36 of us. And maybe she was. That was her job, to dress like and befriend the guests when they came into the Steak House to eat. If a hierarchy existed in the staff of Kelley’s, the hostess stood apart. She and the maître d’ were the only ones on the staff in street clothes and the maître d’ wore his stiff black suit like a uniform, so it really didn’t count. The browbeaten Lebanese busboys would pass for average white guys, but they were too foreign for anyone to even see them much less think they were white. That’s the key. Familiar, but different people. That same year I went to college and studied Anthropology where I learned that part of cultural beliefs was something called ethnocentrism, which is what President Trump is promoting when he says, “America First!” Ethnocentrism is putting us and ours first. Our family, our group, our culture, our race is more important than any other and one way of reinforcing that is to build a belief that other groups, other peoples, other colors are weaker, dumber, lazier, crueler, and generally less than we are. One day, I was cutting steaks for dinner when Selmer pulled out a big mixing bowl, and I smelled bacon cooking. “What you got going there?” I ask. “Selmer smiled and winked. “Your Kentucky mama teach you to make biscuits?” “I’ve made a biscuit or two.” He pulled a big stainless mixing bowl off the rack and set it on the table. “Maybe you make us all some of your mama’s biscuits. Make a big batch and I’ll show you how we eat ‘em down here in East Texas.” He went off to tend to his bacon, and I finished up my steaks before tackling the biscuits. The stores in this kitchen were pretty traditional so I was able to find lard, always the preferred fat choice for traditional biscuits. I found baking powder and flour but had to ask Selmer for buttermilk. He must have planned ahead because he pulled a half-gallon carton of buttermilk out of the walk-in. I knew he was watching me, not as much critical as curious to see how this Alaska homestead kid born in southern Ohio to a Kentucky mom would make biscuits. I did the calculations in my head, converting mom’s standard recipe for biscuits into a batch big enough to make about four dozen biscuits and measured two quarts of flour into my bowl. I added salt and baking powder, whisked it up with a little air; then measured in about two cups of lard that I worked in with a pastry blender before adding three cups of buttermilk. I rarely make biscuits without remembering my mom’s story of how her mother made biscuits. She kept a hundred pound bag of flour in the kitchen and whether she was
CIRQUE making biscuits or dredging chicken, she worked right in the top of the flour sack. She just added her baking powder, salt and lard like I did then mixed in her milk. No mixing bowl needed. I was cutting biscuits with a water glass when Selmer cycled back to check on me. He laughed. “We got a biscuit cutter around here somewhere.” “This will work.” “Yeah it do. By golly, I think you know what you’re doing.” “It felt good to have Selmer’s approval, something I felt he didn’t give lightly, especially when he could have easily made the biscuits himself with his smooth competent hands big enough to swing a sledge hammer but softened by years of kitchen work. Like him I think, soft on the surface but strong below. The biscuits came out golden and tall, so I could breathe a sigh of relief like I had passed some test that only Selmer and I would care about. “Biscuits!” Selmer called into the dining room, “And then he called across the kitchen to the segregated Mexicans, “Come on! Dan’s made us biscuits.” Beside the tray of biscuits, he sat a bowl of butter and a pan of hot bacon grease. He added a dollop of butter to the grease then half a bottle of molasses. After a stir, he slid the pan across the table toward me, “Pour that over your mama’s biscuits there Dan! Or you can just dip them.” They all came from every corner of the restaurant, they put down their prep work and came to stand around Selmer’s table and eat biscuits, my biscuits, the white guy’s biscuits. They didn’t talk much except to compliment the pastries, but they came. Even the aloof maitre d’ made an appearance, and Selmer’s wife put two biscuits on a plate with a drizzle of dip and retreated to lean on the steam table and stare at the backs of the boys from Lebanon nodding and smiling with their cheeks full of food. Selmer had brought the whole squabbling crew together around the stainless worktable. Selmer and I shared a love of biscuits, the first thing I learned how to cook. My mom made sure all of her kids knew how to make biscuits as a source of family pride. I found that same selfish “us and ours” reaction when he started talking about how to make the best biscuits. No matter where I went, I never found biscuits better than I grew up with. When I watched Selmer throw the simple ingredients into the a bowl, the same ingredients I used, I realized that biscuits are biscuits and the key to good biscuits is having the touch with mixing and feel for the dough. He did add a little sugar to his biscuits, something