The thing that honey tastes best on is a Martha Harp dinner roll—a fluffy, buttery delicacy sold in the bakery section of Harps grocery stores, a regional chain based in my hometown of Springdale, Arkansas. Martha was the wife of the onetime owner. They’ve both gone to that shopping cart corral in the sky by now, but not before Martha secured her legacy with her dinner roll recipe.
The rolls are sort of shaped like a big muffin but they’re soft inside instead of dense, and a cleft in the top lets you easily tear the roll apart down the middle. Spread some butter in there and drizzle on some honey and oh my Lord.
No, wait, I know a better expression to use in this scenario. It’s what one of my dad’s coworkers used to say whenever he’d take a bite of something especially delicious: “Honey, hush!”
You could also get Martha Harp rolls with your fried chicken at AQ Chicken House, a long-standing Springdale eatery that went out of business in 2023. (A revival is supposedly in the works, but the project has run into delays.)
I’d always want to go to AQ after church on Sundays, but my mom found the fare greasy so we’d only have lunch there occasionally. One of those meals was the setting for the legendary moment in Thompson family lore when Grandma Jewel, lacking a knife at her place setting, used her finger to butter her Martha Harp.
Maybe my sisters and I were starved for transgression, but we couldn’t have been more shocked and delighted if Grandma had snorted a line of coke off her plate.
I would later make up for that era of AQ moderation. When I got old enough to drive, I would dine there so frequently I got to know the hostess well enough to discuss my college plans with her. More than a decade after I moved away from home—but before I converted to vegetarianism—I dropped by AQ during a return visit to Springdale, and there the hostess stood at her station, all those years later.
And get this: She remembered me.
“You still in school up there in Chicago?” she asked.
I wanted to be like, Lady, I left for freshman orientation 14 years ago. Just how dumb do you think I am?
As I mentioned, this all happened before I went vegetarian. I don’t eat fried chicken anymore—a betrayal of my Southern heritage, as a frenemy from Tennessee recently informed me.
Yeah, well, my Arkansan ancestors also wouldn’t like that I’m gay, that I married a Puerto Rican, and that I practice dental hygiene. So who needs ‘em.
Then again, maybe that’s not fair. After all, I come from people who use their index fingers as butter knives. We don’t follow your stinkin’ rules!
As a matter of fact, I’d go vegan if I had the fortitude. And if vegan cheese didn’t taste like wax paper.
Course, as a vegan I’d have to give up honey, seeing as how it’s an animal product that rightfully belongs to the bees and Winnie-the-Pooh. But that wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice for me. These days, I really only consume honey when I make oatmeal or a yogurt parfait.
The closest Harps store is a 19-hour drive from here.
Indirect Objects 