Scottsboro 55th Barbecue

Blazing--that would be the wood fires all night long under 95 pork shoulders, tended by shifts of our neighbors. And that would be the day of the barbecue, tagged at 101 on the Lewis'Country Store billboard.

Our local Community Club has been doing barbecue on Labor Day Saturday for 55 years, and anyone and everyone who has ever lived in or around the area seems to show up--country band, a bit of sedate boot-scootin', and really good barbecue, beans, slaw, cornbread (the kind that looks like a stout pancake), kid's games, yard sales.

After rounding at the hospital, I served 'cue for a couple of hours, then scrubbed up a considerable pile of pots and pans, and the steam table. My fellow dishwasher was Linda, just retired from 39 years as a Metro bus driver. Miss Nancy worked on cornbread, George O. managed the cashbox.

Tom pulled pork for a while, but our real hero is Jim, who took the midnight shift and then worked most of the day as well. One guy drives from Knoxville each year to help out--grew up on Bull Run Road, and painted the Club and installed the swings for his Eagle Scout project twenty-five years ago.

I've lived out here since 1983, but am still a newbie by CC standards. We enjoy the overlapping generations and shifting groups that mark this as a real community, not an artificial, pay-to-get-through-the-gate simulacrum.

And, by the way, George tells me he's taken up pipe smoking. Burning holes in his pink shirts.

That's all the news for now.