Traverse City Record-Eagle

Sally Ketchum: In The Kitchen

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January 18, 2009

In the Kitchen: More than manners

Today, America observes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1929 birthday, and today I think of my first experience meeting a black person, a steward in the dining car of one of America's great railroad lines, The Great Northern.

I was 6. During World War II, my father's job as a Detroit advertising executive merged into defense efforts. He was sent, with our family, to Seattle for a summer to write a tank manual so that GIs in the field could repair their vehicles. It was a grand summer for a 6-year-old, but the most vivid memory is of the trip there, and of the dining car and its steward, a middle-aged black man.

That trip, crossing the country by rail, is indelible in memory for two reasons: First, the train was packed with young soldiers and sailors, dashing in uniforms. Second, the remarkable steward who supervised the dining care introduced me to grace. I loved both the soldiers and the steward passionately.

I was given free rein on the train. I recall counting the cars up and down, the tiny lavatories with their metal basins to wash up and dim mirrors to check my Shirley Temple curls. I loved the high-backed seats where I sat with the soldiers and played cards -- poker, not fish (a sailor taught me five-card stud.).

I sat on their laps and they told me funny stories about their homes. This was very heady stuff for a little girl in a Red Cross nurse's apron and cap. I thought the GIs the most handsome men in the world.

Most of all, however, I loved the dining car and its steward. Since the different races in Detroit then, in the early '40s, kept mostly to themselves, I had never interacted with black Americans. The steward was a handsome man with a dazzling smile, and he fascinated me. He had magic in his hands, swooping plates around a diner's shoulder to the table, arranging the flatware with exacting care and snapping starched napkins out of their severe folds to drop on my lap like a compliment. I was lost in admiration.

If this were not enough, he brought me delicious wonders (I was certainly an eager eater if not a greedy little girl), new foods and in new portions. He introduced seafood cocktails to me -- Dungeness crab, sweet and pink-fleshed, shredded and mixed with celery slivers in dishes in larger iced dishes, the crab smothered in the red sauce, tart with lemon and sharp with the horseradish. And, on other days, the crab was folded into creme fraiche.

He swept cantaloupe down to my place, huge halves of ripe melon in footed, chrome dishes, presented on paper lace doilies. Richer still, the hollow was filled with French vanilla ice cream. He taught me to place the dish on the doily aside, leaving my plate as a signal that I was finished.

There was crispy southern fried chicken to eat with my fingers with a taste that I now know was buttermilk. The steward and I discussed chicken and other things at times when he could afford to linger, when other diners had been served. He was so charmingly mannered, always checking my parents' expressions for attitudes that told him that he was welcome, not intruding. I know my educated and open-minded father approved of the world and of its people. My mother simply saw it as more attention paid to her prodigy. The steward told me of his mother's chicken, garlicky and aromatic from parsley, and stickier than the piece on my plate.

He also taught me a new and strange dining procedure that delighted me, and I soon mastered it with exaggeration and aplomb -- finger bowls. In these, a perfect lemon slice floated in the tepid water, but he sometimes put a flower in mine. He taught me to appreciate perfect, but not hovering, service.

So many things trigger memories of that dining car -- a perfect shrimp, a flower petal floating in a summer soup, heavy silver flatware on the starched white tablecloth, including soup spoon and salad and seafood cocktail forks. Thinking about this urges me to a pleasant table on nostalgic nights. My husband and I love southern fried chicken. It's greasy, and we will need finger bowls, I think. I'll play steward and snap a starched napkin to drop in his lap.

Crab in Creme Fraiche

1/2 lb. white crab meat, picked over and cooked, or 2 (6-oz.) cans of white crab meat

1 c. heavy cream

1 c. sour cream

1 T. chopped chives

White pepper to taste

Dash cayenne

Mix whipping cream and sour cream together. Reserve at room temperature for 8 hours. Add chives, white pepper, and cayenne. Fold in crab. Chill for at least two hours. Serves 4-6 as a side or an amuse bouche.

Sally Ketchum is a northern Michigan writer. This column is part of "An Affair with Food," a memoir she is writing. Sally can be reached at ketchum1985@gmail.com.

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