This essay has to do with a vegetable or a weed that appears in the springtime and is uncultivated.  It grows along hedge rows and along the highways and when it reaches maturity, it is quite poisonous.
Also this essay is an exercise in nostalgia.  It has to do with my mother, who departed this “vale of tears” some 50 years ago.  Lillie Belle Carr had strong feelings about a number of subjects.  She hated, for example, the English.  I believe her hatred was cemented by the English massacre of Irish patriots at the General Post Office in Dublin during the Easter holiday of 1916.
Lillie also had very strong religious convictions.  She thought that dancing and card playing were the works of the devil.  While I do not share my mother’s beliefs on this subject, I have been throughout my life a lousy dancer and card playing is above my pay grade.
Lillie had some other religious beliefs that, for example, banned the wearing of gold ornaments.  So my father, who wanted to show his love for his wife, continued to buy gold watches and other trinkets that fastened onto the clothing.  It was also a cornerstone of Lillie’s religious beliefs that no woman should ever be caught wearing trousers.  Hillary Clinton, who is the current Secretary of State, would be judged by Lillie Belle as not worthy of entry into the kingdom of heaven.
So this essay is an exercise in nostalgia about my mother.  I hope that you will continue to read this essay not because it is a great literary work but because among other things you may find out about polk salad.  Two of my readers, one born in 1918 and the other in 1920, from the Mid West and the Mid South respectively, are readers who, I suspect, after they read this essay, will call me to tell me that they know all about Polk salad.  Chances are that they will know a good bit more than I do because my information only comes from having remembered the name and the details have been filled in by the internet.
Back to the growth of this weed or vegetable called polk: I am told that it will grow, if it is not cut down, to a height of four or five feet.  If eaten at that stage, it will cause violent reactions because it is basically a poison.  When the plant matures, it has berries on it that are red in color.  This makes them very attractive to the birds.  I am also told that when birds consume a diet of Polk berries, they will become in effect drunk.  Perhaps this accounts for the fact that in early summer birds are found with their necks broken after having flown into window panes or other solid objects.
As spring showed its first signs of warmth, Lillie, my mother, would be out on a hilltop near our house harvesting polk salad.  Now I should interrupt to point out that the word “salad” in our household was considered an effete term, tied mainly to meals served in big city restaurants.  But nonetheless, this weed or vegetable gathered early in the springtime, was called Polk salad.
You will also notice that in the title there is a spelling of “salad” that is different from what we are accustomed to.  According to the internet, which is the final arbiter in matters of this sort, it could be called either polk salad or poke salet.  I am neutral on this subject because I was never a consumer of polk salad or poke salet.
I am told that polk salad tastes a good bit like spinach.  Like everything else in our household, polk salad was fried.  According to those who were connoisseurs of polk salad, the best means for producing the finished product was bacon grease.  I am not a cook, of course, but I suspect that it is no wonder that I became a vegetarian because of the cooking of my Irish mother.  Simply put, it was atrocious.  But as I said, this essay is an exercise in nostalgia.  I can still see my mother on a hillside near our home harvesting Polk salad.  In all honesty, I can’t remember exactly what Polk salad tastes like but if it is cooked in bacon grease, I will happily forego that experience.
In any case, my mother and my father were great consumers of Polk salad.  They hated to see the time when the salad became sort of poisonous.  At that point of course, my mother quit gathering and making the polk salad.  We were left to eat her cuisine, which was influenced by her Irish upbringing.  At this point, I must say that the Irish are great people, making good poets.  Their use of the English language is remarkable.  But on the other hand, I will say that Irish cooks as well as English cooks are unworthy of the name of “cooks.”  Or perhaps I should say “good cooks” because there aren’t many.
There is no rational explanation as to why my thoughts have turned to polk salad at this moment.  But I suspect that I will hear, sooner or later, from a fellow raised in Harriman, Tennessee, as well as from another oldster who spent time in such towns as Defiance, Missouri, before I am finished.  An essay which recalls my mother and Polk salad, and that prods the memories of two oldsters can’t be all bad.
This essay about polk salad came to me out of the blue.  I have no rational reason for remembering polk salad.  I suspect that if I were served a portion of it having been cooked in bacon grease, I would spurn it.  But if you are interested in polk salad, the internet has a great volume of information to feed your fancy.  As a matter of information, Judy, my wife, had never heard of polk salad.  I will request her never to provide such a concoction to me; at my advanced age I am not sure that I could take the challenge.  But at this point I am at peace with myself because I have told you and all my readers everything I know about polk salad.  That provides a sense of great accomplishment for an old timer such as myself.
 
E. E. CARR
December 15, 2011
Essay 616
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Kevin’s commentary: I had never heard of polk salad either, I’m sad to say. My mother apparently refrained from ever making it for me, probably because her father dropped the ball in harvesting and boiling a semipoisonous plant in bacon grease.
The internet, incidentally, seems to be of the opinion that frying it up in bacon grease is actually the only/best way to serve polk salat, so it wasn’t just an idiosyncrasy of Pop’s mother.  I wonder what the threshold is for determining when the plant has become too poisonous to eat. I feel like this would be an important thing for Pop to remember if he ever goes and attempts to harvest more of the stuff, if the nostalgia strikes him hard and he decides he simply must get ahold of some.