So I left Cassie's room to go home. Walking down I passed a room and then I hear sir, sir, so I went backed and looked in the room. There was a man maybe in his late 60's and his wrists were tied to the bed. Nobody else in the room. He says "can you find a razor blade so I can cut these off?". To which I said "I'm sorry I can't help you". He said "c'mon" and I left. So many questions in my head. Flight risk? Danger to others? Under arrest? Termanally ill and wants to end it?

What do you know about cornbread? Probably that it comes from corn, and folks often have it with gumbo, or maybe collard greens, or fried catfish.

All I knew about cornbread was almost every Saturday, I was detailed to go and shuck, then shell a burlap bag of ears of corn. We would be going into town on Saturday and that would require about 10 to 15 pounds of shelled corn. This was our standard practice for a long time.

Upon getting into town, our first stop was the grist mill and dropping off the burlap bag of shelled corn. We would leave it there and upon leaving town to go home, we went by the grist mill again to pick up our share of the corn meal. Which had been ground into meal. This was only half of the shelled corn we had brought to the mill. The other half was payment for the chore of grinding the shelled corn we had delivered earlier.

I never thought about it, or ever asked about this process. I didn’t even know that you could buy ground corn meal at any grocery store in town!

Our corn provided as good corn meal as any that could be purchased. It was simply one of the chores I was asked to perform.
I have a short memory, but believe I was to load up a burlap bag of corn still on the cob, run these cobs through a mechanical device that separated the corn from the corn cob.
When ground, provided half for us and half to the grist mill to pay for their work. I never considered that we were paying too much, but only it was a fair trade.

As far as taste, I suppose it is acquired taste, before one begins to like cornbread. If you grew up as I had, cornbread at lunch and supper, you never gave it a second thought.

This reminded me of an old joke. A young man goes off to college and after a number of years came home with a new PhD. One of his countryfied uncles said, Jimmy, speak to me some of your new PhD. Now, Jimmy aware of the uncle’s ability to hand out sarcastic comments and was probably anxious to do so after Jimmy made some statement about his education, said “Pie R Square!” To which the Uncle guff hawed and slapped his knee and was almost rolling on the ground with mirth. He then said, "Jimmy, you aint learned nothing. Pie are round, Cornbread are square!” Just Sayin...RJS