Silver City, being only 250 or so residents, has not gotten the attention of much bigger Rolling Fork, but it was equally destroyed by the recent EF-4 tornado.
Bob Crisler, Ted Dinkins, Ron and Anna Katherine Scott and I traveled there for a day to serve 80 lunch meals and 180 dinner meals.
Northminster Baptist Church and Greg Radar provided the funding. Ted brought an awesome smoking rig from his son's Starkville restaurant, Two Brothers Smoked Meats. Everyone was so appreciative and kind. We were one of many volunteers scheduled throughout the month. This is a great example of the love and kindness of the people of our state.
It was great food. Ted had just come back from New Orleans where his Hog Addiction cooking team won first place (out of 160 teams for the second year in a row!) in the Ochsner's Hog for A Cause event which raised $3.5 million for the treatment of pediatric brain tumors.
It was fascinating to watch Ted organize the feed. It was obvious he had done this countless times before. He had all the key equipment and knew exactly how to marshall his inexperienced team into an efficient cooking crew.
I had never heard of a Cambro “insulated food transporter.” These cooler-like devices keep hot food to within a few degrees of its original temperature for four hours or longer, so when we served the food, it was piping hot.
Ted brought red beans in huge tin cans and brought a pre-made mix of onions, peppers and flavoring to mix with the beans. He had large plastic containers which held 15 or 20 chicken pieces. Everything had a pan or pot or warmer or place to be throughout the process. It was quite a production.
His custom-made smoking/cooking rig could cook 100 or so pieces of chicken at a time. It had eight levels that constantly rotated like a ferris wheel within the cooker.
We rolled the raw pieces of chicken in “Dinkins Snout Powder,” which came in a factory box with a fancy product label. I looked at the label and said, “What a coincidence. This product has the same name as your last name.”
“That’s not a coincidence,” Ted said. “That’s my special rub. I have it manufactured in bulk.”
Wow! You are truly a cooking guru when you come supplied with your own factory-produced rub. The label’s ingredient list includes: sugar, salt, spices, garlic powder, onion powder, dehydrated lemon peel, paprika, refined soybean oil, yeast extract and “less than 2 percent tricalcium phosphate to prevent caking.”
The chicken was unbelievably delicious, cooked precisely to that narrow, perfect zone between raw and overdone. The rub was the best I’ve ever tasted, both sweet and spicy and applied in the perfect quantity. This is what you get when a man loves his hobby and has decades to perfect his technique. I could have eaten that chicken until I made myself sick.
The people of Silver City loved it too. We served just outside the Silver City First Baptist Church, which had become the de facto disaster headquarters under the direction of Pastor Childress. The Red Cross volunteers knew exactly how many meals we needed to prepare and almost every meal was consumed.
We prepared the styrofoam “plates” and placed them in plastic bags as the local residents drove up and placed their orders. Some were living in trailers, some with friends, some were living in their homes but lacked refrigeration and electricity.
The church was packed with donated household supplies of all sizes and types. Red Cross volunteers kept watch, making sure patrons were real tornado victims and not charity abusers. There was a sign-in process requiring the presentation of IDs.
The Red Cross volunteers came from all over the nation. Most were retired and volunteered for the sense of purpose and adventure. Several were from New England and gushed about the warm and friendly nature of Mississippians. They were expecting Mississippi Burning and got Mission Mississippi.
I asked the Red Cross volunteers how everything was organized between MEMA, FEMA, the Red Cross, churches and independent organizations seeking to help. Basically, there’s an entire process that has been refined over decades of disaster relief. The heads of all the organizations meet at the very beginning and delegate tasks and set up a command structure. It’s quite impressive.
Even more impressive was the storm damage. This was an EF-4 tornado with winds around 200 miles an hour. Standing just by the church was a huge pine tree pierced by a six-inch-thick metal spike. The spike, which was 12 feet long, looked like a low-hanging limb until you looked closer.
It is the swirling debris that kills. Every loose item becomes shrapnel. That’s why getting in a bathtub is a good idea. It’s the closest you can get to a suit of armor.
I met one lady, Nancy Carithers, who had just finished remodeling her house. Now it’s beyond repair. She’s planning to rebuild. She told me the only thing untouched were all her crucifixes and Christian items hanging on the walls. “That’s a God thing,” she told me.
Included untouched was an angelic oil portrait of her six-year-old child who was run over and killed decades ago. The hurt never goes away, she told me, but the driver came to find the Lord after the accident. “His soul got saved for eternity,” she said, which gives her peace.
A dozen piles of debris surrounded the Silver City First Baptist Church. These piles were around 15 feet high, spreading out 15 yards in all directions, mainly composed of shredded trees, but mixed with household items and brick, metal and other man-made materials.
Everywhere sat five-foot-tall shredded stumps of trees that were probably 80-feet high before the tornado. It’s hard to comprehend the force. The total tornado path width seemed to be hundreds of yards wide, enough to pretty much wipe out all of Silver City.
I noticed a brochure advertising a job fair for tornado victims. Other brochures advertised other services for victims. What a blessing to live in the United States where there is a support system for the worst of tragedies.
Throughout it all, I sensed an indomitable spirit that can only come from God. Folks were fatalistic, yet upbeat, ready to rebuild and move on with their lives. Instead of cursing God, Silver City seems to be accepting this disaster as yet another character-building challenge. I found people full of hope, not mired in despair.
