Barbeque, Memphis Style

At age 34, I finally held a high school diploma.  My first year back in the States went by in a blur.  I never realized how much effort went into teaching.  Mrs. Nagel, and many others just like her, are terribly underpaid.

 

After the graduation party broke up, I sat in the kitchen with Roberta and Kenneth.  I was trying to figure out how to bring up the topic.  Roberta knew I wasn’t good at that sort of thing and solved the problem for me.

 

“Alright, young man.  You will always have a place to stay at our house.  But I know you, and you are not your uncle.  It is not your destiny to live your life in Wales, Alaska.  You are driven to continue your quest.  I suggest you start in San Diego.  Visit your parents’ graves.  From there, you’ll figure out what’s next.”

 

Interesting.  I had never thought of myself as being on a quest.  Yet, when I look back, my life has been a series of adventures.  Except for the suicidal trek across the frozen Bering Strait, I had not planned any of it. 

 

One more visit to Eastwood.  Then, a difficult goodbye with the Nagels.  It occurred to me I may never see either of them again.

 

Going to my parent’s graves was interesting.  It brought back a lot of memories.  My father’s laugh, the smile on my mother’s face.  I tried to imagine what my life would have been like if they had not died.  I’m pretty sure I would have never ended up in Siberia. 

 

I had buried the memory of how profoundly their deaths impacted my life.  Now, I felt the emotions again.  For months afterward, I was in shock.  No seven-year-old should ever wake up and realize their parents are gone forever.

 

My uncle had done an incredible job raising me.  A nephew whose world had been shattered was unexpectedly dropped in his lap.  He was a hermit who interacted with other people only when necessary.  Yet somehow, he managed to be an effective substitute for both my mother and my father.

 

I had no regrets.  Everyone’s life has tragedy.  We will only be here for a while.  I felt like I had already lived a complete life.  Whatever happens now, will be the start of a new quest.  A second chance.

 

After visiting the cemetery, I stood in the lobby of the hotel, wondering what to do next.  I scanned the tourist brochures, looking for ideas.  Somehow, riding on a roller coaster didn’t seem like much of a thrill to me.

 

When I left the Army, Colonel Kashuba gave me a one-year pass on the Soviet Railway.  I used it a few times.  Once I took a few weeks off from my job with Semak and rode from all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok.  I spent a couple of days catching up on things with the Colonel. 

 

It occurred to me, I’d never seen much of America. 

 

At the Amtrak station, I purchased a 45-day travel pass.  I didn’t have a plan.  I figured I’d just start moving. 

 

Las Vegas, Denver, Chicago, St. Louis.  They were all exciting and interesting.  But after a while, each one began to remind me of Moscow.  Just with brighter lights.  And a lot more money and freedom.  It was overwhelming.  After New Orleans, I decided to start exploring some of the smaller towns the train passed through.

 

McComb, Mississippi is a community of twelve thousand people.  I walked down Main Street, and aside from the bell tower on a church, I did not see anything more than two stories tall.  The old brick buildings reminded me of some of the places I had been in Siberia and Mongolia.  Not counting the heat and humidity.  Summer weather in the South was a new experience for me. 

 

I stopped in front of a sign proclaiming that Bo Diddley, one of rock and roll’s founders, was born just south of here, on December 30, 1928.  Eastwood had been a big fan.  His extensive Bo Diddley collection melted when his house burned down. 

 

When I was with Irina, she knew I liked the blues, and she had procured a copy of Have Guitar Will Travel.  It was one of the albums she gave me when we parted.  Right now, they were all in my watertight trunk, in a locker at the Amtrak station.

 

I walked around the town.  I marveled at the oaks, pines, and magnolias.  The long days in this part of the world created huge trees.  I found myself on Minnesota Avenue.  A house had a sign in the yard, Rooms For Rent.  An elderly lady rocked back and forth in a chair on the porch.  She smiled and waved at me. 

 

We spoke for a moment and she invited me to sit with her on the porch.  Jewel McComb was her name.  Her family had lived in the area so long they named the city after them.

 

I asked Jewel if there was a record player in the house.  She said yes.  I gave her a month’s rent. 

 

When I went to Siberia, it was obvious I was out of place.  However, my uncle’s obsession with the Soviet Union had rubbed off on me.  I had spent years studying the politics and the culture before I travelled there.  After a rough start, I began to fit in fairly quickly.

 

Technically, Mississippi is in the same country as Alaska.  Just like Siberia is part of Russia. 

 

A visitor will have no trouble distinguishing Siberians, who are Asian, from Russians, who are Europeans.  In Mississippi, I discovered just how different the parts of America can be.

 

On Jewel’s porch, it became apparent it was time for me to learn another language.  Southern English has a completely different accent than what I was used to.  And it was full of idioms that sometimes meant the opposite of what you would expect.  I learned that “bless you” is a sincere wish for good tidings, but “bless your heart” is an implied insult. 

 

That evening, I drank sweet iced tea, and listened to Jewel tell her story.  She gave me the history of her family and the town, as well as my first lesson in southern culture.

 

Jewel was much more than a Southern Belle.  A tomboy from birth, she had hunted and fished with her father as a child.  She was a college graduate and a Registered Nurse.  She had served in the US Army in Korea.  When the Chinese attacked the US 2nd Infantry Division, Jewel’s field hospital was overrun.  She grabbed a rifle and started shooting.  Before the American forces evacuated, she had three hits.

 

By the end of the evening, I stopped thinking of Jewel as a little old lady.  She was a kindred spirit.  Someone who knew they would not hesitate to kill if the situation called for it. 

 

She told me, “You seem like a smart young man.  It will not take long to turn you into a proper Southern Gentleman.”  The way she said it made it sound like the phrase was to be capitalized.  She made a list of books for me to read and drew me a map to the library.

 

The next morning, I walked to the McComb Public Library, and started reading about the history of the southern United States.  We had studied the Civil War, and the civil rights movement, in Mrs. Nagel’s history classes.  But from the perspective of a boy growing up in Wales, Alaska, all that might as well have happened on another planet.  I wasn’t sure why Jewel wanted me to read about it.  I would find out soon enough.  I had a lot to learn.

 

I had grown up in a community of 152 people.  Twelve were white.  The rest were Inuit.  I spent 15 years in Asia and western Europe, and another year in Wales.  I had rarely interacted with African-Americans.  That changed when I met George Henderson. 

 

While I lived with Jewel, I had time on my hands.  The house was old and the yard was overgrown.  Home repair and tree trimming became my new hobbies.  I was up a ladder, cutting a dead branch with a hand saw, when the Ford F-350 pulled up to the house.  It was towing a food trailer, the kind vendors set up at outdoor events.  

 

Later, I found out George had been a lineman at Mississippi State, headed for the NFL, until he blew out a knee.  When he got out of the truck I was thinking this:  That dude is way too big to get into a fight with, but I can outrun him. 

 

The good news for me was that George was only violent when he played football.  His family ran a local barbeque restaurant.  He was in charge of the food trailer.  He had just returned from a festival in nearby Hattiesburg.

 

Jewel was friends with his parents, and had known George since he was a child.  He was in the habit of stopping by Jewel’s house on his way back from events.  He brought her barbeque.  She poured him iced tea while they sat and chatted on the porch.

 

The man walked up to me as I climbed down the ladder.  He reached out a large hand and said, “You must be Evan.  Jewel has told me about you.  I’m George Henderson.”

 

He was smiling, and his tone of voice was friendly.  But I understood the look in his eye.  Anyone who didn’t pass the George Henderson test would probably not be living in Jewel’s house very long. 

 

I knew I didn’t have anything to worry about.  I had barely started on my tea when George said, “If you are going to work on these trees, you’ll need better tools than what you’ve got.  Tomorrow, I’ll bring by a chain saw and a sturdier ladder.”

 

That began a friendship between the skinny white boy from Alaska, and the largest human being I had ever seen.  George showed up the next morning with a truck full of tools.  We worked side by side for hours, cutting the dead branches and overgrowth, and hauling the debris to the curb.  By the middle of the afternoon, I noticed he was limping.  I remembered the knee injury.

 

I said, “Well, I’ve just about had it for the day.  And I’m starving.  I’ll bet if the two of us pester Jewel, she will feed us and bring us tea.”

 

Sitting on the front porch, eating BLT sandwiches, George asked me if I wanted a job.  When school started in a few weeks, his children would not be able to travel with the food truck.  It took a minimum of two people to operate it, one to cook, and one to take orders and handle the money.  I said yes.

 

“Between Jewel teaching you manners, and me teaching you how to barbeque, you’ll be a bona fide Southerner before you know it.  It’s just a matter of time before you start saying ain’t and I reckon.”

 

I wasn’t sure about that.  But I was looking forward to learning about barbeque and the food truck business.  While that was happening, I got lessons in something else.  Racism.

 

Since Jewel was cooking for me, I decided I could do the grocery shopping.  The African-American lady running the cash register was trying to get a wrinkled up bar code to scan.  The man in front of me in line turned and whispered, “Those n*****s are always going slow on purpose.”

 

I was shocked.  It wasn’t just the word he used, it was the venom in his voice.  And, the implication.  That since I was also white, I was somehow a member of his club.

 

I had no idea what to say to that.  I’m better with action than with words.  So I just glared at the man.  He got the idea and turned back around.

 

Jewel and I talked about the incident.  I began to realize why she had asked me to read those books. 

 

“But you treat George like he is a member of your family.  How can some people think like you, and some like the man at the store?”

 

She sighed.  “It’s complicated, my young friend.  You grew up in a very different place.  Your uncle gave you a sense of fairness.  You were never taught that another person was born less than you.” 

 

“The South is a walking contradiction in so many ways.  I don’t expect people who aren’t from here to understand.  Maybe if you stay twenty years…” 

 

On the road to my first gig as a food truck attendant, I wanted to know what George thought about it.  I told him the story.  “So George, has anyone ever called you…that word?”

 

He laughed and said, “The sad thing is, I would have known what you meant by ‘that word’, even if you hadn’t told me what happened.”

 

“But to answer your question, yes, I was called that, more than once, when I was a child.  A funny thing happened, though.  By the time I started high school, I was the biggest kid on the football team.  When the very same people saw the holes I was blowing in those defensive lines, their story changed.  All of a sudden, they were my new best friends.”

 

“My parents tell me much has changed since they were young.  As you have seen, there is still a lot of progress to be made.  The sad truth is, many of these people will take their racism to the grave with them.  Things are getting better.  Way too slowly for my tastes, but Momma always tells me I need to be more patient.”

 

I asked, “How does someone cause change to occur in situations like this?”

 

George said, “You just need to keep doing what you’re doing.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Evan, you’re white, and you’re my friend.  You treat me no differently than you treat anyone else.  There are young people in McComb right now who are figuring out who they will be when they grow up.  One way they learn is by watching the adults around them.  You are a role model, whether you realize it or not.”

 

Wow.  I was a role model.  An advocate for equal rights.  I had no idea.

 

The food truck business is hard work.  If it wasn’t for the good food and good company, it wouldn’t have been worth it.  At the lodge, the chefs had spoiled me with a variety of gourmet cooking.  George introduced me to Memphis barbeque.  If you try it, you’ll like it.

 

Cooking first class barbeque is hard work.  You have to know what you are doing.  It takes time.  Patience is a requirement.  George was as skilled as any of the chefs I knew at the lodge.  Watching him made me think of flying a helicopter.  It didn’t look that hard when someone else did it. 

 

Fortunately for me, running the cash register was just as easy as it looked.  At first, I stayed out of George’s way.  Except for gopher duties.  One only needs to be capable of following instructions to be a barbeque assistant.

 

George taught me that barbeque was an international cuisine, practiced on six continents and every inhabited island on the planet.  In the US, there were four major types.  George and his family made Memphis-style barbeque the old fashioned way.  Mostly pork ribs and shoulders.  They cooked the meat over low heat for many hours, in a large, brick lined cabinet they called the pit.  They made both kinds of ribs, wet and dry. 

 

Dry ribs are coated with a mixture of salt and spices before they are cooked.  Wet ribs are brushed with a sauce when they are prepared, and the chef will add more sauce as the cooking proceeds.

 

George had a number of barbeque mantras.  His favorite:  You need good meat, good heat, good smoke, the right spice, the right sauce, enough time, and the biggest, baddest pit you can build. 

 

I didn’t think cooking barbeque was as hard as piloting a helicopter, but I did have pre-flight inspection flashbacks as I helped George get everything set up the first time.

 

Making barbeque on the road is more challenging than at a restaurant.  Instead of a pit, George had a grill.  In the pit, they would burn oak logs for hours, down to red hot embers, before they would start smoking the meat.  Depending on cut and size, the meat would smoke for six to eighteen hours.

 

In George’s opinion, the things that most separated good barbeque from great barbeque were time and smoke.  You could cook the meat fast, over high heat, or slow, over low heat.  And, any heat source will cook meat.  A good smoke imparts a unique flavor into the meat.  Each type of wood produces a distinct smoke.  

 

George had some backup mantras.  Low and slow is the way to go.  When you need smoke you gotta burn oak. 

 

The biggest challenge on the road was getting the same result in a metal grill as with a pit.  Instead of red hot oak embers, the grill’s main heat source was charcoal.  George used a propane starter to get the charcoal burning.  Then he would add oak chunks, about the size of an egg.  The wood smoldered and produced smoke, just not up to the standards of a good pit. 

 

He would raise the lid occasionally and check the fire.  Sometimes it was burning too fast.  He’d squirt the hot spots with a water bottle.  Sometimes the fire needed more smoke.  Using tongs, he would carefully place oak chunks where needed.

 

We had to start early in the morning.  Typically, we would travel the day before the event, and get the trailer set up at the site.  Then, to bed early.  We were usually out of the hotel by 4am, and spent all day preparing food and cooking.  If the event didn’t start until the evening, we slow cooked all of the meat.  It made George happy when we had time for that. 

 

More often than not, the events started in the morning, and we would have to be ready to serve lunch by 11am.  He had to compromise on cooking time.  He frowned a lot when had to hurry.  That impinged on another of his mantras, one he stole from a wine commercial.  We will sell no swine before its time.

 

Barbeque isn’t just about the meat.  I learned how to prepare cole slaw, baked beans, potato salad, and cornbread.  And iced tea.  Sweetened, of course.  I thought about what Jewel said the first night I met her.  I wasn’t sure about being a gentleman.  But I was learning about what it meant to be a Southerner.