More on Eugene Walter

There is so much info out there about Eugene it is staggering. I picked up one of the books I had been looking at while writing about him the other day and quickly remembered what a great read it is. The book is Milking The Moon, A Southerner’s Story of Life on This Planet. It was written by Katherine Clark as told to her by Eugene. How lucky was she, getting to hear all those stories first hand from Eugene. They are great stories and this is a great book. If you don’t have it get it. If you have it read it. If you have read it, reread it.

I am gonna keep writing about Eugene for a while. There is to much to ignore, and it is all such rich material. I ordered the cook book he did for the Time Life series about southern cooking. It is from 1971, I can’t wait to get it and check out Eugene’s work.

This is from the forward of the Milking the Moon book.

The Monkey was his favorite animal. The highest accolade he pressed on the girls around the Cafe Tournon, across from the Hotel Helvetia where he lived, was that they were just a step or two below being “Queen of the Monkeys.” They adored him. He invited them in for candlelit suppers in his tiny one-room apartment, the light reflecting on the gold stars he had pasted on the walls. He knew a lot about Southern culinary delights, gumbos, and so forth, but he was poor, and so for all the intended elegance of these little suppers, he did miracles with no more than an onion, a carrot or so, and some oysters. A remarkable stew would come of this, not much of it for sure; one truly learned that taste was far more important than volume.

These are the words of George Plimpton, referring to his contemporary, and his dear friend Eugene Walter.