December 14, 2001

Collard Cookout in heaven?

Through A Glass Darkly, by John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

A.C. Godwin of Rockingham, NC, had his annual Collard Cookout Friday and invited a few folks over to his back yard at 1000 Morningside Drive. About 50 or 60 collard lovers were invited, and all came.

This tradition of hospitality started four or five years ago, born of a love for cooking and sharing good food with friends that A.C. learned from his mother, Bertha Godwin of Dunn.

A.C. also learned to love gardening from his mother, and he keeps a farm with a couple of acres on Ledbetter Road where he raises collards - planted 300 in August - plus other vegetables.

I wrote a column awhile back about how I love collards, but now live alone and don't even have a pot big enough to cook collards in, and my prayers were answered with an invite to the Godwins' Collard Cookout due to that column.

The menu was a collard-lover's heaven: Two kinds of collards, the regular leafy kind and cabbage collards, which are a bit sweeter and head up more like a cabbage than regular collards.

Also, the Godwins baked sweet potatoes, cut in half and cooked just right so the skin stands up loose and makes it easy to split it open and get a forkful of that bright-orange sweet stuff.

Add homemade cornbread to that and you have a meal fit for heaven, but that wasn't enough for A.C. He got up at 4:30 a.m. Friday morning for the crowning touch, barbecued pork, slow-cooked and chopped up fine, heaped up by the plentiful panful.

I told A.C. he didn't even need the barbecue, but truth be told, home-cooked barbecue is simply the best meat that's ever been cooked, so I sort of said it with a wink and my tongue in cheek.

Of course, all that good food didn't just happen because somebody twitched a nose. The Godwins had been cooking and freezing collards for three weeks to get ready for the cookout, and A.C.'s wife, Frances, does just as much work as he does.

I found out too late that Frances had a dessert bar inside with home-made fruitcake and cookies. I say too late, because I was not bashful when it came to filling my plate with some of all of the good food A.C. and Frances were passing out. There was just no room left for dessert.

When I arrived, the Godwins' youngest son, Rodney, was strumming his guitar and singing an old Gospel song, a fitting touch that completed the Godwins' back yard with three picnic tables and a pot of collards still simmering on the cooker.

The fellowship and camaraderie alone told me these were good Christian folks who just loved to share their blessings with others, and I felt truly blessed to be among the fortunate guests.

So when I got to work this evening, I decided to share my blessings with our readers and called the Godwin house to get their son's name, which I had already forgotten since lunch.

That's when I found out that A.C.'s mother, who taught him how to enjoy gardening, cooking and sharing with friends, passed away at the age of 94 about 2 on Friday afternoon, just as the last of the guests were enjoying the Godwins' collards.

When they got the sad news, their son Rodney told his parents this: "What a fitting tribute to grandma, that daddy was cooking, and of all things, collards, when she passed away. She would be so happy if she knew that as she left this world."

And I believe heaven's newest resident indeed knew as she was leaving here that her son is carrying on in her place.