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Dinner for hired help is so Mama

By RONDA RICH

I returned from running errands the other day to find a message from Mama on my answering machine.

“I cooked dinner for the painters. I thought you might want to come over and eat.”

Here’s the translation for that message: “cooked” means “feast”; “dinner” means “lunch”; “painters” means Mama’s feeding the hired help again.

This is nothing new.

She’s been doing this as long as I can remember, back to the days when Daddy sent men out to build pasture fences, get up hay or do any other work around the house.

Just a couple of weeks earlier, Mama had cooked up a huge meal for the men who were putting in a new central heating and air system.

This is a throwback to a world that few know now, a world where anyone standing on your property when mealtime rolled around got a hot meal and a glass of sweet tea.

I called her back. “What do you have?” I asked when she answered. Not that I was planning to go. I was just being nosy.

She was standing in the kitchen, surveying the bounty as she called it off. “I’ve got chicken casserole — and it’s real good, too — fried chicken, candied yams, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, green beans, fried okra, hot biscuits and gravy and a fresh peach cobbler.”

“You don’t cook like that when I come over,” I said dryly.

“You don’t work when you come over,” she retorted. That’s not necessarily true but we won’t go into that.

Since the painters, who were at Mama’s, were the same ones who had recently been at my house, I said, referring to the head painter, “I bet Richard’s tickled to death.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, slamming the refrigerator door. “I don’t know which one is Richard.”

Only someone of my mother’s generation would spend all morning in the kitchen, cooking a feast for men who were nameless to her. Richard spoke up, his mouth obviously full.

“That’s me! Tell her that I read in her column that when you go to Mama’s house, you have to eat. She was right! Yum-yum!”

That’s a nice tradition, though. Isn’t it? It’s so typical of our patented Southern hospitality that we want to feed and water anyone in the vicinity of our home. I’ll admit that I don’t cook for those working at my house. I have modernized the tradition by making sandwiches or ordering pizza. And, I do make certain that any delivery guy who enters my house is offered a bottle of water or a Coke.

My mail carrier told me one day that it is isn’t unusual to find treats waiting for her in mailboxes.

“This one little lady leaves freshly-made fried apple pies and an ice cold Coke for me with a little note. It’s so sweet.”

I didn’t have to ask to know that the “little lady” was from my mama’s generation, not mine. I called Claudette one day around lunchtime and she told me someone was putting down new wood floors in her living room.

“Are you going to make lunch for him?”

“Are you kiddin’!” she shrilled. “I don’t even make lunch for Jack and he cooks supper every night!”

Of course, Claudette is not one to count on for keeping up traditions. She serves hamburgers and hot dogs for Thanksgiving.

It’s a nice tradition. I’m proud of my mama for being so considerate to those who come to work at her house.

I’d be even prouder of her, though, if she cooked like that for her own daughter.