They call it streak o’ lean, that salt cured strip of fatback where a little river of meat runs through the middle like a vein of marble in stone. Poor man’s bacon, some folks’ll say. But in North Carolina, we know better. It’s not just meat. It’s a way of stretching the hog, of turning something simple into something sacred with a hot skillet and a little imagination.

You’ll find it fried crisp and laid across a biscuit at the State Farmers Market Restaurant in Raleigh, that temple of Southern breakfasts where the waitresses wear overalls, call you “honey” and the biscuits come out big enough to prop open a barn door. And it was there that the Sodfather himself, Agriculture Commissioner Jim Graham, found his glory. Not in a pork chop plate or a fancy omelet, but in a biscuit as plain as the dirt he loved: streak o’ lean fatback, a slice of tomato, a sliver of onion, and a good smear of mayonnaise.

Simple. Salty. Honest. The kind of breakfast that’ll put calluses on your hands just from eating it.

I reckon a meal like that explains a lot about why men like Graham were larger than life. It wasn’t just the farming or the politics. It was knowing that the good things never needed improving. A hog, a garden, a jar of Duke’s, and a hot biscuit from a kitchen that smells like heaven, that’s all the proof you need that God loves North Carolina.

And if you ever doubt it, just order that streak o’ lean biscuit at the Farmers Market. Bite down, let that salt hit your tongue, and you’ll swear you can still hear the Sodfather chuckling somewhere in the background, nodding like, “Yep, that’ll do.”