Agnes Hangs Out
Just don't invite her for dinner.
Agnes is beautiful. White streaks in her brown hair. Her long shapely pointed nails very au courant. And she’s pretty sassy, doesn’t appear to care at all about the criticism, if not downright fury, of her taking up residence in the neighborhood given her habit of promenading down the alleyway shopping for vegetable patches.
I am her landlord. She resides in our tree. We have a back porch hanging off the second floor of the house and it’s about eye level to her apartment perched in the crook of three good-size limbs. Multiple photos blown up on my phone reveal Agnes wove twigs and sticks together, then packed it with leaves. It must be very cozy. It’s also near enough to the porch roof that she can jump on top of it, causing a huge thud that drives the cat and dog crazy. The roof appears to be a predator-free highway between our tree and a neighbor’s four doors down.
If I was an evil person I’d consider roasting her zaftig body with a lot of root vegetables and the traditional sweet potatoes. Gene, the possum expert I know in Arkansas, looked at the photo I sent to him and guessed Agnes was a good five pounds or so.
“That’d be enough for maybe three people, four if you pile on the potatoes and soaking bread,” he added helpfully.
And this, of course, commenced a search for exactly how to cook a possum.
Gene’s an expert on cooking possum because he lives in Mena, Arkansas, a very conservative, not-close-to-being-diverse small town (all of six square miles big). It’s oppressively hot in the summer but cool in the autumn and winter, which is why the town’s Polk County Possum Club (PCPC) held its famous annual possum dinner in November. The first dinner was conceived in 1915, the last in 1947, with three years off during World War II because there were fewer hunters in town. The affair packed in people from all over the state, including governors, senators, congressmen, and judges.
The 1933 banquet served Senator Joe T. Robinson, Governor Junius M. Futrell, Congressman Ben Cravens, and Chief Justice C.E. Johnson. During the 1939 PCPC banquet, the women of the Mena Hospital Guild served over 650 meals. Long rows of tables were set up in the rock-walled armory on De Queen Street. However, the “possum and taters” ran out, and about 100 people were turned away. That evening, the Goldman Hotel Orchestra from Fort Smith (Sebastian County) played for the Possum Ball at the Elks Club. ~ The Encyclopedia of Arkansas
It is conceivable that the vast amount of liquor the organizers managed to procure in a dry county could have been a bigger draw then the menu. There’s an account of the 1935 feast that seems to be the definition of a bacchanal. The town is still dry, although there is a licensed brewery in town frequented by tourists and you can get a drink in a restaurant but that’s about it.
It is impossible not to visit Mena once you know about the club. A man by the name of Roy Vail revived it in 1995. Roy was the unofficial town historian as well as an award-winning biology teacher, an expert in cactus, the local college’s radio disc jockey specializing in jazz, and the benefactor of the Ouachita Little Theatre, where he won great reviews for his acting and directing. He was also revered for being the twentieth century’s only living president of the Polk County Possum Club. Interest in the club finally petered out in 2001 with the lack of interest in eating possum. Roy died last year, 84 years young.
It was once said that possums were so prolific in the area that they used to hang from lampposts. They weren’t in sight when I was there, and people didn’t seem to care to speculate if they’re good eating. It was early afternoon so a drive down the road to Lum and Abner Store and Museum seemed doable and a good place to find people who might know a thing about possum cooking. And there was—Mrs. Clarkson was polite enough to assured me that its dark meat is gamy tasting, but not too gamy—sort of like duck. She never cooked it, though her grandmother did.
“I remember it as a lot of trouble,” she said and then got into her car.
The summer day was not perfect for walking around anymore, no matter how small the town was. Back at the cheap motel on the last street before Route 88 takes you out of town, the man behind the desk noted that I was far from home. He asked in a good-natured way what I was doing in Mena.
“Got relatives here?” he asked.
“Looking for possums,” I replied.
That stopped him for a second.
“We got them,” he said. “Lots of them.”
He looked to be somewhere in the vicinity of an age where he might have met Roy Vail and perhaps had gone to one of the club’s possum dinners himself. Maybe he even hunted them and, if I was lucky, knew a good recipe.
“Did you ever go to any of the Possum Club’s dinners?” I asked.
He laughed. My knowing about the club made it feel like he warmed up to me a little. “How do you know about them?”
“I read it in an old guidebook. They sounded like a lot of fun.”
“I never went, but I know my mother cooked for a few.”
I perked up. “Do you have her recipe?”
“Maybe my wife does. She never made one, though, so maybe not.”
I sensed that I had reached the limit of his interest in me and possums. You can always recognize this when the person you’re interrogating turns around and starts doing something that really doesn’t look urgent enough to do at that minute. It was okay; my reporting skills were flagging in the heat, anyway. My room’s air conditioner blasted cigarette-perfumed cold air, and dinner of a chunk of beef and two glasses of wine at an alcohol pouring steakhouse was really good. I headed down Route 88 the next day—an extremely beautiful road if you’re ever in Mena and need to go to Oklahoma. That’s where I was headed, to Rock Springs and the local Watermelon Festival happening in three days.
So no possum, not in Mena. But one in my backyard.
Agnes probably knows she is not destined to end up in one of my roasting pans. I like to think she’s grown as fond of me as I am of her. She’s an unexpected marvel that lightens up the day whenever she stretches her whole body out on the lower trunk of our tree where she’ll lounge at dusk. She disappears after a while, then shows up around ten or eleven o’clock on top of the neighbor’s fence or thumps down on the porch roof in the midst of her evening strolls. Another neighbor claims to have seen her carrying babies on her back and several peeking out of her pouch (possums are the only marsupials in the country). I’ve never seen her with babies but it’s still credence that Agnes will spend the whole summer with us. It delights me and my husband, and we’ve grown protective, defending her against our frustrated dog and cat who’d love to have a round with her. Given how pampered they are, we’d bet on Agnes.
The Joy of Cooking’s Possum Recipe
(Leave it to Irma Rombauer! As written in the 1951 edition.) If possible, trap [a] ‘possum and feed it on milk and cereal for 10 days before killing. Clean, but do not skin. Treat as for pig by immersing the unskinned animal in water just below the boiling point. Test frequently by plucking at the hair. When it slips out readily, remove the opossum from the water and scrape. While scraping repeatedly, pour cool water over the surface of the animal. Remove small red glands in small of the back and under each foreleg between the shoulder and ribs. Parboil, in two or three changes of water, then roast as for pork, or use recipes for rabbit. Serve with:
Turnip greens
Lastly, what's the best weird thing you've cooked or eaten? Mine was freshly killed rattlesnake. Tell us all about it in the comment section!
Weirdest thing, Pat? Oh my gosh, there are so many, BUT if I were to pick one or two they might be seal grease and Arctic lamprey eels.
Those small red glands are called 'kernals'--squirrels and racoons have them, too.
"Creamed Possum"? I hope I never have to open a can of that as long as I live!