How the Woolworth’s lunch counter gave me a lifetime love of grits

My southern roots came knocking this morning – and they were calling for grits.

Grits make me think of home, even though my New York-transplanted Jewish mother never made them in our Virginia house. Although she adopted southern traditions like black-eyed peas on New Year’s Eve, our Sunday scrambled eggs remained accompanied by bagels and cream cheese – and lox on special occasions.

It was at a lunch counter in Woolworth’s, the summer after I graduated from high school, that I became acquainted with the delicacy and we became fast friends. My summer job was a block away from the five-and-ten-cent store, as it was called then, and I took to dropping in for the breakfast special before work. Ninety-nine cents for eggs and biscuits with a side of grits. Two months of that and I was hooked.

This continued during my college years on cold mornings in the school cafeteria, but it took a long lapse during my New York years, when it was back to bagels. This time, they were sold from the snack cart that made morning rounds through the publishing company where I worked.

Many years later, now a California transplant, I had a relapse of “grits-itus” when George and I drove cross-country to his family reunion in Tennessee, and I discovered the Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores. The first one was in Arizona, and I went kid-in-a-candy-store crazy when I saw grits on the menu. 

But it got even better after I tasted them. They were not the fancied-up kind that I had tasted in restaurants, but just plain old Woolworth-style grits. Dare I say this, there is something raw and gritty about plain old grits with butter and salt. I was so taken that I suggested we stay at a motel nearby, so I could eat there again for breakfast the next day.

When I learned, from reading the back of the menu, that Cracker Barrels were scattered throughout the South, I actually started altering our travel route to towns where they were located. At some point, I turned into a “grits-a-holic,” even getting up early to go to breakfast. George soon discovered that grits in the morning made his wife a happy traveler. As a side attraction, he enjoyed doing the puzzle games that were on every restaurant table. I still have the one we bought so he could play in our hotel rooms. 

Along the way we met many die-hard “gritzers,” as I call them, who tried to convert me to upgrade my tastes. Everything from grits with cheese to shrimp and exotic sauces were presented to entice me.

“No go,” I said to the plain grits I was stirring on the stove this morning. 

I guess I’m just a simple girl with simple tastes.

 Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Patriciabunin.com