Summary

In "The Eternal Glory That Is Ham Hocks," the narrator's mother says Howard Hughes once asked her to work for him. The narrator is shocked she has never mentioned this. She dismisses his questions, only saying that he wanted her for a cook.

The narrator's love for food began as a young man. Sudden and unexplained "smell hallucinations" inspired his obsession (53). He began asking his mother for childhood recipes. Shortly thereafter, he began culinary school. His mother was relieved.

Howard Hughes was an only child, whose mother died in childbirth with her second child. In the coming years, Howard Robard Hughes Sr. grew his oil business, finding "some serious cash money in building a better drill bit" (55). Now rich, with a large estate, Hughes Sr. hired the narrator's grandmother Inez Cross Pickett as a...