By Bill King
I have a confession to make. I am addicted to barbecue. I don’t have to have it every day, but I also don’t go many days without some. I really don’t remember exactly at what age my love for smoky pigs began, but it was quite some time ago. Growing up, we didn’t eat barbecue much. I don’t recall my hometown having a barbecue place until after I was grown and gone. My family had a barbecue grill, but the only meats we cooked on there were hamburgers and hotdogs. Occasionally, if we were feeling a little uppity, we might cook a chicken on there. I asked Mama once if we could throw a Boston Butt on there. She said, “Son, don’t talk like that!”
I have read that Hernando DeSota, back in 1540, enjoyed the first barbecue feast in America with the Native Americans. I have some Native American blood, but I was not invited! Perhaps, not long after that, barbecue joints began popping up…or maybe not, but they’ve been around for a while.
The first barbecue I remember eating didn’t come from a smoke pit. It can from a tin can. I’m not sure if Mama bought it at Harold Bell’s IGA or Floyd Williams Supermarket. The can said it was “Kelly’s Pork with Barbecue Sauce.” I thought it was pretty good stuff, but that was only because I had never actually had the pretty good stuff.
Sometime during early adulthood, I discovered a place in Birmingham, East Lake, to be exact, called Johnny Ray’s. Their slogan was, “Next to home it’s Johnny Rays.” I didn’t remember ever having barbecue like that at home. The pulled pork was great, the onion rings were the greatest, and Honey’s lemon pie was a slice of pure pleasure topped with meringue. Later, they opened locations all around Birmingham, as well as in a few other towns. I think they are all closed now, but I have found many other barbecue joints since that humble beginning. I have eaten barbecue across the nation. I have eaten barbecue as far East as New York City and as far West as Hawaii, and many points in between. Different parts of the country claim to have the best. I spent almost a decade living in the Memphis area. Memphis has more barbecue places than they have telephone poles. I made it my mission, while living there, to try each and every one of them, and I think I may have. My favorites were Central Barbecue, near the Liberty Bowl, The Bar-B-Que Shop, on Madison, and Leonard’s Pit Barbecue. Leonard’s has been in operation since 1922, so it must be good.
They say the United States has only four styles of barbecue. There is Kansas, Carolina, Texas, and Memphis barbecue. I’ve had them all, and they are all good, but we need to add Alabama barbecue to that list. Out west, it’s mostly beef, from Memphis eastward, it’s mostly pork. In Alabama, we’ll barbecue most anything that stands still long enough for us to catch it, but pork is our favorite.
The best time to have barbecue is whenever you can. Having said that, there is something about barbecue in the fall that flings an irresistible craving on me. When my nostrils catch a whiff of pork being slowly smoked over an open flame on hickory logs, when the southern summer temperatures have dipped down from unbearable to pleasant, and the humidity has taken a hike…well, it causes me to wonder, “What must heaven be like?” I’m not sure we will even need to eat in heaven, but if we do…