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Black-Eyed Peas on New Year's Day in West Texas

hoppin-john
Stone Village Market, Fort Davis, January 1, 2015 (KRTS/Tom Michael)

Texas, through its culture and economy, combines a little bit of the West with a little bit of the South. And West Texas, with its oil and ranching, tends to be less of the South. But on New Year’s Day, there’s a Southern tradition that makes its way onto almost every stovetop. For Marfa Public Radio, Tom Michael has more.

It’s New Year’s Day in West Texas and Belinda Kinzie at the Stone Village Market in Fort Davis is selling cups of soup called Hoppin’ John.
“Blackeyed peas, rice, sometimes turnip greens, and some kind of pork like ham, sausage, bacon.”
She sold them last January 1st, too. Because in Texas and across the South it’s considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day.
“If you eat as a poor man on the first day of year, you’ll eat rich for the rest of the year.”
In the ghost town of Terlingua, they’re celebrating the 25th annual Black Eyed Pea-Off. In 1990 Pam Ware launched the event.
“And it was originally the cook-off between Tommy Hancock and I. And we took turns stirring each other’s pots, so nobody knew who was whose. You had to pay a dollar to vote.And we counted each stack – pot A and pot B – and it was a tie. And that was the first Black-Eyed Pea-Off."
Ware has never missed a New Years’ Day, eating those good luck peas.
“Never in my life. I was raised by a Southern woman. There was black-eyed peas in my life every January 1st. Maybe I have more peas than most. You can’t have too many I think.”
Marianne Brescia is the same way. She lives in Odessa, but is from Columbus Georgia.
“It’s something I grew up. Everyone had black-eyed peas. It was just a tradition that was not questioned.”
Historian Lonn Taylor of Fort Davis doesn’t know exactly why black-eyed peas is associated with good luck.
“Well, I really can’t answer that. Nearly every culture has a tradition of eating sort of a ceremonial meal of poor people’s food. In Mexico…in Germany..in Europe. And black-eyed peas and cornbread were at the very bottom of the food chain of the food chain in the South. Before the Civil War, black-eyed peas were considered slaves’ food.”
As a young bachelor living on his own, occasionally he would make the meal, and one Sunday night his father called.
“He said, ‘Well what are you doing, son.’ And I said, ‘Dad actually I’m fixing myself some black-eyed peas and corn bread.’ And there was this long pause. My father says, ‘You know I worked all my life, so my family wouldn’t have to eat black-eyed peas and cornbread.”
In Marfa, attorney Dick DeGuerin looks out onto his backyard, where he enjoys the tradition with friends, around the fire, every year.
“I think I’ve been eating black eyed peas since I was in diapers. My dad was from East Texas and he always had black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. Some people say it’s superstition. And I’m not suspersitious, but I don’t believe in taking foolish chances either."
And it’s superstition that caused Marianne Brescia to pack a little something extra for her holiday travels this year.
“Just because of my family tradition. We actually have canned black-eyed peas, just in case. We’ll take a spoonful."

Former KRTS/KXWT News Director