Buffets, Coupons, Democrats, and My Grandmother

Emma Claudine Jackson was born in Claremont, West Virginia on August 16, 1923 to Maude Smith Jefferson, a homemaker, and Matthew Vassar Jefferson, a coal miner. She was the second born and oldest daughter out of five siblings. She was six years old when speculative greed crashed the stock market, ushering in The Great Depression and resigning millions to poverty and despair. She was eighteen years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked and when, as a consequence, the United States joined World War II. A coal miner’s daughter from Appalachia, a childhood spent surviving The Great Depression, a woman come of age during World War II—suffice it to say that my grandmother was resigned to the fact that life is difficult, hard, and more times than we would like it to be, unfair.

Clear-eyed acceptance of life’s inevitable ups and downs (what the inimitable Albert Murray referred to as the Blues as such, and the equally inimitable Kenneth Burke referred to as a frame of acceptance) should not be be mistaken for lives lived without joy. Quite the opposite: clear eyed acceptance of life’s constitutive unfairness set my grandmother on a constant search for joy. And at barely five feet tall, tough minded and tender hearted in equal measure, she found joy everywhere: cooking for her family, laughing with her family, the mere presence of her family, growing plants, her collection of birthday Easter and Christmas cards, her photo albums, Parliament Funkadelic, going to church, good preaching (which is to say short-winded preachers), The Beatles, jewelry, trinkets of all kinds, her collection of snow globes, Brach’s candy, Estee Lauder perfume, Taco Bell, hot dogs, fresh tomatoes, crossword puzzles, local news, games shows, football, baseball, basketball—Michael Jordan was, she was happy to share, the best looking man she’d ever seen—and traveling home, annually, to visit old friends back in West Virginia. 

My grandmother also enjoyed all-you-can-eat buffets. Golden Corral’s buffet, to be specific, especially on her birthdays. So much so that whenever we were foolish enough to celebrate her birth and stewardship of our family at a fancy, pricey restaurant, inevitably we were given a lesson in home economics. 

Like clockwork, after the server had handed out the menus, my grandmother began expressing shock over the menu prices. Doubts about whether anything at that price could possibly taste that good were also expressed. Inevitably, when she saw the bill, she gave us a detailed list of all the groceries she could have purchased for that same amount of money. When we wised up and stopped allowing her to see the bill, my Grandmother simply took note of what everyone ordered and did the math in her head. Do you know how many steaks, chops, pot roasts, whole chickens we could have bought at the grocery store, she would ask rhetorically, enough to last us through the whole winter, she would answer. 

(Grocery shopping, it’s worth noting here, was like an Olympic event for my grandmother. Armed with a pouch solely dedicated to storing clipped coupons, sometimes you had to drive her to multiple grocery stores before she was willing to declare victory over over-priced food and goods. My grandmother took great pride in feeding her family, and she was not a little proud of how far she could stretch a dollar.)

But when we treated my grandmother to Golden Corral for her birthday, her delight was measurably different. A childhood survivor of The Great Depression, I imagine that my grandmother could not get over the idea that for a fixed price, you could sit and sample all kinds of food and desserts for hours, and still have money to spare.  A taste of this, a dabble of that, a portion of this over here was how she always ate. She didn’t waste food, and she always cleaned her plate. Affordable bounties of food always tasted better to my grandmother. Her birthday present was always her gathered family. Besides, tough times were always around the corner, and making sure that your saving money was better than your spending money was a lesson she constantly taught.

It should come as no surprise, then, when I tell you that I regularly dine at the Wood Grill Buffet in Charlottesville. As a first-generation college graduate, I am never more aware of that status than when I am eating at a high-end restaurant, but at buffets, chains, and diners, I’m never self-conscious, and I always feel at home.

It should also come as no surprise that whenever I dine at the Wood Grill Buffet, I always think about my grandmother.

But when I ate there last Friday, I also thought about the Democratic Party. Which is to say, I had a lot of questions.

Why does this party refuse to run on a national platform that centers the needs of working-class (not middle class) people? Why does this party’s leaders pull out the long knives to take down any candidate who dares to run on that kind of platform? Why is this party obsessed with suburban voters in a handful of states, rather than appealing over again to the working class who are the vast majority of Americans. Does anyone in party leadership know anyone who clips coupons out of necessity? Does anyone in this party have enough sense to know that most of the folk in Wood Grill Buffet are not the least bit interested in “wokeness” in one direction or the other, but that most people here could tell you which gas stations in town were selling gas at the lowest prices, and which grocery stores you’d get a better deal at for milk, meats, vegetables fruit, and eggs. When was the last time any Democratic Party leader ate at a buffet or chain restaurant because it was food that they enjoyed, not because it was a campaign event? And by the time I wondered if any of our balloon-headed pundits will ever realize how condescending it has been to laugh at, out loud and on air, which is to say mock, for years, the President-Elect for eating McDonald’s and KFC when so many everyday folk eat fast food out of necessity all day every day, I knew it was time to let it go and see about another piece of fried whiting. 

Note to Dems: the majority of our electorate is made up of working class, not middle-class, Americans. Working class Americans come from all racial backgrounds, and forty-five percent are people of color, and by 2032, people of color could make up more than fifty percent of the working class. If you run on national platforms aimed at improving the lives of American workers--like say the Infrastructure Bill II, remember that—chances are you’d win election after election with solid majorities. But that would mean telling the Third Way Dems (who gleefully shot down Infrastructure Bill II and who are now blaming wokeness) to take a hike, and that we’re going another way.

And if there is anyone else out here tired of being triangulated by out of touch right-wing leaning Democrats and wants to talk about it, I’ll meet you at the buffet--try the fried whiting; it’s the best in town. 

Treats on me.

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