A Bowl Of Red

Ora Dee Hadnot Beatty
1919-1967

My maternal grandmother’s name was Ora Dee. This is the South though, so everyone made her first and middle names sound like one word, "Oardee". She was born in the Bevil Port community of Jasper County, Texas in December 1919. My siblings and I called her Aunt Dee. My mother was born four months before her fourteenth birthday. They were raised like sisters. I guess I always knew it, but research and DNA has confirmed that she and my fraternal great-grandmother, R. V. Seale, were half first cousins. Complicated, I know, but not unusual in small close knit communities.

Although she died when I was only twelve years old, I remember her as one of the hardest working women I've known. She cleaned houses and took care of other people's children by day, and at night she was a cigarette smoking, gum chewing cafe cook. She worked at a small cafe across the street from the Jasper County jail. The Wedge Inn Cafe was famous for it's chili, and Ora Dee was the one who made it. People would come in and order a bowl of red. I thought that was funny when I was a kid. My grandfather, Alonzo Jordan, would order a bowl of red and a glass of white. That meant he wanted a glass of milk with his chili. No one ever really knew her recipe. I don't think there was one. She had made that chili hundreds of times, so she knew what it was suppose to taste like. I think she added a pinch of this and a dash of that until it was what she wanted it to be. A high school friend of mine recently gave me a recipe that she said was the Wedge Inn chili recipe. She said it came from the family that owned the place. I tried it. My taste buds have evolved since I was twelve years old, but I don't think that recipe included all of Ora Dee's ingredients. 

Wedge Inn Cafe
Jasper, Texas

One morning in May of 1967 she didn't feel well after her night shift at the cafe. She felt bad enough that she decided to see a doctor. That in itself was saying something. We were country folk who only saw a doctor for life threatening injuries or ailments that had been unsuccessfully treated with home remedies. She had to enter through the back door, of course. After all, it was 1967. She had to wait in the "Colored" waiting room. She probably knew she'd have to wait until the White patients had been seen before they even asked what was ailing her. So she sat her tired body in the hard uncomfortable chair in the Colored section. She fell asleep. When they finally got around to calling her name she did not respond. My forty seven year old grandmother had died. Her death certificate says it was a heart attack. I think she was just too tired to carry on.

I wish I could remember more details of her life, but like most kids I wasn't paying attention to what adults were saying and doing. For some reason, though, I remember her pocketbook (purse) smelling of chewing gum and cigarettes. She always had Alka-seltzer on hand, and she walked almost every where she went. She liked watching sports and she loved to fish. I remember her having a slight cough sometimes. I know now that cough was probably from the cigarettes. She also may have been a little claustrophobic. She liked to sleep near a window, preferably one that was open. Oh, how I wish I remembered more.

I'm still trying to make the perfect bowl of red. Sometimes I feel like I'm close, at other times I think I need a pinch of this or a dash of that.