The New York Times has a story about the culinary phenomenon of Kool-Aid pickles in the Mississippi Delta country. Read the story and see if it doesn’t remind you of those armchair adventure stories from ’50s TV about pygmies and other African “natives.” It seems the Great White Reporter from the civilized world clearly finds the Mississippi Delta country baffling and mystifying:

• The pickles have been spotted as far afield as Dallas and St. Louis, but their cult is thickest in the Delta region, among the black majority population. In the Delta, where they fetch between 50 cents and a dollar, Kool-Aid pickles have earned valued space next to such beloved snacks as pickled eggs and pigs’ feet at community fairs, convenience stores and filling stations.

• The names came fast: Ladarius, Fredericka and Kobreana, among others.

• Most of the children at Carver — perhaps most of the children in the Delta — buy their Kool-Aid pickles from unlicensed house stores, operated by neighborhood elders who, seated at their kitchen tables, sell snacks and chips and candy to anyone who comes knocking. (If these folks sold whiskey instead of pickles, their enterprises would be known as shot houses.) Ms. Sumner’s students praised in particular “the lady on Quick Circle whose dogs bark when you walk up” and “the woman who stays on Slim Street who sells nachos, too.”

The Times doesn’t seem to have a problem exposing undercover CIA operatives or top secret surveillance plans, so I guess they don’t mind identifying the location of a woman who has an illegal store in her home. When the city license inspector makes a call, she can blame Pinch Sulzberger.

(Link via MK)

UPDATE: I need to point out that I didn’t try to find out if the NYT reporter who wrote this story is white or black, nor do I care. That wasn’t material to my use of “Great White Reporter.” I used that to signify the representative of a colonial power (The Times) visiting what they seem to view as the Dark Continent of the Mississippi delta.