Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1884 — The Burgoo. [ARTICLE]

The Burgoo.

“If you should go out to Kentucky about this time,” said the old Judge, “you would probably be invited to a burgoo. You don’t recognize him by that name, do you? No? Well, a burgoo (accent on the first syllable) is a grand, good thing. It is an all-day picnic in the woods, with a feast which throws the clam chowder and the barbecue in the deep shade of obscurity. In fact, the burgoo usually includes a barbecue as a sort of incident. You go out to a corner of the woods where the thick underbrush has been carefully cut away, and where there are trees enough for shade, but not enough for gloom, and there you sit and play poker and smoke the finest tobacco in the world, and drink only ten-year-old sour mash, and sniff the delightful aroma of the burgoo until along in the afternoon, when the niggers pronounce the burgoo ready and ladle it out to you in big bowlfuls. The burgo is a delicious broth which is the perpetual remainder of the aborigines, who handed it over to our pioneering forefathers when they began coming across the mountains from Y’irginia. You take—or rather the darkies take—a gigantic kettle and hang it over a roaring fire. A light broth is made first; then they throw imyoung chickens, young ducks, sucking pigs, and all sorts of small game, with fresh potatoes, green peas, string beans, corn, and every other vegetable. Everything is cooked until the meat begins to fall to pieces. Then the waiters, with shining, smiling black faces, and snow white jackets and aprons, bear great bowlfuls of the toothsome stew through the grove. Oh, how good it is ! My mouth waters as I tell you of it. Afterward there .is more burgoo, and then, more burgoo, until everybody has actually had enough. Then the darkies satisfy themselves, while you return to your pipe and your glass, until the shadows of evening gather sleepily around you.” His voice became low and his look became dreamy. Suddenly he roused himself, and remarked, as he turned away: “A fev weeks later the darkies helditheir camp meeting on the same Letter. Mr. Herbert Spencer fears the tendency of-free government to enforce systematic restriction of personal conduct till it becomes equivalent to despotism.