Ham is a tradition in our family, a tradition we restarted this past year. Actually, I should say a tradition I restarted. Annie wasn’t too wild about it.

Back in Nashville where I grew up, we McLeods ate Tennessee country ham and biscuits for breakfast on Christmas morning, just one day each year. My dad, the doctor, said we were eating enough fat and salt to last a whole year. He may have been right.

So the salt-cured ham was a special treat reserved for the holidays—generally a gift from one of Dad’s patients who couldn’t pay his doctor bill. It came wrapped in heavy brown paper covered in grease stains. Unwrapped, the ham sported a healthy carpeting of green-blue mold.

My brothers and I stared wide-eyed at the green slime and little pig hairs still sticking out of the greasy pigskin.

“Yuk!” we said.

(The only ham we’d seen to that point came sliced in a plastic bag.)

Undeterred, my mother scraped the mold off the ham, soaked it in water in a gigantic lard tin for a couple of days to remove some of the saltiness, then simmered the ham in the tin on the stovetop starting late on Christmas Eve, letting it slow-cook all night long so we’d have a ham ready to slice on Christmas morning.

We loved it. Even my father, the doctor, loved it.

After Annie and I married, we spent Christmas with her family in Virginia every other year until we had kids of our own. Virginia ham and rolls were part of their Christmas dinner tradition. Annie’s mom never soaked her ham and baked it instead of simmering it in water. She liked her ham incredibly salty, and it was. To compensate, she sliced the ham paper-thin. A little bit went a long way on a homemade yeasty roll.

When Annie and I moved west, we lost touch with the Christmas ham tradition. I don’t know why. I guess we were trying too hard to be Pacific Northwest people. We ate smoked salmon on toast points instead of ham biscuits, until this past year when I happened to see a familiar-looking ham recipe in a magazine. The memories came streaming back. I decided to give it a try.

So I ordered a Virginia ham, not a Tennessee ham. Annie doesn’t like Tennessee country ham.

“It’s not right,” she says.

Our Virginia ham arrived three days before Christmas. I unwrapped it and scraped the mold off the ham with a stiff (previously unused) dog brush.

“Yuk!” Annie said.

I put the ham in a huge canning pot, covered it in cold water, and shoved the thing into the refrigerator after removing two shelves, two gallons of Eggnog, and a lot of other stuff Annie had prepared for other Christmas dishes.

“What the heck are you doing?” Annie asked.

“Making some room for the Christmas ham,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you make some room for it in the refrigerator out in the barn?”

“Too late,” I said. “No worries. I’ll put your stuff out there.”

“Oh, brother,” Annie said.

I changed the soaking water twice over the next 24 hours, then brewed a barrelful of black tea and soaked the ham in the tea for another 24 hours.

Annie thought I’d lost it.

“Why are you wasting all that tea?” she wanted to know.

“Part of the recipe,” I said.

On Christmas Eve I toted my pot out of the refrigerator, poured off the tea, emptied six bottles of beer into the pot, and filled it the rest of the way with cold water to cover the ham. I put it on our stovetop and let it simmer there all night, just like my mom used to do.

On Christmas morning I made a glaze out of blackstrap molasses, brown sugar, and mustard. I slathered the thick glaze all over the ham and put it in a hot oven long enough to set the glaze. By breakfast that ham was ready to slice. Annie made the dinner rolls my Aunt Wiese used to make, and we had a feast.

“Yum!” the family said.

“But next year that thing goes in the barn,” Annie said.

It’s a Christmas tradition reborn. Makes me proud.

I walked into the coffee shop yesterday, a little later than usual. Annie and her friend, Gretchen, were there—solving some of the world’s pressing problems.

“Sam,” Gretchen called, motioning for me to join them before I got in line.

I started to sit down at the table with them, but…

“No,” Annie said. “No need to sit down. We just wanted to tell you there was a guy sitting right over there, next to the window. He just left. He was impersonating you.”

“What?” I said.

“It’s true,” Gretchen said. “The guy was sitting there in that big green chair. He had a cowboy hat on and he was wearing sunglasses. And he had a beard. And he was writing something. He looked just like you. I started talking to him, but he wasn’t you.”

“That’s right,” Annie said. “I thought he was you and I’m married to you.”

“Well, why would somebody do something like that?” I asked, puffing up with self-importance.

“Because you’re a writer and come in here all the time and people like you…well, some do. I think the guy must be lonely or a little off,” Gretchen said. “He looked a little off. And when he took his hat off, his hair was a mess like yours…”

“What?”

“Oh, I don’t mean anything by it, you know. Just that sometimes…occasionally…you know…well your hair is sort of a mess.”

Annie nodded. “See. I told you,” she said.

“Other than the hat and sunglasses, what was he wearing?” I asked.

“A ratty old fleece and dirty blue jeans and some nasty white tennis shoes. Just like the stuff you’re always wearing,” Gretchen said.

Annie nodded again, rolling her eyes this time.

“And he was sort of big-boned like you,” Gretchen said.

“Fat,” Annie said.

“Pudgy, not fat,” Gretchen said. “And old. We’ll not really old. Just…you know…older…not elderly.”

“Old,” Annie said. “And he had gray hair and a gray beard.”

“Snow white hair,” Gretchen threw in.

“Sorry I missed him,” I said, not quite so puffed up anymore. “That’s strange.”

“Yeah, it was,” Gretchen said. Annie nodded.

I left the ladies to their problem-solving, stepped up to the counter, and ordered a cup of coffee—tall drip with room for cream.

“A refill?” Eric the Barista asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s my first cup.”

Eric looked at me funny—like he was having a déjà vu moment.  “I could have sworn you were here earlier,” he said.

I came into town again this morning. It was dark and foggy. Holiday lights hung from the trees along Main Street in wind-blown strands. The street was deserted but the coffee shop was well lit, looked warm, and inside the place was buzzing. Nat King Cole was singing “Mona Lisa.” The place smelled of cinnamon.

As I ordered my coffee, Eric the Barista pointed to the green chair at the window.  Then he shrugged his shoulders. “That guy looks just like you. Even ordered a tall drip with room for cream just like you,” he said.

The fellow sitting in the big green chair did sort of look like me.  He had on a cowboy hat and sunglasses.

“Odd,” I thought. “Wearing sunglasses when it’s dark outside.”

He had a white beard and white hair that could have used a comb. He was wearing a worn-out fleece and dirty blue jeans. And really dirty white sneakers. He was sort of paunchy and well past his middle years—way older than me.

Before I could walk over and say anything to him, Bob, a coffee shop regular, walked up to him and said, “Hey, Sam.”

“What?” the guy said. “Sam?”

“Sam McLeod,” Bob said, laughing like the guy was joking.

“Never heard of him,” the guy said.

“Lousy impersonator,” I thought. “Guy doesn’t even know who he’s impersonating.”

Then the guy looked at me and nearly jumped through the ceiling, like he was seeing a ghost.

An old neighborhood favorite!