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BY FRED THOMPSON

And so, you ask why I eat what I eat. The six-year-old walks into his grandparents’ country store, Mitchums Grocery, a tiny credit grocer in Manning, South Carolina with concrete floors, four short aisles, and a single gas pump out front.

To the passersby, modest in the extreme. To the boy, a wonderland.

On the counter, Jack’s cookies; butter cookies and ginger snaps, two for a penny. The bigger round sugar cookie sets you back one whole cent. For a gourmet treat, you take two ginger snaps and sandwich a thin slice of extra sharp cheddar—cut from the great wheel at the meat counter—between them. Rustle up a slice of liver pudding with white bread and cheese; Penrose pickled sausage; perhaps a banana popsicle. Sneak up to the candy counter with Zippers and Mary Janes and that mythic, forbidden Snickers.

Across from the front windows lies the drink box, its hum and profile low. The sliding horizontal lid pushes open to reveal ice-cold, darkened water shimmering with bottles up to their necks, only caps visible, begging to be rescued from their frigid bath. Virginia Dare, Sunquist, Yahoo, RC, Diet Rite, Nehi, Pepsi, Sprite, and, of course, that most treasured of any lusted-for substance ever invented, the six-ounce Coke in its curved green form.

I did not know it at the time, but my grandmother kept a running total of my skipping path through this paradise. She recorded my grazing in pencil on a brown two-pound bag and required my father to settle my debt at the end of the day. So, that explains the sweet part of my tooth.

But on Sundays, after my grandparents had spent six mind-numbing, 14-hour days in that store, we’d gather at their place, where the savory side of my heart took shape. My grandmother fried chicken to die for, achieving perfection I didn’t again encounter until 50 years later, when I walked into Martha Lou’s Kitchen on Morrison Drive in Charleston, and saw Martha Lou Gadsden lovingly cooking one chicken order at a time in her cast iron stovetop skillet. Butter beans, collards, squash, rice, biscuits, sweet potatoes, everything flavored, bathed in a pork lard.

Also on our table: Slow-roasted whole hog, pulled and swathed in the vinegar black pepper of the Lowcountry (mustard, along with that awful tomato abomination, was unknown until much later). A hash of simmered unmentionables. Pies in season: apple, then peach, then sweet potato and pumpkin.

I have read about appropriation, and I know about the African origins of soul food, but I knew these foods then only as my cuisine. My tastes were forged by place and time.

That credit grocery, my grandmother’s kitchen, even Martha Lou’s, survive only as memories. But I’m still here, and I still like banana popsicles and collards.