[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
IMAGES: Catherine Frederick and Jeromy Price”][/title]
It’s one of those bright spring mornings, cool, mild, gorgeous. Wildflowers sprout near roadways, new leaves spring from the awakening trees, and Scotty Wallace, ninety-two years old, is heading to work.
As he leaves his home in Russellville, Arkansas, he passes the sign he installed years ago. Inside a wood and brick frame hangs a giant fiberglass pickle, and on it is his family name. “People use it as a landmark,” Scotty says. “They’ll say, ‘Go to the third house past the pickle.’”
Seventy miles down the road is Alma, and there, just behind McDonald’s, is Bryant Preserving Company, a business that’s been operating in this town of 5,470 since 1947. The company is best known for its Old South brand of pickled products, which includes vegetables like baby corn, mushrooms, carrots, jalapeño slices, cocktail onions, and watermelon rind. One of their most unique products is Tomolives, a tiny tomato that’s used as a martini garnish.
Once a week Scotty shows up to work, something he’s been doing since 1986, after he retired as president of Atkins Pickle Company, where he’d spent thirty-five years. He helps Bryant Preserving develop new products, from start to finish, and consults on things like pricing, quality control and processing. Where his genius lies is in the formulas, or in layman’s terms, the recipes. His success lies in the quality of spices he uses, but it’s also in his knowledge of what flavors work together. “Salt, pepper and garlic taste good together,” he says. “Clove, cinnamon and basil are good together. There’s a bit of sugar in our asparagus, so it tastes dilly with a smooth background. The asparagus is my favorite thing we produce here.”
One of the things he likes best is that they are as excited as he is about developing new products. Some companies produce a line of products and stick to it, never veering too far off the beaten path. Scotty can’t abide that approach. “I’m a development guy,” he says, “through and through.”
He’s also the Wikipedia of pickling, and begins talking about “pure culture,” a process that allows producers to control the fermentation in the tank. And then he begins using words that begin with lactobacillus and then trail off into multi-syllable phrases you’d need a chemistry degree to decipher.
He explains the process as easily as he can, though it’s still a tad complicated. He smiles, sees he’s losing his audience, and then says, “Here’s a fun fact for you. Pickle consumption in America is nine pounds per person per year, which is a pretty high number. In Germany, they eat only six pounds of sauerkraut per person per year.”
It’s taken him seventy-three years in the business to acquire the kind of knowledge that mixes science with trivia. But even before that, he was learning about pickling. “My dad was fifty years ahead of me,” he says, and then tells the story of the way things were way back then. Schoolchildren earned a quarter an acre by picking cucumbers. They’d bring them to local brining stations where the cucumbers would be put into tanks to be turned into pickles. Scotty’s dad got into the business, going from Michigan to Colorado to Wisconsin, and finally to Minnesota, where Scotty spent his early years.
So Scotty grew up around the business, but didn’t plan to make it his life’s work. World War II came along, and he became a flight instructor for the army. His only brother, also a pilot, was killed in Stuttgart, Germany. When Scotty came home, his father needed help in his sauerkraut plant. Scotty got to work, and did so well he was moved to the main pickling plant, finally becoming the vice president of the company. He eventually made it to General Mills in Dallas, and after that to Atkins Pickles.
All along the way he was learning. In the early days, the lessons came from his father, and later from the schooling he received from the army, and finally from the decade he spent attending night school at the University of Minnesota. He took courses like Statistical Sampling, things he knew he needed to know. “I didn’t earn a degree, but I think I got the equivalent of one.”
But not all of his success can be traced back to the classroom. While in Minnesota he also joined Toastmasters International, a non-profit club that promotes leadership skills, including public speaking. “We met every Friday for about twelve years. I learned to express myself in front of an audience, and I’ve given a lot of talks. To be able to think on your feet is vital. I thank Toastmasters for a great education.”
As Scotty kept growing, those in his field took notice. He was elected president of Pickle Packers International, the organization Scotty calls the governing body of the pickling industry, which has been around since the 1800s, and has members in seventeen countries. He also served for years on the group’s research committee. They’d hold conventions, and at one in Chicago, they decided to try something that had not been done before. “They had some bombardiers [soldiers whose job was to release bombs] and they took them up to a tall, tall building, and they had them drop off pickles into pickle barrels below.”
Scotty laughs as he remembers. What they were trying to do, he says, was make pickles popular, to show they were a lot of fun. And the effort was paying off. Pickles were growing in popularity, and companies producing them were popping up across the nation.
At the same time, Scotty was starting to write academic papers, and lecturing. He traveled to Seville, Spain in the 1980s. “We weren’t within 3,500 miles of an olive tree over here but we still went over there to try to tell them how to pickle olives,” he says, and shakes his head. He’s traveled to Paris and Scotland and the Caribbean because of his job, and he’s worked with big names, like Burger King, on the flavoring of their pickles.
At Bryant Preserving, he’s made a colossal impact. The products he’s helped develop make up two-thirds of their inventory. The company employs thirty-eight full time workers year round, and that number rises to sixty-five during their peak season. And each year they go through two and a half million pounds of produce.
As he’s talking, he walking through the plant. Today they’re processing pickled okra, and the air smells of vinegar and spice, so strong it takes some getting used to. A forklift driver ambles by, and a dozen workers in hairnets work the assembly line, many of them in rubber aprons. Inside the lab, where he most often works, he goes straight to the apparatus that tests the salt level in their products, something that’s done every fifteen minutes. Other instruments check acidity levels and sugar and pH levels.
Scotty is proud of the work he’s doing here. But then he adds that it’s not what he’s best known for. “I wrote the ‘Pickle Polka’ in 1985 or ‘86. That was my crowning glory,” he says, and then he begins to recite it. “Don’t be fickle, enjoy a pickle on each and every day. Be a smarty and have a party and chase the blues away. Oh, feel the power grasping a sour and make like old King Kong. Have a few beers, break out the dill spears and have a Pickle Polka time.”
The song is still played today, at pickle events, and has even been on the radio a few times. Scotty laughs, a sweet, deep sound, and then hands over a cassette tape that has the “Pickle Polka” on it.
It is growing close to the noon hour, and Scotty is finished for the day. He’s waiting for his daughter to pick him up. They’ll have lunch, they’ll head to a nearby casino for a little gambling, and then they’ll make their way home to Russellville. Scotty spends time cooking — he loves a good prime rib — and composing songs on his electric keyboard. He reads a lot, and does research online. Not so long ago he tended 2,000 orchids, something he loved but gave up when his health faltered for a time.
One of his greatest joys remains his weekly trip to Alma, where he always shows up at Bryant Preserving with snacks. This week it’s donuts, next week he may bring cookies. He’ll make his rounds, stopping to talk, asking after a co-worker’s daughter, checking on another who will ask him about a natural health remedy she’s sure he’s heard of. And then he’ll go to the lab, where gauges sit in neat rows, where everything he’s learned in the last seven decades comes into play. When asked who will take over if he ever decides to retire, he shakes his head and says, “Oh, I’m teaching everybody here,” though the statement sounds extremely underplayed. And then Scotty says this: “I’ve had a wonderful, diversified life. I’ve loved every day I’ve been in the pickle business. You talk about a man who loves his work, I do.”
Just as he says this, his daughter pulls into the parking lot. Once inside the car, he tips his cap, he smiles again and waves. And then he’s off, headed for adventure, absolutely certain his luck will hold.
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For more on Bryant Preserving Company’s Old South pickled products, visit oldsouth.com.
You can also listen to the Pickle Polka below.
