Quite a few years back, a buddy and I traveled across the lower forty-eight in search of inspiration, cosmic answers, strange American exoticisms and spiritual sustenance. We wanted to soak in the hands and faces of our countrymen, and extend the hand of solidarity to all manner of folk--to let them know that our great land was still one of curiosity, warmth, brotherhood, and adventure.
Floating in the ionosphere of our lofty objectives was to, I believe the phrase was, “find the best goddamn bar-b-q in the country.” Oh well, what we lacked in originality we more than made up for with appetite.
We muddled our way down California and choked down a few overly chi-chi baby backs soundly defiled with stuff like red wine, balsamic vinegar or tarragon. Tarragon—just the kind of bent rib-nannigans you’d expect from some new-age doofus chef who doesn’t know that you don’t mess with ribs. Shoot, you might as well make a margarita with gin. Don’t get me wrong. I love California; It’s the best place in the world… just that nobody gets it right every time.
Along the Kingman highway we endured Arizona's feeble attempts at capturing that je ne se qua so very critical to ribs. Something about Arizona and a roaring open fire I guess…folks cooking stuff too fast over too hot a fire and calling it bar-b-q. A rib shouldn’t be chewy, folks. Can someone please tell Arizona this? I ain’t a dog.
We meandered around the many landscapes of Texas and I gotta tell you we started getting pretty darn impressed; one contender in Lubbock held the title for six-hundred miles until one unimaginably broiling day near Vicksburg, Mississippi.
That hot blowing through the open car windows made it too stiff for anything, no talking, no smoking, just staring out the windows, letting the hangover work, and mulling the phenomenon over and over in your heads. Like I can’t even believe this is on Earth.
We were driving along the river marveling at the burned-out one-room churches and overgrown farms, drowned in the scream of the bugs and the sting of a South that keeps trying to right itself but may never. You can get lost in the thickness of that myth (which is my roots by the way), the one that lulls a heart with notions of proper folks and mighty oaks, Spanish moss and a mint julep. It’s tough to see which way is up down South, and when and if you scratch the surface you’ll see a scar runs longwise tickling the empathies of passersby—a scar toughed up, mangled, shiny with shame, poverty, and frustration. It’s nothing but an overgrown network of rock-hard dirt roads, dead ends, humiliated ditches that don’t do nothing but stop the way from flooding with the obvious.
Things can start getting serious till you remember it’s all about bar-b-q.
Then we saw it: a house as we hit the edge of town, at the bottom of a steep river-bluff hill, like the house was on the first step of an escalator about to get drawn up into the sweet arms of the silver hot sky. We saw this house, a little thing, and noticed it had smoke coming out of the chimney and about 20 cars parked in all directions, willy-nilly, fit in like puzzle pieces. Along the side of the house was a piece of OSB leaned up that had spray painted on it, "BBQ: chicken $4.99, ribs $5.99, both $7.99." Needless to say, we both were in it for a "both."
These people are not playing games. They burn an impossibly mellow wood fire under this massive grill and keep it at a steady 250 degrees at the cooking surface. The sauce is angelically sweet, hinting cloves and black pepper and cumin and maybe even whiskey. The ribs…forget it. I’m not even gonna try…but lemmie tell you the sombitches fall apart on contact. The beans? Mustard and onions maybe…a little vinegar and parsley. Whatever their recipes, they’re original and just right. I didn’t bother asking ‘cause I knew they weren’t sharing.
I'll leave out the really graphic part where two hungover wanderers, devoid of self-consciousness, sit on the stoop sweating in the impossible heat and practically have sex with two giant Styrofoam clamshells overflowing with a rack of ribs, a half chicken, coleslaw, and baked beans, but let me tell you that this chapter ends with me agonizingly gorged, stumbling up and shaking my sauce-covered fist at the steamed-up-glasses wearing lady behind the counter, heckling her up and down telling her she oughta be locked up for making bar-b-q that good and other crazy stuff like that.
"Aw, I wish all my customers was so sweet like you." She said. I guess she likes a fool.
Her big pie of a smile was the dessert, period.
Then I got a cup of coffee to go. It came out of a batch that shoulda been dumped out like a year ago…the kind of coffee you send back with indignation. It was thick and ugly and I choked it down with the smell of the sauce still on my fingers. I regret drinking that cup of coffee, the fitful caffeine fever that ensued. The turbulence forever in my blood further exacerbated into an obsessive unfair self-reflection lasting twenty hours. It kept me awake all the way to Newport News, the city Frank Lloyd Wright dubbed America’s ugliest. Were it not for the afterglow of that bar-b-q, we might have noticed it too.
