April 28, 2008
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Google Maps error causes me a bit of consternation
I arrived in Liberal, Kansas after dark, Googled the location of Wal-Mart where I hoped to spend the night, drove there - and found no Wal-Mart. It took a few minutes, but I found it lurking a few blocks over. I only recently started using Google Maps to locate businesses and now wonder how often this kind of thing happens.
Night camp:
Wal-Mart parking lot, Liberal, Kansas
Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk
Hickory was another favorite. Rambling through the Southeast in the 1770s, the naturalist William Bartram observed Creek families storing a hundred bushels of hickory nuts at a time. "They pound them to pieces, and then cast them into boiling water, which, after passing through fine strainers, preserves the most oily part of the liquid" to make a thick milk, "as sweet as fresh cream, an ingredient in most of their cookery, especially hominy and corncakes." Years ago a friend and I were served hickory milk in rural Georgia by an eccentric backwoods artist named St. EOM who claimed Creek descent. Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue, unlike anything I had encountered before.