Livermush never made it big (but I don’t care)

Livermush hails from North Carolina hilltops and foothills that once hummed with tractors, textile mills and furniture factories. Families that ate livermush lived frugally and made do with homemade. But most started buying commercially made once it became available in country and company stores during the Depression.

“Unlike bacon and country ham (or, for that matter, chitlins), livermush never took off. To this day, the epicenter of livermush is a handful of counties in western North Carolina where the five commercial producers — Mack’s, Neese’s, Jenkins, Hunter’s and Corriher’s — remain.

“I was served plenty of livermush when I was a little kid, mostly because my granddaddy loved it. I tapered off livermush as I grew up and headed out into the world….

“For about 30 years, I made one annual exception, at the North Carolina State Fair. Neese’s and/or Jenkins always had a booth in the Jim Graham Building, where workers cut bricks of livermush into bites the size of sugar cubes, fried them up and stabbed them onto frill picks. Fairgoers would queue patiently, awaiting their turn to lift a pick from the tray and pop that free bite into their mouths as though it were a communion wafer….

“These days I don’t eat livermush as often as I could, but I defend it as often as I can…. I am from western North Carolina, and I know my place.

— From “Why Livermush Matters to North Carolina” by Sheri Castle at Extra Crispy (Aug. 2)

 

Western NC in February: ‘cool without being chilly’?

“The days here [in February] are like Northern October; cool in the morning, warm at midday and cool at night. The air here is cool without being chilly. It has a stimulating quality which makes one eat much, laugh heartily and feel frisky. People come here pale, coughing, all bundled up and, in about a week, you see them racing about, eager to climb Mt. Mitchell and with the ‘terrible cold’ dwindled to a fast fading recollection.

“Of course the reputation which the Hot Springs [resort in Madison County] have acquired brings here many invalids who cannot recover in a week, or, perhaps at all, but even this class brighten up and in many cases turn the corner to recovery.”

— From “Western North Carolina: The Best Place in the World to Spend February” in the Wall Street Journal (Feb. 3, 1891)