• Jewish students at FAU are owed an apology
• Fountain pens, quill pens, old pens and nickel pencils
• Sean Hannity and the other radio jerks
• Trayvon Martin shooting requires federal investigation
• Words that ‘inspire’ can also be misused, as history of Ku Klux Klan in Florida shows
• Caffeine withdrawal can cause one heck of a headache
• Roosevelt Wilson will join us; we see Haley as Romney’s running mate
• Age may tell story as Romney and Gingrich face off in Florida
• GOP top candidates in Florida will have to overcome the deficits of age
• Maybe Robert Champion Jr. should have been home, studying
• Seminole football team deserves encouragement rather than doubt
• Mitt Romney hopes that this will not be his last supper in Tallahassee
• Did secession die with Jefferson Davis? Burial speech in Tallahassee praised new, unified country
• Moonpie and a Nehi
• Fewer bookstores and that uneasy feeling that we could have done more to prevent this loss
• End of world is around corner, authorities predict - While the demise of Earth is predicted, many people seem to be skeptical. ...
• Gore tells victim’s parents he has become different person; his death takes 19 minutes at Raiford - Remorseful killer David Alan Gore, strapped to gurney, was dead in 19 minutes after lethal injection. ...
• Bragging about what you’ve done can get you to the death chamber quite a bit faster - Prisoner set for execution April 12 could have learned a lot from Charles Profitt....
• FAMU professors patent new medication for schizophrenia - African-Americans suffer three times rate of schizophrenia says recent research ...
• Murder comes without any warning as rage can build in state’s prisons - Any prisoner can become dangerous and there are ways to make deadly weapons and time to do it. ...
• Many innocent may languish in prison on corrupt testimony, legislative payment shows - Dillon case, Pitts and Lee demonstrate that justice is sometimes difficult to come by in Florida...
• Clues to a murder: forensic botanist finds the little things in death - David Hall helps law enforcement trap the bad guys with botanical clues...
• Honduras jail fire recalls horrific Florida prison blaze where 38 perished amid lingering questions - A scene of racial fights, the Florida road prison in Jay exploded into fire in 1967, leaving truth yet to be fully told. ...
• Waterhouse executed proclaiming innocence - Convicted murderer Robert Waterhouse, 65, died by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Starke, with unsettling words....
• Florida Senate kisses an emotional goodbye to prison privatization - Public prisons get a valentine as senate proposal fails in a 19-21 vote; meanwhile, execution slated today...
• Group alleges more financial links to privatization; vote could be today - A watchdog group alleges that privatization backers have financial links the effort ...
• Florida A&M Rattlers have played in 25 of the 46 Super Bowls - Dallas star Bob Hayes won a Super Bowl ring and an Olympic gold medal. ...
• Freedom rider rabbi remembers his arrest in Tallahassee airport 50 years ago - Ministers eventually served sentence, worked as road crew before release from jail ...
• Second Harvest signature soups will help fight child hunger on Wednesday at Capitol - One in six people locally struggle for enough to eat ...
• Cancer patient slips away from hospital to give stranded bus riders a last Christmas gift - In his battle with cancer, he relied on city buses . . . and now he had a plan to help people who didn't know the buses were down for the day. ...
Moonpie and a Nehi
I stopped in Lake City at the Cracker Barrel on the way home from Gainesville recently and picked up a box of Moonpies. I would have gotten two, but the fact I have put on some weight had a little to do with it. After all, I see that one chocolate Moonpie contains 220 calories and a lot of saturated fat.
The Moonpie was invented in 1917, I learned, so one might say it came out of the war years. A bakery salesman from Chattanooga noticed some people dipping graham crackers into marshmallow. He added a cookie on each side, dipped it all into chocolate, and it became a popular lunch bucket item for miners.
I think it’s a part of the legend of the South, as truly Southern as Nehi soda, grits and goober peas.
The Moonpie has become so legendary that it is now sold by the Yankees on Amazon, but they still can’t beat the price at Cracker Barrel. Cracker Barrel has some good prices. In fact, I still don’t know how they manage to sell those harmonicas at Cracker Barrel so inexpensively, and I often buy one when traveling as I like to play a tune now and then.
Am I a child of the South? In some ways we adapt.
Maybe growing up in Charleston, after we moved from Miami, has something to do with all of this. I’m not Southern by blood, although my Mom used to boast that Baltimore, where she was born, is below that Mason Dixon Line. Growing up in the South was a strange amalgamation for me. The Jews of Dixie managed to combine grits and gefilte fish. It’s a sign of our times that one may purchase bagels at a bagel shop in almost any Southern city worth its salt and poppy seeds.
Sad to say, while there are many good restaurants in the Tallahassee area, no one has been brave enough to try to open a kosher delicatessen. Harry Golden, the memorable editor from Charlotte, was one of my favorite writers, and if you are of my generation and have read Only in America, you know what I am talking about.
You can’t be truly Southern and abide by the dietary rules of Judaism. Crawfish, crab, lobster, oysters and shrimp are out of the picture. And, of course, pork is not on the menu. Strictly speaking, my Moonpie did lack the kosher registration mark I always look for, but by that time, I had eaten at least two of them.
Not sure what to do with the rest of the package, but they are tempting, especially when frozen.
It seems that perhaps in childhood I had a grape Nehi with a Moonpie and never got over the fact. It’s just not right to tempt people this way. And I could go on about the frozen cups of Kool-Aid we called “chilly bears” we got at the drugstore lunch counter in Charleston.
If the South ever rises again, it will be with some extra pounds around the belly.