Paula Deen

by Paula Deen

  Finally, my grandparents sold the stand and moved to a little town in southwest Georgia called Albany, where my granddaddy bought a restaurant called The White House. That was the start of River Bend. And that’s where I come in.

  Thinkin’ back, I remember my momma was so much a lady, you’d never know I came from her loins. She was a proper Southern lady, and you couldn’t guess what she was thinking. She kept her feelings to herself, which, to me, wound up being her downfall. It seems to me now that if you keep a secret down deep in your guts because you think folks will think little of you if they knew the secret, it tends to fester and grow rank. Tell a secret, you get one back.

  My mother was the disciplinarian in the family. It was she who’d whip my ass. We had a hedge, and she’d make me go out there and pick that damn switch for her to whip my ass with. I remember she would switch my legs, and I’d be just jumping up and down hollerin’. I remember one time she was switchin’ me, and my girlfriend was over in the corner, with her legs crossed so she wouldn’t pee because she was trying so hard not to laugh while I was getting my own legs tore up. Once I made the mistake of telling my mother that I hated her. Afterward, I was so mad at myself for hurtin’ her so bad. I only told her the hate thing once, though, after she said, very quietly, “Don’t you ever say those words to me again.”

  My momma meant business. Sometimes, I still said hateful things behind her back, but you know, I would never seriously get in my mother’s face, and I would never say all these fresh-mouth things to her face that young girls do today, like:

  “I most certainly am wearing that outfit. I don’t care what you say!”

  “I’m gonna do it! You step outta the way.”

  “I want some new shoes and they gotta be designer shoes like everyone else!”

  On the other hand, no matter what, Daddy would walk in that house and he never once laid a finger on me. All he’d have to do was act like he was going to go for his belt and then it was “Yes, suh, Daddy. Yes, suh.” It’s funny how Momma would spank me at the drop of a hat if I deserved it, and Daddy wouldn’t. That’s the way it was. You spent most of the time you weren’t in school with your mother, especially in the fifties and sixties. Daddies were just not a real important part of a young girl’s life. The dad worked, and then he did what he wanted to do. My daddy was so kind. I’d bring home these horrible report cards and look at Daddy and say, “I failed algebra again,” and he’d say, “Honey, it’s all right—I stunk at algebra, also.” He’d tolerate my weaknesses, but let me tell you what he would not tolerate and that was being unkind or rude to people. If my parents had company and I’d walk in the back door and go straight to my room, he’d be sure to call me back down and say, “The Fletchers are here. Speak to them.” And I did.

  Our daddy was in the car business at this time. I worshipped and adored him, and I think I’m just like him now. He loved life and he always was laughing. That’s really my legacy from my daddy.

  Finally, when I was nine or ten, our grandparents sold River Bend and moved to Florida, where they bought another motel. It didn’t feel the same without them, and a year later, we moved back to Albany.

  Times were tough. Money was hard to come by. But I didn’t realize we weren’t rich because it seemed my folks gave me everything important I ever wanted. I was turning into a young woman. Funny—I remember the day when that was made clear to me like it was yesterday. I was eleven years old, so it would have been 1958.

  Bernice and Hugh Crum, Momma and Daddy’s best friends, had moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, and we decided to drive out to see them. So, along with Shirley and Dale Dingler, we loaded up the car, and back then cars were huge. The Dinglers had a pudgy little son we called Fudgie. So, it was Momma, Daddy, Bubba, and me, and the Dinglers—all seven of us piled into the car. I remember lying under the back windshield. It felt like it took a million hours, and all that time Shirley Dingler was curled up on the passenger floorboard asleep, and she wasn’t a small woman. I’m sure all four of the adults were also smoking. Not a comfortable million hours. So, we went to Little Rock, then we got back in the car and drove home. I remember on the way back I rode on the floorboard. The next day, I woke up with blood all over my pajamas. I went and found Momma, and I started crying in terror. “I’m bleeding, Momma!”

  My momma made it all better and made me feel good about getting to be a woman. “Oh, honey, it’s just your period coming on. Congratulations,” she said, like I did something good.

  “Do you think it was all the jigglin’ in the car?” I asked. She said no, of course, but I secretly always felt like lying on that floorboard and having all those bumps maybe brought it on.

  Then, sure as a rainbow follows a rain, I discovered the male gender. When I turned into a teenager, all those hormones were flowing like crazy. I was fueled with nuclear energy, a high-octane mix of curiosity and passion, and I found out I was pretty good at flirting. I liked to flirt. Still do, I might add. Men are damn cute. And, I found out I had this woman power—it felt good.

  I remember we had a little baseball park right between my best friend’s house and my house, and I walked on by it every day and all the boys were doing those cat whistles, callin’ out, “Oh, I wish I had that swing in my backyard.”

  I started realizing my power. I liked it plenty.

  Comin’ to the end of high school, life turned for me; it turned in many directions, and mostly down. I was seventeen years old and soon to make a bad decision. I didn’t know it then, but I was about to meet the most gorgeous boy on the planet. I wonder how my life would have been had I never set eyes on his beauty.

  One day, in my junior year, I was walking down the hall alone and happened to glance over at a couple, also strollin’ down the high school hallway. Well, there was the most startlingly beautiful young man I had ever seen and he had his arm around a girl named Betty Sue, and she had the most tremendous boobs you’ve ever seen. I knew for a fact she had to have her bras special-made.

  I didn’t think a thing about it. I just remember seeing that couple and watching this beautiful boy laughing and looking down at Betty Sue. And then I didn’t see him again for almost a year. Forgot plain about him. I thought.

  Around this time, I’d settled comfortably into going steady with Bill, a nice young man who had graduated from Albany High School. He was attending Auburn University, and he came home weekends to see me and he drove this darling little burgundy Volkswagen. Oh, I was crazy about Bill—he was hardworking and smart, he’d played football for Albany High, and he was just so sweet and everyone loved him. In his time, he’d been a Senior Superlative. Senior Superlatives were big-time at Albany High School; the ten girls and ten guys who were the most popular and talented as voted by the senior class. I was going to be a Senior Superlative too when I graduated—but I didn’t know it yet. I wasn’t much for the academics (I failed algebra three times), but I was a big social butterfly, excelling at dating, beauty pageants, and cheerleading. Actually, I did not give a rat’s ass about the books; it was rah rah rah I loved. If I could have made a livin’ cheerleading, that would have been my chosen life path.

  We girls all pretty much wore the same things: penny loafers without socks, pleated skirts, shirtwaist dresses with cinched-in waists, pedal pushers, and, best of all, dyed-to-match alpaca sweater sets and skirts. Peter Pan collars were everywhere. We’d have slumber parties with seventeen girls all in baby-doll pajamas with fat curlers in our hair and big daisy-flowered bonnets to go over them. In the middle of the night, if we got hungry, we’d sneak out of the house, put the car in neutral, and push it to the corner so Momma and Daddy wouldn’t hear us going; then we’d hop in the car and drive down to the local fast-food joint, the Krystal, right in our curlers and pj’s, to get us a sack of burgers.

  The boys wore blue jeans, button-down oxford shirts, and crew-neck sweaters. The guys who sported greasy, longish hair were playin’ like they were Elvis, but we considered them hoods. My own hair was very b
ouffant. We did the twist, danced to the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” and I thought Bill and I were a perfect couple—you know, eventually to marry. And, listen …

  … Bill and I were doin’ it. Back then, you did it but you didn’t talk about it. Once in a while, a poor girl would get caught and get pregnant. Many of us were lucky, because we sure weren’t all that careful. But there were a lot of us doing it, especially if we had a steady boyfriend.

  Anyway, here it was, my senior year, and Bill was home and something was wrong with his little car and we took it to this service station that sat on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Slatton. And we had to get out of the car for the garage guy to take a look at it, and suddenly, there was that beautiful boy.

  Betty Sue and her mega boobs was nowhere to be seen.

  He must have been a mechanic or something at this service station, I thought. And then I said to myself, Oh my stars! I can’t stand it; he is so handsome!

  Tall, dark eyes, dark hair, dazzling. I wasn’t exactly mashed potatoes myself then. Some said I looked like Elizabeth Taylor. I’m not so sure about that, but I had an eyebrow pencil and a tube of lipstick, and that was all I needed. I think maybe it was my reaction to the good-looking boy that made me start thinking maybe I wasn’t ready to make a commitment to Bill. Maybe I needed to experience more than cheerleading and cooking with Grand-momma Paul, to get out in the world now and then?

  We never said a word to each other, the boy and I. We just looked, this long, fatal look. Then Bill and I left.

  I broke up with Bill soon after. It was hard and I didn’t want to hurt him, but I thought maybe I should go slower. I sure didn’t want to get married yet, and I couldn’t stop obsessing about it: what did that beautiful boy mean to me?

  His name, I found out, was Jimmy Deen.

  Aside from Bill, I hadn’t dated a lot. I was the type of girl who had one guy and stayed with that guy. After I broke up with Bill, I had two dates with two other guys in the senior class—one at a time, naturally. That was it for my social life.

  And then, one evening, I went to Gary’s Super Sub, a big teen hangout. In the back, there was a game room and pinball machines; I adored pinball machines, still do. I remember it was one night after a game. I still had my cheerleading outfit on: the sweater and the little skirt. My waist was like twenty-two or twenty-three inches, believe it or not. So, I was in there playing the pinball machine, and in walked the beautiful guy. It turned out he’d asked out Marilyn Milson, one of my best friends, for a date Saturday night. Well, don’t you think Jimmy walked up to a mutual pal also playing the pinball machines—a boy named Johnny Halliburton—and said, “Johnny, ask Paula for a date tomorrow night, and we’ll double date.”

  Turning to me, Jimmy whispered, “Go over there and stand by Johnny and just wait till he asks you out.”

  Like a dummy, I did it. I was besotted with Jimmy Deen. And Johnny finally said, “Well, Paula, you want to go out tomorrow night?” And I said, “Yeah.”

  Well, Saturday night came. I slept over at Marilyn’s house, and the guys came to pick us up. I remember I wore a blue alpaca cardigan, a dyed-to-match blue skirt, and a little white shirt with a Peter Pan collar. I also had on black diamond-patterned hose, which I thought were fabulous.

  Well, I walked out of the house with Johnny, and Jimmy sidled up to me and said, “Those are the ugliest hose I’ve ever seen.”

  And I answered, “Well, I’m not ya date, and it’s none of my business whether ya like my hose.”

  After that it was like Johnny and Marilyn didn’t exist. Jimmy and I just talked and talked and talked to each other.

  The evening passed, the guys brought us home and said good night, and ten minutes later, Jimmy Deen called me up for a date on Sunday night.

  I said yes.

  My mother answered the door and she let him in and then she turned and went to her bedroom and cried because she knew that he was so beautiful, I was gone from her. I was eighteen years old, and she knew I couldn’t resist that Jimmy Deen.

  My momma knew.

  Chocolate-Dippy or Sugarcoated Doughnuts

  I sure loved those peanut butter balls when I was little, but coming in a close second were Momma’s quick doughnuts dipped in chocolate or sugar. They were so damn easy to make.

  Momma would just buy a can of big, fat biscuits in the dairy section of the market. She would remove the biscuits from the can and then poke a hole in each one with her thumb and form them into doughnuts. Then she’d drop them into hot grease and brown them on both sides until they were done—about two minutes on each side. The best part came next: she’d dip each doughnut into a pot of hot fudge sauce and they were ready for the devourin’.

  Sometimes she’d coat the doughnuts with confectioners’ sugar. I can see her right now with her paper sack full of sugar, because just as those doughnuts came out of the grease, she would drop them into the bag, shake, and pull out these mouthwatering sugarcoated doughnuts. I can see Bubba and me in there watching TV and her walking in with a big old plate of chocolate-or sugarcoated doughnuts, and maybe both, if we were real lucky.

  Let me tell you, these are different from and better than Krispy Kremes or Dunkin’ Donuts. They’re mah momma’s doughnuts!

  CHOCOLATE-DIPPY DOUGHNUT SAUCE

  One 4-ounce bar Baker’s German’s sweet chocolate

  ½ ounce (½ square) unsweetened chocolate

  1 stick unsalted butter

  3 cups confectioners’ sugar

  1½ cups evaporated milk

  1¼ teaspoons vanilla extract

  Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over very low heat. Stir in the sugar, alternating with the evaporated milk, blending well. Raise the heat to medium and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Lower the heat and cook, stirring, until the mixture becomes thick and creamy, about 8 minutes. Stir in the vanilla, then remove the pan from the heat. Stick a fork through the doughnut holes and dip the doughnuts immediately into the chocolate mixture before the chocolate starts to cool. Place the doughnuts on a plate and serve when the chocolate on the doughnuts sets, about 5 minutes.

  Chapter 3

  ON NOT LISTENING TO YO’ MOMMA

  “Contrary to what you may believe about yourself, Paula,” my momma said, “you don’t have the ability to change people.”

  Momma was right, naturally.

  Our courtship was rocky. I was a popular little girl and I had a lot of girlfriends and boyfriends—just friends, but it didn’t matter to Jimmy, who was always big-time jealous. He didn’t even want me talkin’ to anyone else. And controlling? Whoa! Jimmy had something to say about the way everyone should do.

  He even wanted to monitor what I wore: the comment about the black diamond hose should have been my first clue. If it was too sexy, I’d hear, “No, you can’t wear that, you look like a tramp.” It was like datin’ the Proper Police. If I came in late on an afternoon when he was waiting for me, he wanted to know exactly where I was and with whom. If it was Saturday night and I was feeling real happy, I’d ask him if we could go hang out at the burger joint where all my friends always went. No, Jimmy would say, it may be Saturday night but why didn’t we just go to the drive-in by ourselves?

  What was Jimmy Deen studying at school? Try nothin’. What were his plans for the future? Had none. He was a good basketball player in high school but his family didn’t have money to send him to college, so he’d just hang out till something good came along. It wasn’t that he was lazy—he was always working at some job or other and I always thought he could whip the world if he wanted. He never did seem to have the big dreams, though.

  Me? I wasn’t worried about any of it. He had those intoxicatin’ eyes. Furthermore, I knew, even then, you didn’t need an education to be successful. My own dreams for myself were actually pretty limited as well. I just wanted to be a good wife and momma, like I saw my own momma doing. That’s what I planned. I wanted children so badly, I could already smell their littl
e baby-powder selves.

  But, let me tell you, girl, if his prospects weren’t so impressive, Jimmy was sexually hypnotic. He was a very good lover. A very, very good lover. The sex was always the best part of us—during our courtship, and during our marriage.

  I’d started dating Jimmy in January of my senior year, and for graduation in June, Momma and Daddy gave me a two-week trip to New York to see my Uncle Bob, who was having a ball being a model in the big city. Arriving in the city, in about a New York minute I was weak with excitement and I wanted to be a model also. I got to go on shoots and all that with him and he wanted me to stay in New York so I could break into the business. I loved the fancy restaurants, especially the one where they put these little white britches on the lamb chops, but every day I got letters and phone calls from Jimmy saying, “When are you coming home? I want you to come home.”

  I couldn’t wait to see him. When I got back, he had me an engagement ring.

  My Momma and Daddy weren’t one little bit happy. They knew, for one thing, that Jimmy’s mother was an alcoholic. It was true that I’d been learning there were different levels of drinking. I’d noticed that Mrs. Deen wouldn’t drink at all for a while. Then, she’d only drink beer. Then, she’d settle into a steady binge of harder stuff. It scared my mother so badly. I’d never been around an alcoholic, didn’t know what one was. Momma knew I didn’t have a clue as to what I could be in for.

  I told them flat-out, “I’m not marrying his family. I’m marrying him.”

  A know-it-all at eighteen, I was.

  But they were devastated. Their baby at eighteen—getting married? And then, beautiful as he was, this young man didn’t really appear to have a future, and that was so upsetting for them. One night, my momma came to snuggle in my bed with me but she wasn’t wearing her usual sweet smile. Now her face was full of concern and even sadness. She wanted me to be absolutely certain I loved Jimmy, and if there was anything that bothered me about my sweetheart, it had better be something I could live with because I couldn’t change him later.