A trip down memory lane, plus AYCE fried catfish

The next best thing to a time machine is a visit to the old home place after years of absence.

That's what I did last Saturday. The lure for my return to my favorite hometown in the Ozarks over yonder was an invitation to help judge the First Annual Tim Savage Memorial Fish Fry Cook-off sponsored by the Piedmont Chamber of Commerce with assistance from the American Legion Auxiliary.

Why me as a judge for a fish fry? Apparently the organizers thought my role as creator, in this space, of the Louis J. Lorimier Memorial World-famous Downtown Golf Tournament and All-You-Can-Eat Catfish Buffet was good enough.

So, there I was, along with two other judges, sampling piping hot fried catfish. We also judged several hush puppy entries.

Can you, in your most vivid imagination, think of a better way to clog your arteries? I mean, if God wanted us to avoid fried foods he wouldn't have created cooking oil, would he? Or fire?

Driving an hour and half to get to my favorite hometown seemed like the perfect opportunity to allow enough time to visit the farm where I grew up, the one-room school I attended, the country church pastored by the same Mr. Grassham who delivered our mail, nearby Clearwater Lake, the house on Second Street where my folks moved after selling the farm, the cemetery in Iron County where my folks and brother are buried, and Gad's Hill, the site of the famous railroad robbery in the 1870s by the infamous James gang.

All of this was even more of a treat for me because I wasn't driving. My friend Mark offered to take the wheel, and I accepted his generous offer. It was his first visit west of Marble Hill, so he got to see a lot of new scenery while being a captive audience for all my stories about growing up in the hills.

We proved, once again, that it is two and a half miles from my childhood farm house to Shady Nook School and uphill both ways.

I was able to meet the current occupants of the old homestead, a young family consisting of parents David and Summer, and their five daughters.

You know how childhood memories distort the shape and size of things like houses and distances? I can remember the first time I ever visited the farm after leaving home for college. The house seemed so much smaller than I remembered. Saturday's visit was different. The farmhouse was the right size, but the garden plot looked twice as large as I remembered. And, yes, we planted and hoed and watered and harvested every square foot of that garden.

Our trip included two visits to the Zephyr Cafe, a Piedmont institution for more than 70 years. We had an early lunch and stopped by later in the afternoon for a bit of refreshment. Then it was off to the American Legion Park for the festivities.

The auxiliary was selling catfish dinners while the fish-fry teams -- 11 of them -- geared up for the "best catfish" and "best hush puppy" contests.

The event was named for Tim Savage who died last year. Tim was quite a fisherman and top-shelf fry cook. Without a doubt the contestants in Saturday's event tried to uphold the best traditions of catfish cooking. The judges got to sample some outstanding fried fish and hush puppies.

Hats off to the organizers of the event. Everything went smoothly, thanks to considerable forethought and advance preparation.

So many towns like Piedmont are struggling for survival, but my favorite hometown shows considerable evidence of a can-do grit that keeps the town humming.

Thanks to the organizers of Saturday's event, I had a wonderful day and got to reconnect with so much of my growing-up years. Thank you, Brenda and Donna, and everyone else who ramrodded the fish from and contributed to my opportunity to revisit memory lane.

Yes. I had fun.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.