WELL DONE! Hot Chicken(The Mostly-True Story of How Hot Chicken Came to Be) by Rita Welty Bourke

Hot Chicken(The Mostly-True Story of How Hot Chicken Came to Be) by Rita Welty Bourke

Thornton Prince was a pig farmer who lived north of Nashville. When his daily chores were done, he often sat on his porch and gazed at the lights of the city. He listened to his pigs grunting and oinking as they settled down for the night, and he watched the lights twinkle on and off. He yearned to go there.

His grandmother had been a slave, and she would have been thrilled to own a piece of land where she could garden and raise chickens and pigs. But Thornton Prince wanted more. He wanted to step away from the life he had. He wanted to taste the pleasures of city life.

In Nashville there was music, and dancing, and women. There were city parks, and bars, and food he had never tasted. There were pretty girls who would swing their hips and smooth their hair and smile come-hither smiles.

So he sold his hogs and left that place and moved to town. Life in the city was all that he’d hoped for, and more.

Thornton was a handsome man, by all accounts, with copper skin and pearly whites. Soon he had a partner who cooked his meals and washed his clothes and warmed his bed at night. And he was happy.

But Thornton Prince was, in the very depths of his heart, a womanizer. One woman was never enough.

The one who cleaned his house and shined his shoes and ironed his shirts was not unaware of his philandering. But she loved her Prince, so she bore his infidelities in silence.

Until one night, just before dawn, he came home and roused her from the bed. “Cook me up some breakfast, Woman,” he said. “Cook me up some Southern Fried.”

She saw the lipstick on his collar, smelled liquor on his breath. Worse than that, she smelled woman. She got out her iron skillet, dumped grease in the pan, and turned on the heat. She floured three chicken breasts (Prince was a man with a prodigious appetite), added salt and pepper, then looked around her kitchen. She opened her cupboard door. Inside she saw a bottle of cayenne. She took it from the shelf and poured it over the chicken. She sprinkled spices on top.

While the chicken cooked, she got out a plate for her lover-man, a loaf of white bread, a jar of pickles. A napkin, a fork, and a knife.

The chicken turned a crispy red. She added more spices, and when the chicken was done, she placed it on slices of bread, topped it with pickles, and set it in front of Thornton. He ate the fiery blend. His lips began to burn. His eyes to water. His nose to run. Sweat beads popped out on his forehead. He kept eating.

He liked the chicken. Liked it so much, when he had polished off the three breasts, he wondered: would others like it too?

He went to bed and his stomach burned and his mind whirled. What spices had she added, he wondered? She wouldn’t say.

The very next morning he took the spices from the cabinet and began to experiment. It wasn’t long before he had perfected the hot chicken recipe.

Thornton Prince opened his Bar-B-Q Chicken Shack in 1945. Soon people were waiting in line for Hot Chicken served on white bread with a slice of pickle on top. These were the days of Jim Crow, but things were reversed at the Chicken Shack. Blacks came in the front door, whites the back.

And there were plenty of both color: Nashville mayors, Grand Ole Opry stars, musicians, singers, ordinary people. On occasion, there were even famous chefs. In 2009 James Beard visited, ate Hot Chicken, and gave it one of his American Classics Awards.

Customers are often rendered speechless by Thornton’s Hot Chicken. They cough, they tear up, they towel off. They keep eating. They come back for more.

Today you can order Thornton’s Hot Chicken on Charlotte Avenue and on Nolensville Pike. There’s even a Prince's Hot Chicken Food Truck on 6th Avenue South.

Restaurants across America now serve Hot Chicken, but there is no substitute for the real thing.

Try it. You’ll love it. And you’ll soon be back for more.

Rita Welty Bourke is the author of Islomanes of Cumberland Island and Kylie’s Ark: The Making of a Veterinarian, a Kirkus’ Best Indie Book of the Year Selection. She has published over forty works of fiction and non-fiction in literary magazines including The North American Review, Cimarron Review, Louisiana Literature, Shenandoah, Witness, and the Black Warrior Review. One of her stories, Gunnison Beach, has been included in an anthology entitled “Naked” compiled by Susan Zakin. Five have been nominated for Pushcart prizes. Her essay entitled “The Larry Brown Discovery Tour,” originally published in The Chattahoochee Review, appears in the online journal The Smart Set.Ms. Bourke was a semi-finalist in the Faulkner Words & Music Literary Contest for Novel-in-Progress in 2004, 2005, and 2006. She was a finalist in America’s Best Short Fiction Contest in 1994.