Fennel

It was the week of my twelfth birthday when Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, forever changing the way Americans thought about food. My father was in Europe with Fritz Hollings, then Governor of South Carolina, trying to attract foreign industry to the state. My mother, perhaps then more than ever, was totally immersed in her cooking; Dad was always bringing home fabulous bottles of rare vintages and stories of meals in the world’s finest restaurants. We would take family trips to New York or San Francisco and stay in modest hotels, but we’d always dine in the best eateries. Friends would ask me at school what we had eaten at home the night before, then roar with laughter when I would say “squid”—which they knew I would have had to go buy at the bait shop in the “colored” neighborhood. This was Orangeburg, South Carolina, in a very different time. (Just two years before Hollings was elected, Strom Thurmond had spoken for twenty-four hours and twenty-seven minutes against civil rights, setting a filibuster record. Integration wasn’t mandated until another two years later.) I’m pretty sure we were the only people in town eating squid. I don’t even remember fried calamari on the menu of our local pizza joint.