Yesterday afternoon I called up my local butcher in Oxford, Mississippi, and placed the same Thanksgiving order I place every year: four beef tenderloins, which is my contribution to the sprawling Thompson family gathering, as it was my father's contribution before me. This year's order was a bit melancholy because Wong's Foodland in Clarksdale, the town where I was born, recently changed hands. They'd been the purveyors of the tenderloins for decades, but lacking time to check out the new owners -- such a task cannot simply be trusted to unvetted people -- I turned to my local LB's Meat Market, which has yet to mess up any cow-related missions.
Football, food and the last big tent events left in a divided America
