Just Like Old Times An Oxford tradition and damn good catfish, Taylor Grocery reopens. by JOHN T EDGE hen Taylor Grocery closed in the spring of 1997, a heavy sigh could be heard to drift across the hill country of northern Mississippi. Famed for serving crisp-fried, sandy-brown catfish in a woebegone, tin-roofed old country store, the avant-funk restaurant had won an army of admirers through the years. When those screen doors slapped shut, and the big metal sign -- the one that pleaded with passersby, "Eat or We Both Starve" -- was hauled inside for the last time, a large chunk of Lafayette County history was laid to rest. It was a tradition, damn it! A rite. A pilgrimage of import. Rain or shine, win or lose, generations of Ole Miss football fans had made their way down the two-lane blacktop that snaked 8 miles south from Oxford to the little hamlet of Taylor, toddies in hand, fried catfish and hushpuppies on their mind. No one seems to remember when the first string of Taylor catfish was bathed in milk and eggs, rolled in meal, and tossed in a skillet burbling with oil. Maybe it was sometime in the early '70s; that seems to be the era most often cited. This much is clear: By the early '80s, tiny Taylor was the catfish capital of a state that was plumb catfish crazy. Politicos and starlets, musicians and writers, adventuresome gourmands and just plain folks; they came by the carload, by the busload even, intent upon tasting something authentic, something real, something that smacked of Mississippi. No matter the occasion, Taylor Grocery was the destination restaurant of choice. Weddings and divorces, births and deaths; at the rickety tables set with dull flatware and paper napkins, good times were celebrated, bad times salved. But it was on football-game weekends that the place really came alive. Fraternity boys, tight on Jim Beam; sorority girls, pink bows fixed in teased, henna-colored hair: They came, they ate, they scribbled doggerel on the white plaster walls: "John loves Jessica, Tammy digs Tommy, Mississippi State sucks, Archie Manning for Governor, William Faulkner can kick William Shakespeare's ass!" Soon, "that catfish place" was as prized for the graffiti that covered the walls as it was for the sweet white fish that emerged piping hot from the skillets of owner Mary Kathryn Hudson. Some folks will tell you that it all began on the eve of the Ole Miss-Georgia game back in 1979, when the late writer Willie Morris and Senator Thad Cochran took pens in hand. No matter, in the ensuing 20 years, barrel after barrel of ink was spent, to the point where Willie and Thad's doodles were long ago eclipsed by Tammy and Tommy's. Taylor Grocery was a democratic institution, in the truest sense of the word. And then it was gone: doors locked, cast-iron skillets stowed away. Mary Kathryn retired. Soon locals were carping that, though you could get a decent plate of sushi up the road in Oxford, a heaping platter of bone-in, honest-to-goodness fried catfish was getting about as scarce as chicken teeth. And they were right. Within a few weeks of Taylor's closing, rumors began to circulate. Word on the street had it that somebody had bought the place and was turning it into a seafood buffet restaurant. You know the type: popcorn shrimp, whiting straight from the Bering Sea, faux scallops punched from white fish, frog legs of indefinite vintage, and oysters straight from a bucket, all coated in the same anemic breading, all fried in the same acrid oil. Enter Lynn Hewlett, owner of Oxford's Dixie Creek Barbecue. Turns out, he bought the place soon after it closed in '97 and has since been working for the past two years to reopen it, albeit with a few changes. He grew up in the community, three doors down from Taylor Grocery, to be exact. His grandfather owned the little general store next door. This is his place. These are his people. "I did my best to remodel the place -- to fix it up so that it would satisfy the Health Department -- in the least obtrusive way possible," Lynn says, his arms sweeping wide to take in the restaurant. From the looks of things, he has succeeded. The walls have been patched in places, but with an eye for saving as much of the old graffiti as possible. The open kitchen has been enclosed. The old bathrooms have been reworked. And Lynn has even installed an underground grease trap, soon to be brimming with oil. But the heart and soul of the place remains intact. "We want to pay homage to the history of this place, to Mary Kathryn who cooked here for so long," says Lynn. "She'll get free catfish any time she wants it. I hope we can fix it to suit her." This Saturday, the doors are set to open once again on an Ole Miss football game tradition. "Everybody's invited to come on down," Lynn says. "But if you're in a hurry, don't bother to make the trip. We want people to sit out on the porch, sip a little wine or whiskey, and visit with their neighbors while they're waiting for a table. It'll be just like old times."