As someone who looks forward to Las Vegas trips and Myrtle Beach visits, I was probably primed to love Ellis Bros. Pecans. Located about one hour from Macon, on the northern edge of South Georgia, the Dooly County retail store is an extravaganza of sensory stimuli and contented capitalism.
Like pecans? You can crack them! Like candy? You can sample it!
Tourists have been spending hours and dollars at the 4,000-square-foot snack outlet since 1978, when Elliott Ellis built out his family’s decades-old pecan stand. On the strength of an Interstate 75 billboard that promised “We’re nuts to sell this low,” Ellis Bros. became a must-stop for Florida-bound vacationers.
Today, Ellis Bros. sells 650 products, including white chocolate almond clusters, garlic pecans, habanero chunk pickles, and moonshine jelly. But several of its bestselling products harken back to the company’s farmstead roots, including fig preserves.
Like pawpaws and muscadines, figs are a late-summer fruit that haven’t been straightened out and smoothed over by industrial interests. So, even though they symbolize the eons that preceded our technological age, they’re representative of a highly specific moment toward the end of August.
Carson McCullers conjures that sliver of time in “The Great Eaters of Georgia,” when she describes visiting an aunt in the lower part of the state. She had:
…an immense backyard with a great scuppernong arbor as well as fig and pecan trees. I would sit with my five cousins at the breakfast table, and with our thumbs we would gouge out a hole in our biscuits and carefully pour the tupelo honey in the hole. The scuppernong arbor was shady and cool under the glare, and we would pick up the squelchy grapes with our bare toes.
In other words, to capture the fleeting flavor of figs, you need to be a great writer or have the kitchen know-how of Ellis Bros. Pecans. Start gouging your biscuits.
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