Pickle-In-A Van

When I was in the 6th or 7th grade I remember going to Jackson, MS, the state capitol, with my church youth group. At the time, Jackson "The Bold New City", was the only city in the whole state with a MALL and this mall had a glass elevator...ooooohhhh... AND a Hickory Farms store....aaaaahhhhhh.....and THIS was my primary reason for going to church on a regular basis. Not fellowship with teenaged, like-minded Christians, sorry mom and dad (and Jesus), but for the chance to endure a 4 hour van or bus ride a couple of times a year to go to the MALL, more specifically to go to a store in the mall that was known for its sausage...(please note I KNOW this image is of Hillshire Farms summer sausage but come on-it's a yard-o-beef regardless!)

Do people outside of the South know this store? Eventually most of the stores closed and you would only see a Hickory Farms cart in the mall around Xmas time-they were acclaimed for their "summer sausage" and gift baskets of said meat, mustard and those little strawberry candies. My family always had a log of summer sausage at Xmas time and my dad, sister and I would sit down and hack into that thing with no mercy every year.

My best friend, Christy, and I ran to the Hickory Farms store as soon as we were off the church bus. The store had dark red tile floors and wooden beamed ceilings. The counter was in the middle of the store with a nice old lady wearing a red and white gingham apron behind it handing out samples of meat. There were huge glass containers of rock candy and bags of "melt away mints"...it was exactly how I imagined Germany to be, never having been there myself. Since her allowance was much larger than mine, Christy would usually splurge for a log of sausage, rock candy in every color, and bags of mints while I shyly asked for $3.00 worth of sliced pepperoni and the small "stocking stuffer" sized log of summer sausage. Imagine our delight on this trip when we discovered next to the delicious meat logs, PICKLES-In-A-Bag. Individually packaged pickles in their own little sack o' juice...they were a Van Holten's product called Picante Pickles. Yeah, I'm sure you're all familiar with the "pickles in a pouch" that are readily available now in most gas stations and other places that sell "pouched" products (tobacco chaw, beef jerky, big league chew), but at the time, in the mid-'80's,in Mississippi, these were exotic, luxury items. And the packaging was handsome, a pickle entwined in cucumber vines and Van Holten's in beautiful cursive script at the top.

After rounding up the church teens from their shopping sprees at Spencer's Gifts & Novelties we were all back on the bus. I had to have that pickle right then and there but I was hesitant...I was at that tender age where I had sadly realized that eating a pickle in front of 2 or more teenage boys was, well...complicated. Surely eating a pickle on a church bus would be fine...so I decided to proceed in a way that of course became ritualized by a need to take it slowly. I bit a teeny, tiny hole kind of close to the top of the bag so that I could first suck all of that picante pickle juice out. Once that was accomplished I ripped open the rest of the top of the pouch and bit off the top of the pickle. It must have been painful to watch, but by this time we were probably 2 hours into the trip back home and I'm sure if any boy had been watching earlier, he lost interest 1.75 hours ago.

I'm not sure how many pickles in a bag we bought that first time at Hickory Farms, but you can bet I stocked up on as many as I could the next time I made it there. At Xmas that year I found a whole display case of Picante Pickles under the tree for me! Thank you Santa! or Jesus or whoever!