Every Sunday when I was a kid my grandmother would get up at 5:00 a.m. to make Sunday dinner.  We would all go to church, and before we left, dinner would be fixed and on the stove.  And, she always made cornbread.  She could make it all sorts of ways – jalapeno, cheese, pork – and she would bake it in all types of pans.

From time to time, I’d play sick and be allowed to stay home with my uncle who never went to church.  That’s when I’d make my way into the kitchen and into the pan of cornbread.  I’d cut off a piece, then another and another.  One time I ate all but one small slice.

My grandmother would get so mad at me when she would come home and get ready to eat.  One time she brought the pastor home and the cornbread was gone.  That was it for me.  She told me I was the cornbread eatin’est little boy she ever saw.

It wasn’t long after that she woke me up around 6:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning and told me to wash up and help her in the kitchen.  I found her at the kitchen table with all the ingredients laid out to make her cornbread.  She also had two pans – hers and one small one for me.  From that day forward, I would get up every Sunday morning and make that pan of bread.

One day a friend came over and called me ‘Cornbread’.  That was in 1967, and the name stuck.  It was with me until I came to prison.  After I got here I heard some guys talking, and one of them called the other Cornbread.  I dropped the ‘corn’ in my name that day.  Now – I’m just called ‘The Bread’.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.  Alfred Hall lives in a prison in Texas and can be contacted at:

Alfred L. Hall #01840184
Ramsey 1 Unit
1100 FM 655
Rosharon, TX 77583