This morning we rode out to Loachapoka, which is a neighboring rural community. Some 185 people live there, but this one Saturday every fall, the place grows by several thousand people. Today was the annual and nationally famous Syrup Sopping. They estimate they draw almost 20,000 people, which is a little hard to believe, but there are tons of people in the little community.
Loachapoka, by the way, gets its name from two Creek words: “locha,” meaning turtle and “polga,” meaning either killing place or gathering place.
But the point is the old-timey agriculture, the arts and crafts on sale, the puppies from the two rescue organizations that show up and the music, played on a gooseneck trailer strategically placed by the railroad tracks. Loachapoka, before the Civil War, was the local hotspot. A depression in the 1870s all but wiped it out, but that railway was critically huge to the community.
Today, it is the syrup. This is a Southern thing, apparently — and just more evidence of something that the rest of you are missing. Buttermilk biscuits with fresh sorghum, juiced and simmered right on the site, is heaven on your fingertips. You could do maple, too, but there is a slight difference. Both are acceptable, however.
And it is dying art. Very labor intensive, as we’ve moved from farms to cities the production has dropped significantly. Wikipedia: Currently, less than 1 million US gallons (3,800 m3) are produced annually in the U.S. Most sorghum grown for syrup production is grown in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
So we bought some local honey and several bottles of syrup. We use it for pancakes, of course, but also salmon and the occasional other treat, like a biscuit. We also bought the kettle corn because there was kettle corn:
Man that’s good stuff, and this is my one day of indulgence of kettle corn for the year.
This evening there was a wedding. My college buddy’s little sister got dressed up and said the things and performed the rituals and found herself married:
I guess I’ve known her since she was 10 or so. It was a lovely ceremony, and the bride was beautiful.
We had a side view of her niece who was the flower girl, and is very much the perfect blonde princess. She dropped petals all the way down the aisle, got to the front of the church and turned over the entire basket. “I did it!”
The reception was at a mansion a few hundred yards from where the bride grew up. We sat out on the back patio enjoying a delicious meal of shrimp and grits and a chicken pasta and just about the most fresh salad you’ve ever tried. We listened to a local band with a wicked bass. They played lots of Motown. I think some of those guys played her brother’s wedding.
Everyone had a great time. The flower girl danced herself silly. I think a U.S. Senator was there. The cake had a raspberry filling, and the groom’s cake was something approaching German chocolate.
I put that picture online after we left the wedding. The bride had already seen it by the time she reached her reception, because that’s the world we live in now.
The mother of the bride was the most beautiful person there. “I think I’ll wear this dress grocery shopping,” she said.
Sweet young lady, good family. It was almost a perfect wedding — she did get married on a Saturday in the fall in the South, after all.
We won’t talk about the day’s football.
