my mother, my brother, and me to shell before it got too hot. We sat in the shade on the west side of the house, where there was a nice southerly breeze, to do our shelling, and when we were done, we would have a mess of them and pone of cornbread for the mid-day meal and then again at supper.
Anyway, they are part of my standard New Year’s Day. Ritual requires black-eyed peas for prosperity. Perhaps it should bother me that so many of the folks who forego this ritual are so much more prosperous on the average than those of us who take part in it. Logic would indicate that maybe we should exchange the peas for sauerkraut and weenies, for instance, but fear prevents this. What if the peas are actually working? We could be worse off than we are now.
And that’s something we don’t even want to think about.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and speaker. Visit his website www.okieinexile.com.)
By Bobby Neal Winters
My most cherished New Year tradition is the consumption of black-eyed “peas for prosperity” in the New Year. There aren’t very many people in Kansas who share this tradition with me, and that took a bit of getting used to.
In fact, one of the first instances of culture shock I suffered upon moving to Kansas was the realization that when someone said they were having peas for a meal, they were thinking about a different kind of pea than I was. Some of you might have such a rigid concept of pea yourself that you might be confused as to what I am getting at now.
When I was growing up and heard that we were having peas for dinner, they were invariably black-eyed peas, though Crowder peas provided a suitable substitute upon occasion. Those other kinds of peas were always referred to as “English peas,” as though we were wanting to put some distance between ourselves and them.
The “English” in front meant they were for a fancy sort of people we sometimes met or those folks who were putting on airs, and they were invariably presented in a white cream sauce and pearl onions or new potatoes just to rub in how fancy they were. Black-eyed peas don’t need cream sauce. They can make it just fine with a little salt pork and cornbread.
Like I say, learning that there were folks walking around loose who when they said, “We’re having peas with dinner,” meant the English variety shook up my world view, so I developed a test, a shibboleth if you will, to discern whether I was talking to one of “us” or one of “them.”
“What color are peas?” I would ask.
The responses I got came in three varieties.
The first two are similar. The person being interrogated would look confused, as though it had never occurred to them there could be a question and then would answer, with a bewildered expression either “brown” or “green.”
If they said “brown,” I would welcome them as a brother and explain the test to them. Their eyes would open wide as the shock of realizing there were people to whom English peas were the basic pea came to them.
On the other hand, if they said “green,” they would be filed under “Yankee” and never be enlightened. It doesn’t do to give too many of your secrets away to the enemy.
However, there was a third sort of response which was, “Brown, Brother Bobby, brown” and usually accompanied by a warm smile and a healthy handshake.
As I’ve grown more worldly and sophisticated, I’ve suffered from a loss of innocence. It has been a shock to discover not all Okies give the right answer to my question. Some, mainly from around the increasingly Godless metro areas of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, will say “green.”
I suppose there are degrees to being Okie, just like anything else. The deepest level of Okie knows that peas are an entrée, not a side-dish.
The deepest level of Yankee will not even acknowledge the black-eyed pea to be a pea and insist upon referring to it as a cowpea. They consider cowpeas to be food for cattle and not fit for human consumption. You don’t need much imagination to figure out what they think of “us.”
It might be the humbleness of the lowly pea that connects it to prosperity. If you full of black-eyed peas, you’re not as likely to go spending your money on a New York Strip steak.
As a boy, there was many morning my Grandma Winters brought black-eyed peas by the bucket for my mother, my brother, and me to shell before it got too hot. We sat in the shade on the west side of the house, where there was a nice southerly breeze, to do our shelling, and when we were done, we would have a mess of them and pone of cornbread for the mid-day meal and then again at supper.
Anyway, they are part of my standard New Year’s Day. Ritual requires black-eyed peas for prosperity. Perhaps it should bother me that so many of the folks who forego this ritual are so much more prosperous on the average than those of us who take part in it. Logic would indicate that maybe we should exchange the peas for sauerkraut and weenies, for instance, but fear prevents this. What if the peas are actually working? We could be worse off than we are now.
And that’s something we don’t even want to think about.
(Bobby Winters is a professor of mathematics, writer, and speaker. Visit his website www.okieinexile.com.)
