Peach Cobbler and the Genius at Our Table

My freshman year at the University of Maryland was interrupted by something no one expected. My Uncle Thomas died suddenly.

He was not simply my uncle. He had lived near us when our family was in South San Francisco, and he was one of those people whose presence made the family feel whole.

His death brought everyone to Texas, where for several days we grieved, remembered, and laughed through tears in the way families sometimes do when someone they love leaves too soon.

Before everyone returned to their own lives, I found myself standing with Pop. I do not remember exactly where we were or who else was nearby. I only remember saying quietly, “Pop, I think I want to come home.”

He looked at me for a moment and nodded.

“Okay, Hawk.”

That was all he said.

Two days later, I was back at school in Maryland when the telephone rang. It was my mother.

“Hakim,” she said, barely able to contain herself, “I’ve got good news.”

Without telling me, and without anyone asking her, she had gone to Morehouse College.

She explained to the admissions office that I had originally been accepted there before deciding to attend Maryland and asked whether Morehouse would still honor my admission if I transferred home.

They said yes.

I could come.

I was stunned. She had done all of that because of one quiet conversation between my father and me. No one had told her to do it. That was simply how she loved.

I could almost see her walking across the Morehouse campus, introducing herself, asking questions, and refusing to leave until she found someone who could help her son.

That was Ma.

I finished my freshman year at Maryland and transferred to Morehouse for my sophomore year. Looking back, I know both of my parents were delighted to have me home, although they showed it differently. My mother expressed her love through action. My father expressed his through patience.

Ma loved to surprise me by driving over to Morehouse and appearing at my dormitory without warning.

Pop would laugh and say, “Pat, you’ve got to let the boy have his own space. We finally got him back home. He’s living on campus, and I even got him a car. There can’t be anything so important that you have to drive over there just to talk to him about nothing.

Let him be a college student.”

She eventually listened.

Pop found another way.

Every two or three weeks, the telephone would ring.

“Hawk.”

“Hey, Pop.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m over here at Paschal’s.”

There would be a pause.

“I think they just brought out some fresh peach cobbler.”

Then another pause.

“I don’t know whether you really want any. I’m sitting here looking at it, and it appears to have your name written all over it. But if you don’t want it, I suppose I’ll have to take care of it myself.”

I never argued.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Paschal’s was less than a mile from Morehouse, so I would jump into my car and head straight there. For years, I thought I made those trips because I loved peach cobbler.

Now I know better.

The peach cobbler was my father’s excuse for calling his youngest son to lunch.

Paschal’s was one of the great institutions of Black Atlanta. People came for the fried chicken, smothered pork chops, collard greens, cornbread, and, of course, the peach cobbler. But they also came because Paschal’s had long been more than a restaurant.

During the Civil Rights Movement, it became a gathering place where ministers, organizers, educators, artists, business owners, laborers, students, elected officials, and neighborhood residents sat together. History was discussed there. Friendships were built there. Ideas were tested there.

Pop loved everything about Paschal’s, especially Saturday mornings.

Whenever he was in town, he met there with Dr. Herman Reese, Babatunde, Larry “Obadele” Williams, and a changing collection of professors, ministers, activists, educators, businesspeople, travelers, workers, and neighbors. They jokingly called their gathering the “Board Meeting,” although there was no chairman, no agenda, and no minutes. There was only conversation.

Some of the people around that table had doctorates and had spent their lives inside classrooms. Others had raised families, driven trucks, operated businesses, organized neighborhoods, built communities, or simply paid close attention to the world around them.

To Pop, every one of them mattered.

He often said he had a bias for information. When I was younger, I thought he simply meant that he enjoyed learning. Later, I understood that he listened to everyone because he believed anyone might possess information he needed.

Degrees mattered to him, but so did experience, observation, memory, and the knowledge people gathered from living. He never assumed wisdom would arrive wearing a suit or carrying a doctorate. Sometimes the person who understood a problem best was the person living with it every day.

Pop traveled constantly, but he hated missing those Saturday conversations. More than once, he landed at the Atlanta airport, climbed into a taxi, and told the driver to take him directly to Paschal’s. Our house was closer, but he would not stop there first. He did not want to miss the Board Meeting.

One afternoon, after the meeting had ended, Pop and I stayed behind for lunch.

A young waitress approached our table with a warm smile.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. What can I get y’all to drink?”

“Sweet tea,” Pop said.

“The same for me.”

She smiled, wrote nothing down, and walked away. Pop immediately returned to something Dr. Reese had said during the meeting. Within minutes, she brought our drinks, and we continued talking.

She refilled our glasses before they were empty. She asked whether we wanted cornbread just as we realized we did. Our food arrived hot, and she checked on us without interrupting the conversation. At one point, she quietly removed a plate neither of us had noticed was empty.

Then, without either of us asking, she appeared carrying two warm bowls of peach cobbler.

“I figured y’all were about ready,” she said.

Pop looked at me and smiled.

“I told you it had your name on it.”

We laughed.

When we finished, she brought the check and placed it on the table. Pop gently rested his hand over it.

“May I ask you something?” he said.

She looked slightly concerned. “Yes, sir.”

“How long have you been serving tables?”

“A few years.”

He nodded. “Well, I want to thank you for your service. You are one of the finest servers I have ever seen. We have truly enjoyed being served by you.”

Her expression softened.

“Thank you,” she said. “I really appreciate that.”

“No,” Pop replied. “We appreciate you.”

She smiled, thanked him again, and returned to her work.

I watched her move toward another table. Then Pop turned to me.

“Mr. Hilliard.”

Whenever he called me “Mr. Hilliard,” I knew he was enjoying himself.

“Yes, sir?”

“I fear the peach cobbler has affected your powers of observation.”

I laughed. “What did I miss?”

“Did you ever ask for more tea?”

“No.”

“Was your glass ever empty?”

“No.”

“Did she interrupt our conversation?”

“No.”

“Did she know when to come to the table and when to leave us alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did she remember what we ordered?”

“Yes.”

“Did she bring the right food to the right people?”

“Yes.”

“Did she ever appear rushed?”

“No.”

“Did either of us feel neglected?”

“No.”

He nodded toward the dining room.

“How many tables do you think she was serving?”

I looked around. “I don’t know. Five or six?”

“I counted seven.”

He allowed me a moment to consider that.

“Hawk, while you and I were sitting here enjoying our lunch, that young woman was managing seven different groups of people. Seven conversations. Seven sets of personalities, expectations, orders, and timelines. She remembered who ordered what, watched whose drink was getting low, decided which table needed her first, anticipated problems, and adjusted every time new information came to her.”

He looked directly at me.

“And she did all of that so well that you never noticed.”

He was right. I had watched her moving through the restaurant, but I had not truly seen what she was doing.

Pop continued.

“Someone may look at her and say, ‘She is just a waitress.’ A school may have looked at her once and decided she was average, slow, distracted, or even at risk. But look at what her mind is doing. She is using memory, observation, organization, timing, judgment, and an understanding of human behavior, all at the same time.”

He paused.

“That is intelligence.”

We left the restaurant and began walking toward the car.

Pop had devoted much of his life to changing how America thought about the education of Black children. He believed schools had become too comfortable asking whether a child could learn. The better question, he argued, was whether the school had learned how that particular child learned.

There was a world of difference between those two questions.

Too often, children, especially Black and Brown children, entered classrooms carrying gifts their teachers had not been trained to recognize. When those gifts did not resemble the narrow definition of intelligence expected by the system, the children were labeled: at risk, learning disabled, slow, disruptive, unmotivated, or deficient.

Once the label was attached, it frequently became an explanation instead of a challenge.

Rather than asking, “How do we teach this child?” the institution quietly concluded, “This child cannot learn.”

Pop rejected that completely.

He believed labeling a child was too often used as a substitute for teaching the child.

“The label,” he once told me, “usually tells you more about the limitations of the system than it does about the limitations of the child.”

That afternoon at Paschal’s, he was not criticizing every teacher. He was challenging an assumption: the belief that intelligence only looks one way.

Some children learn by listening. Others learn by watching, moving, building, making music, forming relationships, hearing stories, or recognizing patterns that no standardized test was designed to measure. Pop believed an educator’s responsibility was not to force every child through the same doorway. It was to discover the doorway through which the child was already entering and then build from there.

That was why he devoted his life to African-centered education and challenged the misuse of standardized tests. He was not asking schools to lower their standards. He was asking them to deepen their understanding.

By the time we reached the car, I was no longer thinking about peach cobbler. I was thinking about the waitress and about all the people I had looked at without fully seeing.

Over the years, I have represented corporations, neighborhood organizations, developers, elected officials, and ordinary citizens. I have sat across tables from judges, governors, professors, chief executives, ministers, laborers, parents, and children.

Every so often, I still catch myself forming a quick judgment about someone. When I do, I hear Pop’s voice.

“Mr. Hilliard.”

Then I remember the waitress at Paschal’s. I remember the Board Meeting and my father saying he had a bias for information because anyone might know something he did not.

Most of all, I remember that intelligence often arrives wearing clothes we have not been taught to admire. Sometimes it carries a briefcase. Sometimes it carries a toolbox or pushes a mop.

And sometimes it carries a tray filled with sweet tea and peach cobbler.

That afternoon, I thought my father had invited me to Paschal’s because there was fresh peach cobbler waiting for me. Years later, I understood that he had invited me there to change forever the way I looked at people.

That is the wisdom of the heart.