Matthew Burnette, Staff Writer

Country ham is an interesting breakfast meat to cook.

It’s not like your typical store-bought piece of ham that you can get out of the packaging and fry for a couple of minutes and eat.

Country ham has to be carefully trimmed to remove an excess fat or leftover rind that may be around the edges. It’s also important to cook it in some sort of sweet liquid like Coca Cola to not only tenderize the meat but take out some of the saltiness from the cured pork.

The most peculiar aspect of country ham, though, is the aroma it produces.

I’ve tried to think of more eloquent ways to describe the scent that the aging process causes, but the best I could muster is that the ham smells like feet, particularly feet after a long summer hike that started with stepping in a large puddle.

I don’t particularly care for country ham which is funny in that way that life tends to be because all of the knowledge that I have about country ham is through cooking excess amounts of it.

For the last several years, I have been given the task of being the designated ham cook at my church’s annual fundraising breakfast.

I wake up at four in the morning on the first Saturday of October to make my way to the fellowship hall at church to spend about four hours preparing the ham, cooking it and inhaling the musty odor that lingers in my nasal passages for several days after.

Despite my distaste for country ham, it’s a job that I perform with a great deal of pride and reflection.

We found out in the lead up to this year’s event that the Country Ham Breakfast is a church tradition of ours that dates back to at least the 1950s.

The breakfast is something that I can remember going to as a kid in the 90s. By that time, it was organized by the men of the church to help with different odds and ends and projects that needed to be completed.

Both Young brothers, Nile and Virgil, would help get the breakfast ready. Nile would make buttermilk biscuits from scratch with lard, and someone would make homemade red eye gravy with the ham drippings.

While technically labeled as a “men’s breakfast” with the men taking a turn putting together a meal, many of the women in the church would also play a part in putting the event together.

The Youngs’ wives Della and Grace would also help cook, and several of the ladies of the church would provide items to sell at a bake sale during the breakfast.

There would also have to be a designated dishwasher as they used real plates and silverware, though that job was never gender-specific and would go to whoever needed something to do.

It was a group effort which is how things like that are meant to be.

Our breakfast looks a little bit different today than it did when I was a kid. The biscuits come from the store (though they are still quite tasty). We don’t make the red eye gravy anymore, and we use paper plates and plastic utensils for easy cleanup.

Another notable difference is the people you see putting the breakfast on.

My church these days tends to have an average age that falls somewhere around retirement which is something that I’ve always enjoyed because older people are not only an interesting group to share stories and talk with, but in a lot of cases, they’re the best ones to learn from as well.

A lot of my favorite people are the ones that I get to see at church, some that I’ve known my whole life and some that I’m close enough to that it feels like I have.

But the problem with a lot of your favorite people being a part of an older population is that you slowly find yourself having to say goodbye to a lot of your favorite people.

Many of the folks that I can remember from my youth have gone on to greener pastures. Both Young brothers are gone, Della too. Rick Taylor, Mike Dangerfield, J.C. Webb, Pete Peterson, Jewell Love, Paul Lucas and Betty Rigsby are all people that I can picture from my childhood that are no longer with us.

I often find myself thinking about the rotating cast of characters that come and go in a group that’s long-sustaining. The church I attend is over 200 years old so obviously, as the cycle of life tells us, many of the members have passed on, but sometimes it’s a little overwhelming to think about the ones that you knew personally.

When I find myself standing over the hot pans waiting for the right time to flip the ham, I’ll occasionally think about all of the people that would have had the job before me over the last 70 plus years.

How many of their fellow church members would have passed behind them with hot food ready to serve? What members of the community came to eat breakfast on those past Saturday mornings? Who came up behind them to say hello or was just curious about the process of cooking country ham?

It’s a legacy that I can only hope to be carrying on in a way that those who came before me would be proud of.

Is it a job that I ever thought I would end up with or even want? Probably not.

As I mentioned, I’m not that big a fan of country ham.

It’s one that I will gladly be the facilitator of for as long as I am able to, though.

Then, in the hopefully distant future, another 30-something year old can stand where I’ve stood on the first Saturday of October.

He’ll be slightly put off by the interesting aroma of the country ham. He might be a little cranky from getting up so early on the weekend, and he may be nervous about getting it right.

But maybe as he’s waiting for the right moment to flip the ham, he’ll think of me as fondly as I have those who came before me.