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INTERVIEWS Hicks' World Famous Tamales & More Joe's Hot Tamale Place (The White Front Cafe) Meals on Wheels Hot Tamales & Tacos Tamale Contest (Frank Carlton) --- |
| MARIA'S
FAMOUS HOT TAMALES
And I always used to tell folks, hot tamale[s] is like making corn whiskey. You never get the same thing out twice. Makes no difference what you do, it won't never come out the same twice. – Shine Thornton Lawrence “Shine” Thornton was born in Shaw, Mississippi, in 1924. He worked for Delta Electric Company in Greenville for thirty-seven years and kept a liquor store business on the side to support his family. In 1984, Shine lost his job at Delta Electric and focused on the liquor store to earn his living. That same year, Shine entered the hot tamale business. With a jerry-rigged recipe he got from a friend, Shine figured out the rest through trial and error. When he had a product he could stand by, he named his business after his Sicilian wife, Mary, calling his new venture Maria’s Famous Hot Tamales. Mary now lives in a nursing home, but Shine is still making his meticulously crafted beef tamales out of the custom kitchen behind their house, still inspired by his muse.
--- What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here. Subject: Lawrence “Shine”
Thornton, owner, Maria’s Famous Hot Tamales, --- Amy Evans: I'm in Greenville, Mississippi, with Mr. Shine Thornton, and this is Amy Evans. And we're in his home in his kitchen, and he just pulled out a stack of photographs. And this one is you and your wife on your--? Shine Thornton: This is my wife and myself on our fiftieth wedding anniversary. That was in 1999, I think it was. We were born in 1940--I mean, excuse me…My birthday is November twenty-third, 1925…We were--we were married in June--June eleventh 1949, so that's 1999. Okay, and what's your wife's name? Her name is Mary…Uh-huh. I call her--I call my hot tamales after her. I named them Maria's--Maria's Famous Hot Tamales. --- Are you both from this area? Yeah. Now she--her--her--she's Italian. Both her father and mother came from Sicily. Do you know when her family came from Sicily?
Okay. Were you born in Greenville? No, I was born in Shaw, Mississippi. You heard of Boo Ferriss [David “Boo” Ferriss, famous Mississippian and Boston Red Sox pitcher]? [M]y daddy used to manage his father's [William Douglas Ferriss, Sr.’s] plantation, and I was born on his daddy's plantation out there west of Shaw, Mississippi. --- Now how did you get into the tamale making business? Well, I'll tell you, it's a long--it's a long story. I used to work for the Delta Electric Company. I worked for thirty-seven-and-a-half years rewiring electric motors and they--they finally sold the business…And I had a liquor store. But I knew I couldn't make enough money out of it to live on, so I started worrying about trying to learn how to make some hot tamales, and a friend of mine knew how to make them long years ago, but he forgot the seasoning to put the seasoning in for--you know, for the--for the seasoning for the--for the hot tamales. So I kept throwing hot tamales out the back door. I tried to make some and--and they wouldn't taste good, so I'd throw them out. I'd make some more. And the man upstairs is the one who gave me my ideas. Well I got--I got over to making hot tamales, and he gave me some ideas here and there as I went along, and the first thing--you know, it was a man told me--he—an old darky, a black man from Metcalf, Mississippi. Every Saturday he used to make hot tamales during the week and on Saturday he would bring them to Greenville and sit there and sell his hot tamales, and he would never leave until he sold all of his hot tamales. So this man told me--he said, “Shine, you've got a hot tamale that tastes just like his hot tamales.” And [he] said, “If I were you, I would do nothing else to them. I'd leave them just like they are.” So that's what I did; I left them like they are. But every time I make them it--I try to improve it, but I guess I can't go no farther than I am now. But anyway that's what I do. And I always used to tell folks, making corn--or hot tamale is like making corn whiskey. You never get the same thing out twice. Makes no difference what you do, it won't never come out the same twice. But anyway, I look back through the years, and that's the way I make them today. I've been making hot tamales now about--about twenty years. But about the first five [years] I had to throw a lot of them out, because I kept trying to make them better as I went along. --- Well so when you got your hands on that very
first recipe from a friend, Well he--he told me how to make--the principle part about making hot tamales--he showed me how to make them, but he didn't know the seasoning. He forgot what seasoning he put in them. So I kept making them, and I tried different seasoning and--and I've used his--his expertise, I guess, is how to make them. I kept doing that, but along the way I've dropped some of it and picked up some myself. And--and but that's how--that's how I learned how to make them. Do you have any idea where that man learned how to make them or got the recipe? No. I think--I think a black man told him how to make them. He told me he did--a black man he--he told him how to make them, but I never did--never did get the--I--strictly how he found out how to make them but originally the--the hot tamales was made by the Indians in the south part of the United States down in South Mexico---down in the southern part of Mexico and they--they used to make hot tamales and wrap them up in banana leaves and things like that. And--and of course it's a different variation of how you make hot tamales. A lot of Mexicans make hot tamales now, and they do it in--in a method by hand. They take the shuck, the--the cornhusk and lay it out in their hand and take a masa that they--that they grind up corn real fine like flour. They call it masa, m-a-s-a—masa. And they'll put it up onto--onto a shuck and then they put the meat in the center of it and then spread it out, and it's kind of like a little round ball, and--and they roll it up like a jelly roll. And then they put the--fold one end together and--and that's how they make--make hot tamales--the Mexicans make them like that. I had a niece that lives in Arizona and she--she came over here one time, and she showed me how the Mexicans make hot tamales. They--they use pork and they pull that pork; they take it--after they cook it they pull it--what you call pulling it, and then they take this broth that they get out of cooking the meat and they put it in the masa and make it into like a--a cake, a real thick cake and then they put that masa out on that shuck and put the meat on top of it, and then they roll it up, and that's how the Mexicans make--make hot tamales. Of course, the seasoning--of course she told me the seasoning that they--that she--she knew about, but there's--ain't no telling how many ways you could make seasoning. Sometimes they--they even make like a cake; they make a cake and--and wrap it up in shucks just like you would at Christmas time. They like to make them at the holidays. But the way I make hot tamales is I don't use masa.
I use regular cornmeal, and I take the broth off--off the meat when
I cook it, and I put it in the cornmeal and mix it up, and then
I take and run it through a machine [an extruder]. I got a machine
and I--the--the meat, I cook it and I grind it. I put it in a grinder
and--and grind it up real fine. Then I'll put the--my machine has
got a divider in the center of the--the tub of it, and it's about
eighteen-inches tall, and it's about six or seven inches in diameter,
and it's got a partition in between it. One side you put the meat
in; one side you put meal in it. And it's got two compressors they
go down--I got a little electric motor on mine and it pushes the--pushes
the How long were you making hot tamales before you got your hands on a machine?
--- [Y]ou mentioned the African American fellow who tasted your tamales and said they tasted like his?...That they tasted the same. Would that have been the Scott family out of Metcalf, do you have any idea? No. No, this--this man used to have a restaurant in town…His name is P.B. Griffin…He had--had a--a restaurant down on the lake, and he sold it--sold the business. But then he would peddle hot tamales downtown? I used—yeah. I used to have a--a--I had a van, and it was an old telephone van and a woman had it down in Jackson and she was--had a sno-cone machine in it…But it played out on me. The old engine quit, so I haven't--I haven't bought me another one yet, but I've been thinking about buying another one. Where would you take it in town? Well I--I was down on the corner of Cedar and [Highway]
82--Cedar Street and Well now, did you--did you want to do it just for fun, or did you think it was a good moneymaker or--? No, I was doing it out of necessity. I did that--at my age--I was fifty-nine years old, and at my age I couldn't find a job and did try to look for one. Of course I had the liquor store, and then, of course, after I got hit in the head I had to get out of the whiskey business…I come out of it alive. And after I got to where I could go back to making hot tamales, well I--I was making them. That's the reason I bought that van, but of course I had bought the van before then. But that's the reason I went back to selling my hot tamales out of my van. So you were--were you first selling hot tamales from the liquor store, and then you got the van and you sold them from there? No, no. I was selling them out of my van at the liquor store. I backed into my liquor store, and people was coming in to buy--some of them was buying whiskey, and some of them just wanted hot tamales and coming in and telling me they wanted a dozen hot tamales. Well, I locked the door and would go outside and get them out of the back of my--the back of my van, and I'd sell them. --- And you built that building out there [behind his house] specifically to make your hot tamales? Yeah. You know, I was making them in the house and--and the--the Health Inspector came over and he--but about three years he came over and inspected it, and all of the sudden he told me, he said, “I'm going to stop everybody from making hot tamales in their house. They're going to either have to build a house or build a place or either rent a place. You can't make them at your house no more.” So it cost me over twenty thousand dollars to build that place out there…Yeah, and I got--I got permission from the City to build it back there and permission from the City to sell--to make my hot tamales back there. And so--but the man told me a fib about it. It's still people--people are still making hot tamales in their houses right now. And I know they are, but I had already built it so I said, “Well I got it here, I might as well continue to make them.” So that's what I done. Do your sons know how to make them? I'm trying to teach--teach my son…His name is Larry--Larry Thornton; he works for the [Greenville] Post Office…So a lot of people say, “Well, why don't you get Larry to help you make hot tamales and teach him how to make them?” They said, “Something is going to happen to you one of these days, and we want them hot tamales. We want somebody to know how to make them.” So what gave me the idea of--and I asked him, I said “Larry, if you're not doing anything, why don't you come, and I'll teach you how to make hot tamales?” And so he--he works once in a while with me. That's the awards I won [shows off an assortment of trophies]--hot tamales… Yeah, I've one five or six--five or six trophies… It's WWISCAA [Warren, Washington, Issaquena, Sharkey Community Action Agency. Pronounces this “Whiska.” They, along with Frank Carlton, put on Greenville’s annual World Championship Hot Tamale Contest.] --- So what is it, do you think, that makes your hot tamales championship tamales? The taste--the taste and--and the presentation of
them. A lot of people--a lot of people don't--don't pay any attention
to--when--when they make hot tamales, they just--they slam them
around any kind of way. But I pay particular attention to the--in
other words, when I wrap a string around them, I try to be--be sure
It makes a difference huh? Yeah, I think so. I think so. Are your tamales made with beef? Yes, sir. I don't--I'm scared of pork. Pork--pork is all right, but I'm scared of it because it's--especially in the summertime, pork is easy to spoil. It's very easy to be spoiled. But my beef--my beef hot tamales, I've never had any problem with them. And you got to keep hot tamales up above 140-degrees heat-wise or less than forty-degrees cool wise. You've got to do that. That's--that's one stipulation the Health Department requires. And you've got to have a thermometer to check your water, and I cook my hot tamales in water. But a lot of people put them in a little container and put the water on the bottom of them and--and steam them. But I don't like to steam them because it seems like to me I have a better fix out of mine when I cook them and let them boil. --- What kind of schedule do you keep of making hot tamales? Well, I'm making them about once a week here, lately…No, it takes me three days to make about 100--100--well I made 100--122 dozen yesterday.
Yeah, but--but they call me in advance. How much do you sell a dozen for? They're six dollars a dozen. Have they always been, or have you hiked the price up over the years? No, when I started I--I was using somebody else's price. I was going by Doe's--Doe Signa [owner of Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville, Mississippi]. I was going by his price. I don't--I don't know what he charges for them now, but we started selling them for four dollars a dozen, and then it jumped up to four and a half and then five dollars and then five and a half and six, and that's where it's been for the last couple of years is six dollars. --- So you added a lot of seasoning to the water there [as he prepared a dozen hot tamales for the interviewer to take home]. What that's for is--is--the hot tamales has got seasoning in them. But if I put naked water in there it will rob the seasoning out of the hot tamales. But when I put some more seasoning in the water, that kind of levels it off to keeping it from robbing out the hot tamales--it's already saturated, so it can't--you can't comment either way--one way or the other, so that's the way you keep--you keep it like that. Now a lot of people take that--that juice when it gets--gets to cooking and take some crackers and like a soup and put some crackers in there, and they eat it like that, and it's good. Does the fact that you season the water, does that have an effect on how you--how much you season the tamale? No, no. That's what I say--if I put them hot tamales in there without putting some seasoning in the water it--the water—naturally, it's going to take some--take some of the spices out of the hot tamales, and that robs the hot tamales of their spices. But if I put--put some more spices into the water then it--it's--well I can't take nothing over there because it tastes the same to me like it is here as it is over there. So it just leaves it like it is. So you put that--put that seasoning in the water and that makes a good juice when you get through with it and cook it in that juice, you see. It takes a little while for it to cook but put this--put this [a piece of tinfoil] over top of it so it keeps the heat in. --- So you like shucks better, obviously? Yeah, I--I like these shucks better. Now they make--they make all kinds of shucks but these--these are what they call select shucks. In other words, you start--you start with these things and--and you see, they come like that. [Points to a fully intact shuck.] But they ain't all pretty like that. Some of them got wrinkles all in them, and you got torn places like that [points to a torn shuck], but you have to use them. You know, you have to use them. But see, some of them, what you do is you lay your hot tamales down about this long right here [holds fingers apart about three inches]. You lay it in there and what you do--you take and start rolling them up and roll them up like--like a cigar, and when you get--when you get over here [almost to the opposite side of the shuck] you take this end [pointed end] and pull it up like that [into the main part of the shuck] and roll it on up like that [with the pointed, smaller end of the shuck rolled inside the tamale]. Okay, I've not seen anybody roll them like
that…And tuck that end See, you got one end open, and one end is closed. Okay, because a lot I've seen--they roll it like a cigar, but they don't fold it in halfway…Halfway through rolling it--they leave that flat. You fold the flap in. Well you have to use--you have to use your judgment about the length of it. You see, the hot tamale will come about one and a half inches from the end of it about like this [points to the area on the tamale]. --- Now is--is your recipe something you've written down or do you just keep it up in your head? Scared to write it down….Yeah, I'm scared somebody--somebody going to steal it. [Laughs] --- Do you like eating hot tamales yourself? Do I ever eat them? Yeah, I check them out every once in a while. My wife she--she liked--she liked to take that meat, when I put the seasoning in them. She liked to taste it, but—yeah, we--we--I check them out every once in a while and make sure that--like I say, when you make hot tamales, it's like making corn whiskey. No two batches ever come out the same, so you keep trying to make a better hot tamale. You try--try to do a better job and you try to take shortcuts when you can and it's just--that's the way of doing things to--to get by with it, because the less time it takes you to make them, the better off you are. You can stand around and rest a while, you know what I mean? And I don't blame [people] sometimes for not wanting to monkey with them hot tamales, because they're--they're a pain in the neck. They sure are. But you think it's worth it, huh? Well it's worth it if you need to--if you need a way to make a living, yeah. But a lot of people--I used to think making hot tamales was just something somebody wanted to do…It takes me three days to make a little over a hundred dozen but I--I done got to the age now where I can't do it. If I was working for somebody else, I probably would get--do what I need to do in a day's time, but I make so-and-so one day, and then another day I do something else, and another day I do something else, and when I get through I'll be made--it took three days to do it. Yeah, I used--I used to do it--do it all in one day. But when I do--I said I've got to peel garlic, you got to cut strings, it's a lot of preliminary work that you got to do before you start making them--making hot tamales. You got to go buy the meat, and I buy--I buy chuck meat. That's what--that's what I put in my hot tamales--chuck, ground chuck because it's got a good flavor to it. Round steak is all right. T-Bone steak is good, but you can't afford to make no hot tamales out of T-Bone steaks. You'll be [Laughs]--you'll be eating bologna and sausage from now on, instead of eating something decent. Well, how is it in Greenville there are so many people who make and sell hot tamales? I don't know. I think when I--when I found out that I could make a halfway decent living with it, it looked like everybody and his brother wanted to get on the bandwagon then. So I started making hot tamales. And there's a bunch of people that's made hot tamales in the past that quit. Because they got old. They couldn't do it. --- Have you felt much competition in Greenville with there being so many people who make tamales? Well it--it looks like it's more and more trying to get into the hot tamale business, but if I was going to get in the hot tamale business--if I was a young man, I wouldn't stay in Greenville. I would go to a town where they don't have hot tamales and set up an establishment and--and you could get rich--get rich. But you have to hire a lot of people to help you make them. You have to hire a lot of people. --- To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
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Maria’s Famous Hot Tamales
Listen
to this 
Yeah,
Palermo…Let's see, she--he came over here twice. He [her father]
came the first time by himself and he worked until he made enough
money to send for her, and then he brought her and the two boys
into here, both them over here, and I don't know what year it was.
But he got into the vegetable-type business and grocery store type,
and he had a wagon and he used to go out in the country and carry
things in the back of his wagon and sell them. And that--and they
were Maniscalco. That's--that was his name, Vincent Maniscalco.
And he got--I think they had eleven children, I believe. Anyway,
my wife was--my wife was one of them.
you say?
compressor
down on top of the meat and the meal. And at the bottom of it--it's
a container down in it that holds the meal and the meat. And when
it comes out through this circular part--I'll show it to you a little
later--the meat comes out right at the center, and the meal comes
out around the--the outside of it. And you break it off ever how
long you want it; you make it that long [holds his hands about four
inches apart]--that long or whatever--whatever you want to make
it. And a lot of machines--they've got electric machines that's
got a little turntable at the end of it and it rotates, and it's
got a belt on top of it and it runs and--and as the hot tamales
comes out of the machine, they flop down on top of the belt, and
it carries it to the end. Somebody is standing down there and taking
it, and they fill up a tray with it. When I get the tray filled
up, they usually put in a--in a cooler and it kind of solidifies
the hot tamale, so you can roll them with these corn shucks. And
that's how--that's how you do it. 
Oh,
well I couldn't--I couldn't make them. I couldn't make them without
that machine. I had a nephew that lives in El Paso, Texas, and he--he
run an ad in the paper asking to see if he could find me a machine.
The machine I got is made in 1937. And once you buy one of them,
if you take care of it, it'll last you a lifetime…And I wouldn't
take nothing for it. But you can't buy them no more; they stopped
making them. They're made in San Antonio--San Antonio, Texas. 
[Highway]
82; I stayed down there about almost ten years, and that's how I
got--I used to--well I had a liquor store and see my head? [Takes
off his hat to reveal a large concave area near the top of his head.]
I had--I got--I got robbed…And the guy hit me in the head
and liked to kill me. And it liked to got me. And I had to get out
of the whiskey--the whiskey business. But I was making--I was making
hot tamales, and I parked my truck out there in front of my liquor
store. That's when I first started selling them like that.
that
all the hot tamales are even on the bottom and level on the top.
If they're not level on the top, I got scissors and I cut--cut the
shucks off for them to be level. And--and a good presentation of
product--that's what--that's what I try to do. 
And
then you have regular customers who come pick them up?
inside.
