(In part one, I established how meat is better than salad, but sometimes people screw meat up...now a harrowing real-life example of when BBQ goes bad).
I was going to see Lewisville play at Fox Creek. I did a little research and discovered a well-respected and highly thought of barbecue restaurant in North Augusta. In reviews I read, the place was especially lauded for it's ribs and desserts. Ribs + cake= happy Travis. So, I tried to leave the office that day a little early to allow myself some eat time. It quickly became obvious that my best laid plan was going to go awry. First of all, the restaurant I so desperately wanted to visit closes at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays, I assume so the owners can go to church. Even having left early, I was going to cut it awfully close. The directions I'd obtained were also a bit faulty. I was told the place was "just off" of Highway 121. It was, if the magic voice inside my phone was accurate, 12 miles off the highway. Is 12 miles "just off"? In Southern-direction giving parlance, I think 12 miles is "a fur piece" or maybe "a good ways." Driving 24 extra miles there and back would also have endangered my making it to the game on time, which was the really important thing anyway. Ribby deliciousness and cake-y goodness would have to wait for another day, I thought. Still, I had skipped lunch in anticipation of my big barbecue meal and was awfully hungry, so I still needed to find somewhere to eat. As I drove down the road, I thought I might have found my answer. A large barbecue restaurant was not only open, they had a flashing "buffet" sign lit. I pulled over and tried to find a review of the place on my phone, but couldn't locate one. But come on, it was barbecue, what's the worst that could happen? Because of the nature of the commentary to follow, I will use an assumed name for the restaurant...let's call it "The Sad Meat Jubilee." My first hint that perhaps better vittles could be had elsewhere was the fact that only two customers were in the restaurant. It was around 6 p.m., which is prime supper-eating time and a tasty barbecue buffet would figure to draw in a good-sized crowd. I walked in and started to question my choice almost immediately. Everything just looked old and and sort of pitiful, from the carpet to the wallpaper. Tasty food can come from the most meager of accommodations, but this was just different. It looked like a funeral home...so I guess we were having a visitation for the pig I was about to eat. It also smelled old. About the time I'd decided to explore other culinary options, the one person working there had seen me. Against my own instincts and better judgement, I almost felt obligated to find a table and order something. I inquired of the one employee about the buffet. "It's all-you-can-eat for $7.50," she said. This should have been a second hint that perhaps I should seek out an alternate feeding location. You can sometimes find good, bargain-priced food, but often times a price that low indicates corners are being cut somewhere. I went to the buffet which was small and had limited choices. The barbecue looked like barbecue, at least, so I piled some of that on my plate. There was a big tub of watery red sauce next to it. I figured it was a tomato-vinegar sauce, which isn't my favorite but isn't bad, so I ladled that on. Next to the sauce was some unidentifiable red goop. I stirred it up a little trying to figure out exactly what it was. I think it was supposed to be hash. Sane people would have left the stuff sitting there, but I got some rice and spooned on the mystery meat. There were green beans, but they looked waxy and there was some sort of sweet potato dish, but I don't eat sweet potatoes. I'd just stick with the two "meats," I guessed. I sat down and took a bite of the barbecue. It didn't taste bad really, because it didn't have a taste. There was no smoke flavor and no seasoning to speak of. Also, contrary to what the menu said, the meat was not "juicy." There appeared to be some bits of bark mixed in, but it wasn't that magical combination of rendered fat, caramelized sugar and spices...it was just black, burnt meat. Well, maybe the flavor would come from the sauce, I thought. As mentioned, sauce should never have to save barbecue, just enhance it, but it was about the only option I had left. It definitely added flavor...a horrible, off-putting, flavor. The sauce basically tasted like old tomato soup...not "good old tomato soup" mind you, just OLD tomato soup. If Mr. And Mrs. Campbell themselves had made the soup 10 minutes prior, it would still be an ill fit with barbecue. Stale soup...bleh! The hash, which I'm certain came from a can, had been "livened up" I think, with that same sauce. I would have tried to apply some salt and pepper, but the salt was sort of yellowish. I don't even want to think about what might make salt turn yellow. Double bleh! So, just to review, the décor was dreary and the food tasted like failure and old socks. That meant there was only one thing left...one redeeming quality the place could possibly have. I mean, there are three things you judge an eatery on. How it looks, how the food tastes and... "You'll have to call back later," the one employee said to whoever had just called as a fourth customer walked in. "We're getting real busy." So the service was lacking as well. Oddly, the woman asked that fourth customer if he was going to "have his usual." He'd eaten this stuff and come back? Maybe it was court-mandated punishment or something. I decided to cut my losses. I covered most of the food on my plate with a napkin, paid my bill and left. As I drove down the road, I could still taste that awful sauce. It actually lingered into the next day. Maybe it was just that bad, but maybe I was wallowing in self-pity. I had primed and readied myself for tasty smoked pig and had been given poop on a plate instead. Maybe I was tasting disappointment. I should have just gotten a salad!
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A friend of mine once said bad barbecue beat a good salad any day of the week. I have basically subscribed to that theory my whole life. I never believed I'd see the day that a bowl of dirty green junk topped smoked, sauced pig meat, but it finally happened.
First of all, we have to draw a contrast between good and bad barbecue. I truly believe that good barbecue is the finest food available to mortal man. The people who make it the right way are true artisans, spending hours and hours trimming, injecting and rubbing the meat, then dutifully tending the fire and smoke that will embue it with a million wonderfully subtle flavors. When you take a bite of good barbecue, you should taste meat, smoke, rub and some sauce (if you are using any). That's it. It's simplicity that takes a full day of hard work to prepare. Bad barbecue, simply stated, is barbecue that doesn't taste good. Luckily, there are some ways to spot it before you soil your palate with its acrid badness. Barbecue can be sliced, chopped or pulled (I like mine pulled). If you are handed a plate of barbecue that has been obliterated into tiny little bits, the server is probably trying to mask the fact that their Q came out dry or tough. I call this stuff "pork confetti." It may have a place in some bizarre meat parade, but not on my plate. If barbecue is served to you drowned in sauce, that's another indicator. I believe it was Barney Fife that said "I don't like my main dish concealed in a heavy sauce." Barney was right, man. Barney was right. Oversaucing probably means the meat was burned, or smoked too long and got bitter or tastes poopish. I love barbecue sauce, I have more variaties than I can count and make my own, but it should compliment the meat, not hide it. I may not be 100 percent on-point with this, but I would generally say if you buy it from the refridgerated section of the grocery store or from a fast food restaurant, it's probably bad. There may be exceptions (please let me know if they are) but getting barbecue from those two sources means getting a mass produced product. Cooking barbecue requires individual attention, care and authenticity that you can't replicate in a food factory. All this is important because no one's first barbecue experience should be bad. As fellow blawger Jed Blackwell and I have discussed before, I don't want any person to be offered good barbecue...juicy, immaculately pulled meat with tiny bits of delicious bark, a perfect smoke scent and a splash of homemade sauce and think back to the first time they ate barbecue. It was from McWendy King's in the Box...it was semi-gelatinous red goop between two pieces of bread. To them, that is what barbecue is. "No thank you," they say to the person offering them the good stuff. "I don't care for barbecue." I want people to enjoy their lives...you can't know true happiness without knowing good barbecue. Now, everything I've just said should not be taken to mean that any restaurant that bills itself as a barbecue joint is good. Some of them suck too. The South Carolina Barbecue Association has lists on its website of "100 mile Q" and "worth the drive Q." Generally, the places on those lists are good, so it's normally safe to assume you'll get quality food at those places. Sometimes you aren't near one, though, and have to roll the dice. That happened to me during the baseball playoffs... When we first started kicking around the idea of doing this blog, I envisioned myself only writing about Class A athletics and BBQ. The topics will probably end up being more broad than that, but this first entry will shed a little light on why I'm passionate about Class A sports. Big cities have other forms of entertainment, whereas small town America often has its school and that school's sports teams. It provides an identity and means everything...also there kudzu plays a role, but more on that in a minute. I'll have something describing my obsession with barbecue later...it basically centers around the fact that I'm overweight and like pig meat. In the meantime, this tale of dark end zones and places with "crossroads" in their name sort of sums up my love of small schools...
I've heard people talk about "dark corner" South Carolina for a long time. I've always heard it's up in the foothills around Landrum somewhere. Apparently, I've always heard wrong. Earlier this season, I decided to take in Great Falls' football game at Wagener-Salley. I had been there, once, about 10 years ago, but had apparently forgotten how long a drive it is. The school is actually in Wagener (sorry Salley), which is in Aiken. I left from home, going past Whitmire to get on I-26, then to I-20, then to dimly-lit, Lexington County roads. I had tried to plan a full-on eating excursion as part of this trip. Aiken has a highly thought of barbecue eatery and I am quite fond of dead pig, smoked and slathered in a mustard-based sauce. I didn't get to leave as early as I'd hoped, and the barbecue place I wanted to visit was a good half-hour away from the school, so I had to nix that idea. I figured I could turn to the magical voice inside my phone for a recommendation on somewhere to eat that was a little closer. I don't know why I thought that, since Siri can't seem to understand my Carolina twang and doesn't particularly seem to like me very much. "Siri, where is a good place to eat in Wagener, South Carolina?" I asked. I asked in an extra-friendly voice, hoping that would win over the woman in my phone. "Getting locations for tire stores," she said. "I don't want to eat tires, ma'am," I said. "Somewhere...to...eat...in...Wagener...South...Carolina." "Getting locations for wagoners in South Carolina," she said. I decided it was hopeless. I gave up. I made it from one interstate to the other fine, but once I took my exit off I-20, I was a little confused about where to go. I decided to turn to Siri again, though I'm not sure why. She once instructed me to turn right in the middle of a long bridge and insisted that I could find Camden High School if only I would turn left into someone's driveway then take a right into their shed. I decided to eliminate the language barrier by just typing in where I wanted to go. To my amazement, it worked. She gave me accurate directions deep into the country portion of the midlands. She could have just said "exit near the dirty book store" then turn left, but she avoided that for some reason. Anyway, how far in the country I was became quickly apparent. At one point, I came to Fairview Crossroads. In my experience, anytime you come to a place called the "fill in the blank" Crossroads you are pretty deep in the sticks. I don't say that disparagingly at all...I'm from the sticks and like being there. Usually, though, little communities are named for a person, or a nearby landmark of some kind. "We gotta name this place," one state mapmaker says to another one. "What families live around here?" "Ain't none," the other would say. "Oh, well are their any bodies of water around here? Creeks, rivers...anything like that?" "Nuh-uh," the other says. "Not even a mud puddle." "Any old churches? We could name it after an old church." "I already told you nobody lives here. No people, no church." "Dang. What are we going to call this place? Hey, they've got two roads that intersect, right?" "Yep. That's about all they got. That and a hill." "Alright, I got it. You can get a fair view from that hill. How about Fairview Crossroads?" As I got a little further down the road, I finally started to see some things. I saw a sign advertising the services of B. Jay the DJ. A very long time ago, I actually went by the name "T.J. The DJ" when I was really young, worked in radio and thought that was the awesomest name ever. I may have a copyright issue with B. Jay. I'll have to look into that later. I also passed a monastery, which was a pretty interesting find...and quite a contrast to frontage road "book store" I'd passed earlier. I got to Wagener...well, Siri got me to Wagener anyway. It was a really nice little town and did appear to have some good local places to eat. With the game only 20 or so minutes from kicking off and the action probably to last well past business hours, I would have to come back and enjoy them some other time. From that point, finding Wagener-Salley High School was pretty easy. All I had to do was look for the stadium lights, which were beaming just in front and to the right of me. As I started to turn in I saw a number of girls posing for pictures in pretty dresses out front...a sure sign of homecoming. That usually means a big, happy crowd (Yay!) and a really long halftime (Sigh...) I enjoy the atmosphere at small school football games. I have been to most of the state's larger schools to watch games and have been subjected to crummy parking, actually being charged to park and unfriendly attendants who want everything short of a blood sample and my mother's Social Security number before letting me walk through the gate. At places like Wagener, you park wherever you can find a spot and stroll on through the gate. The folks are friendly and figure that a notebook and a large bag of camera equipment would be an awfully elaborate disguise for someone to don to get out of paying the $5 admission price. "You're good shug," a woman said as she waved me in. I was only a few paces into the place when I saw a big sign affixed to the trailer that serves as the stadium's restroom facilities. It was an advertisement for the Town of Salley. It voiced support for the Wagener-Salley War Eagles and touted Salley as the chitlin capital of the world. I already knew Salley held that title, but seeing the sign made me wonder how exactly Salley got it in the first place. Do they have more chitlins than everybody else? Do they have better chitlins? Frankly, how would you know good chitlins from bad? I've had them before, a long time ago, and don't remember them being bad or anything. It's just, you know, if you have to wash poo out of something before you cook it, I think I'll pass. Of course, I also eat hot dogs and who knows what's in those. Maybe it's best not to analyze what I eat too closely. Still, I decided then and there that maybe, perhaps, if they sold chitlins at the concession stand, I would buy an order and try a small bite. I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to food. The concessions stand had a big menu with a lot of good-looking items on it, but no fried hog intestines. Generally, I have found, small schools often have the best concession stand food, because some lady is in the cramped kitchen quarters actually making that food, or a fellow is stationed by a grill actually cooking the hot dogs and hamburgers. I like chain restaurant pizza and chicken sandwiches as much (or maybe more) than most and bigger schools often have some kind of sponsorship agreement with those chains and sell their stuff at games. I can get those at those restaurants, though...I can't get an appropriately burned hot dog Jimmy just took off the grill with a ladle-full of chili that Beulah just cooked in a crock pot. At a football game, I'd rather have that. Once I got down to the sidelines, I realized I didn't have a pen. I'm bad to just cram my pens into the spiral of my notebook, where they don't tend to stay. I asked Great Falls assistant coach Cody Mobley if he had a spare. He didn't, but he saw to it that I got one. "Hey, anybody got a pen Travis can borrow?" he hollered at the Great Falls fans. A young girl came down and gave me a hot pink pen. I would go to my car at halftime and get another one, since I would have to stay on the field after the game (when she would be ready to leave) to interview players and coaches. I returned her pen and thanked her profusely. Almost exactly one year before this game, I had ventured down to the Midlands to see another Great Falls game. That one was at River Bluff, a new, big school in Lexington County. The school was a palace and the stadium a cathedral. They had a two story building in one end zone. The bottom floor was a field house, with the second serving as luxury boxes for the team's biggest boosters. They had a field turf surface, a big video scoreboard and a brick wall that stretched from the corner of the home stands almost to the visitors side, providing a catwalk-like view of the game to anyone who wanted to stand up there. It was impressive, it is beautiful, it is the envy of most other schools and it was entirely too much for a simple fellow like myself. The Wagener-Salley band, which included 14 musicians by my count, one of whom was wearing her homecoming dress as she played a horn, treated the crowd to "Call me Al" and "Seven Nation Army" a dozen or more times. Call me crazy, but I far preferred that to the high-dollar sound system piping in music at River Bluff. What I also didn't miss was someone saying, over and over "That's another Jim Bob's deer cooler, tax service and haberdasher FIRST DOWN!" I know athletic departments need revenue anywhere they can get it, but constant commercials over the loudspeaker and wacky videos on the scoreboard during time outs sort of take away from what you're actually there to see...which is kids playing football, kids cheering for the football team and other kids playing music. I know many folks have shorter attention spans today and need something to tickle their senses almost constantly to stay engaged, but I'm not among them. Fourteen kids (one in a fancy dress) playing an old Paul Simon song and a country gentleman from somewhere in Aiken County occasionally saying "Let's go War Eagles" over the speaker (in vain as it turned out, since Great Falls won in a rout) is all I need on a nice night, out in the country under the big stadium lights. Bells and whistles are fine and all, but small towns supporting their small school and teams is far more authentic. Maybe they have figured out, as I have myself, that the more perfume you have to squirt on something, the more it probably stinks. Chitlin signs and bathrooms in a trailer and a crowd small enough to hear a coach ask for a pen for the goofy local reporter tell you a lot more about a place than a million dollar scoreboard, lights that virtually turn night into day and luxury boxes. Speaking of those lights, as Great Falls drove toward the far end zone, I made a discovery. As I walked down to that end to take some pictures I noticed something unusual. Just beside the visitor's stands, there are some woods and is often the case of wooded areas in South Carolina, there was an abundance of lovely kudzu growing on the trees and fence and some even spilled onto the field. Because of that, light actually can't get to one corner of the end zone. I've heard about "The Dark Corner" of South Carolina all my life and thought it was up in the hill country somewhere. I was wrong. It stretches from the goal line to the back pylon and over a few feet toward the goal post in one of Wagener-Salley's end zones. I bet York or Blythewood or any big school would fire the groundskeeper and fear for what people might think of unwanted vines blocking out the light. Man...they don't know what they're missing. |
TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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