Oscar Orsby boasted that he sold "hotdogs as long as 4th Street and pork steaks you don't need no teeth for," but he didn't have to brag about his hot tamales. All of Clarksdale, Mississippi knew they were some of the best in town.

Every Friday and Saturday from mid 1980s until the late 1990s, Orsby backed his converted pickup into a parking space at the corner of 4th and Yazoo streets, flipped the circuit breaker on his personal electric meter, plugged his little two burner stove into a socket on the utility pole, and set to work selling hot tamales to anyone with a few quarters jangling in their pocket.

So what is this food, so often associated with Mexico, doing in the Mississippi Delta? you might ask. Isn't this just an aberration? Like finding curried conch in Collierville, Tennessee or foie gras in Fort Smith, Arkansas?

It's not that simple. Tamales have been a menu mainstay in the Mississippi Delta for much of the twentieth century. Indeed, along with catfish, they may just be the archetypal Delta food. Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson sang about them in the song "They’re Red Hot," recorded in 1936. Hodding Carter began his book So the Hefners Left McComb with an ode to the symbolic importance of tamales. He tells us that the Hefners left McComb, Mississippi after breaking the 1960's de facto laws against eating with interlopers. The Hefner's great crime? They shared hot-tamales, from Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, with civil rights workers.

White and black Mississippians recall that tamale vendors traveled the streets of their youth. Author Shelby Foote, a native of Greenville, Mississippi, remembered two African American tamale vendors, "Stanfield and one they called 666," selling tamales during the 1920's: "They sold them out of lard buckets," Foote recalled. "They wrapped them in newspapers and sold them for fifteen cents a dozen. Hell, we were eating them before we ever saw a Mexican."

Tamale ingredients are few and readily available in the South: cornmeal, pork or beef and a few spices. All one need do is steam the mixture in a corn husk, a sleeve of butcher's paper, or, heaven forbid, a coffee filter (I've seen it done), and you have a Delta tamale.

As best as I can determine, tamales came to be a Delta favorite sometime in the early years of the twentieth century when Hispanic laborers began making their way up from Texas by way of Arkansas to work the cotton harvest. Imagine the scenario: It's an unseasonably cold November day. Two laborers sit side by side in a cotton field, unpacking their lunch pails. One, an African American, has a sweet potato, a slice of cornbread and a hunk of side meat. Though they were hot when he packed them at sunup, by lunchtime they're cool, almost cold.

The Hispanic laborer unpacks a similar pail -- probably a lard bucket lined with crumpled newspapers -- but his lunch emerges from the bucket still warm, because tamales, packed tightly, have wonderful heat-retention qualities. In essence, the cornmeal mush jackets serve as insulation. The African American laborer casts an envious eye over at his co-worker's hot lunch, begs a taste and then a recipe.

Soon, both men are heading to the field, their pails packed with tamales. When the cotton harvest is over, the Hispanic laborer hops a train bound for Texas, and the African American, in need of income between seasons, starts selling tamales at rent parties, maybe from a cart he pushes down the main drag on Saturday nights.

All supposition aside, rather than fret about the origins of Delta tamales, most Mississippians would rather eat them. Visit any of these purveyors of culture and cuisine, and you'll be inclined to do the same.

John T. Edge

DISCLAIMER: Any depictions of people working in their homes refer to tamales made for private consumption. They are intended for illustration of this project only. In addition, please contact these establishments directly, when making travel plans. Every effort has been made to make the TAMALE TRAIL a functional and up-to-date map of vendors and locations, but this is the Delta. All information herein is subject to change without notice.