By W.C. ABBOTT, Jr.

Good luck comes to those who work hard to make good luck happen, is what I always thought. But I counted on other methods too. If I caught a big fish while wearing a certain hat, I'd wear that same hat the next time I fished. If it worked more than one time, that became my lucky fishing hat. Some people use other methods to bring good luck.

If you have lived most of your life in South Louisiana where you never heard of eating yourself into a whole year of good luck on New Year's Day and you get an invitation to eat dinner with a co-worker who says everyone should eat black-eyed peas and hog jowls for good luck, you accept. That's what I did.

Mrs. McQuiller, the Extension Home Economist for Ouachita Parish, had the table set and ready when I arrived at her home. She brought to the table a large serving bowl full of what turned out to be our entire dinner, except for a pan of corn bread. It was mostly peas, but if you kinda dug around you could find some jowl cut into small pieces. It was good, but I kept watching to see if there was anything else to be served. There wasn't. She said if you practiced frugality on the first day of the year, you'd have a bountiful year laced with good luck.

Several years later after we come to Jonesboro we decided to eat some good luck on New Year's Day. Blanche and E.D. Dixon, my wife Edna's sister and her husband, were spending the holidays with us. Edna had planned to cook black-eyed peas, but instead of jowl she had pork chops. She had some nice baking size sweet potatoes she planned to put in the oven to bake. About 10:30 a.m. the electricity went off. E.D. looked at the fire going in the fireplace and said, "no problem." He rigged up some bricks to set the pot on and started the peas and chops to cooking right there in the fireplace. Edna wrapped the sweet potatoes in foil, placed them in the hot ashes and we set out to see how it was when people cooked on open fires. I have eaten better peas and pork chops and I've eaten sweet potatoes that were softer and more moist than what we had that New Year's Day, but we really enjoyed that dinner. Luck? I don't know if it was good that year or not. Wish I could remember.

Many years before that good luck episode, John and Winnie Clay lived in a one-room hut on the Cooper place, next to the wooded area of our farm. Inside the building was a bunk bed, two or three chairs, an old table and a few shelves. There was a fireplace where they did the cooking. The chimney was made of red clay mud and Spanish moss. I have no idea how the stuff stayed together without rain washing it away. But it was a chimney for quite a while that I can remember. My older sister Jennie and I, along with Bill, my brother just younger than I, went to John's home quite often to take food and clothing Mama sent to them. Sometimes we'd see them cooking in the fireplace. There was a hook over the fire where John could hang an old pot. The floor of their room was the ground and they had covered it with feed sacks or anything that would insulate a little. They always asked us to save and bring them newspapers and old magazines, which they used to cover the walls to keep out the cold wind.

I don't know what happened to that old couple. They were old, old when we were just youngsters growing up. Time passed and one day they weren't there anymore. I think about them every once in a while on New Year's Day because I remember the time we cooked the peas and sweet potatoes in our fireplace.