Jim McAllister’s Good Old Carolina Barbecue

It’s been said paradise is a fountain Cheerwine paired with a chopped plate. Ok, it was me who said that, but Carolina barbecue is on everyone’s lips lately and I had to give my two cents. Half the fun of barbecue is the debate.

Piggybacking on the excitement I had after picking up a copy of the Our State Gone Hogwild issue, I wanted to share an old barbecue story from a somewhat forgotten Carolinian, the late newspaper columnist Jim McAllister.

McAllister wrote back when people couldn’t care less about the Internet, back when a small city’s newspaper could reach a circulation of 300,000+ readers, back when the first Star Wars was just an idea. His columns appeared in the The Greenville News (Greenville in SC not the Greenville in NC). McAllister told as many tales from above the border as he did below. Like Petey Pablo says in his new anthem for the Super Bowl 50 bound Carolina Panthers, McCallister was “reppin’ two states.”

He called his column “McCallister and His People.” According to a Spartanburg Herald-Journal obituary, it ran for 12 years. He ended up with three books, each one chock full of his columns. I found one of these books by accident at an antiques shop in Cornelius, NC. Before then I’d never heard of the guy. I enjoyed it enough to order his other two via Amazon. I quickly became his newest fan.

Each column is a snapshot of 1970s and early 80s life in the Carolinas. Some were about catching up with hometown celebrities who made it big. More often he wrote about regular folk, coworkers or people he just sort of bumped into. He had a knack for rendering them all equally fascinating.

The following excerpt, “Good Old Carolina Barbecue,” is presented in its entirety as I found it printed. It’s not online anywhere or else I would’ve just linked to it. It can be found in his first book, “Well Shut My Mouth: tales from the South,” printed in 1976 by Nashville-based Harris Press (acquired by R&S Printing in 2003). I suppose the copyright (in his name) was passed down to his children. If you take a little time to find McAllister’s books, you’d be doing yourself a favor. From the first paragraph/unassailable thesis, it’s as a much fun read as it is an historical document. Oh yeah, there’s a casual Andy Griffith anecdote in there, too.

Good Old Carolina Barbecue
by Jim McAllister

Carolina barbecue is not something to take lightly. It’s a serious subject, ranking right up there with Cheerwine and persimmon pudding.

I’ve always held in great suspicion any barbecue that was produced outside that Piedmont area of North Carolina where I grew up.

That original Red Pig barbecue in Concord, N.C. has, I’m convinced, saved many lives. After traveling around the world in the Navy during my youth, I would sometimes stop off at the Red Pig for one of their sliced specialties before going home to see my parents.

Jerry Bledsoe, a newspaperman in Greensboro, N.C., likes to argue about barbecue. He thinks he has all the answers and knows all the good places. He has been known to scoff at the mention of the Red Pig and Troutman’s in Concord.

Jerry grew up in Thomasville, N.C., and he says the best barbecue in the country is made at Stamey’s in Greensboro. He conceded that there was a place on South Main Street in Lexington, N.C. that did very well by barbecue.

I was reminded of conversations with Andy Griffith, the actor, about barbecue. Andy probably takes a more gourmet approach to barbecue than anyone. After he graduated from the University of North Carolina back about 1950, he took a high school teaching job in eastern North Carolina. Believe it was at Rocky Mount — and Rocky Mount considers itself the barbecue capital of the world — the true home of eastern Carolina barbecue.

Andy is from Mt. Airy, up near the mountains, and for some reason the barbecue isn’t as delectable in those parts. He once said the closest real good barbecue he could find to Mt. Airy was at Casey’s in Greensboro.

After Andy struck it rich with his “What It Was Was Football” record and “No Time For Sergeants” on Broadway, he moved to Hollywood. That really removed him from barbecue land and he was worried. He soon found out that people in California don’t know anything about barbecue. When you say barbecue out there they think you’re talking about beef barbecue.

Well, Andy wouldn’t have anything to do with that beef barbecue. A couple of places even tried the Carolina kind of pork barbecue, but it was a disaster.

“The thing they don’t have out in California is hickory wood,” Andy said. “You can’t make good barbecue without hickory wood. And then, of course, you have to know how to make it. Nobody out here knows how to make it.”

Perhaps, he said, one of the nicest things about being a star and being wealthy in Hollywood was that he could afford to have those places back in North Carolina fly barbecue out for parties at his home.

Casey’s in Greensboro still has one of Andy’s checks framed right next to the cash register.

Wayne McIntosh, a former football player at Furman University and now a high school coach in Greenville, S.C., says he is a transplanted Georgian with a wife from Kannapolis, N.C. He says he has sampled the best barbecue in the Carolinas, Gerogia and Alabama.

“I have eaten at the Red Pig in Concord, but must take issue with its claim to the No. 1 spot. I cast my vote for a barbecue house in Fayetteville, Ga. on Georgia 85 called Melears. Second place belongs to a barbecue house in Phenix City, Ala. (across the river from my hometown of Columbus, Ga.) called Chicken Corners. Carolina barbecue is great, but it’s better in Georgia.”

Football people seem to have a special hankering after barbecue. There’s this high school coach in Houston, Texas, who grew up in North Carolina. He was raised on barbecue and Cheerwine and he says every six months or so he has to drive his station wagon back home to Carolina for a new load. “A man would die if he had to live on that Texas barbecue,” he said. “They don’t know a thing in the world about barbecue in Texas.”

Fred Cone, the former Clemson and Green Bay Packer star, casts his vote for a place in Lexington, N.C. called the Barbecue Center. “Really a super place,” he says. “The barbecue is the best and the hushpuppies there are a special thing. There’s another good barbecue place in Lexington called the Honey Monk. It’s out on the main highway on the left just before you get to the Holiday Inn.”

Fred also puts in a plug for the Hickory House in Charlotte. He says it isn’t too far from the I-85 turnoff at Horne’s Motel. “If I’m headed south the place I like to go is Sprayberry’s at Newman, Ga. Great barbecue there. When I was a student at Clemson I used to hitchhike home to Alabama and you could smell Sprayberry’s miles away. It’s just as good now as it was then. They haven’t changed the place a bit.”

Morgan Goldsmith of Greenville makes a pitch for Big Dave’s Barbecue at Hemingway, S.C. “Man, it’s the greatest,” he says. Goldsmith says Big Dave also has a place just off Highway 17 between Myrtle Beach and Surfside on the road that runs parallel to the main highway. At his No. 1 place in Hemingway they can cook 200 pigs at one time.

“Another good place is Bubber Sykes Barbecue King on the main highway from Columbia to Sumter. He’s known as the barbecue king of the world and he’s open Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It’s on the left before you start going through the swamps. He runs one of those old-fashioned filling stations, but he’s got a clean place to eat.”

The column is at least 40 years old, so here’s an updated scorecard on the barbecue joints McAllister mentions. Red Pig doesn’t exist anymore, but here’s a picture of it, and here’s a pretty neat artistic computer rendering of it. Troutman’s is still on Church Street in Concord. (In fact, I visited Troutman’s for the first time this past Saturday night. Oh yea. It’s the real deal. My eyes stung with barbecue smoke as soon as walked in the place.) Casey’s in Greensboro is gone. Having spent most of 2014 and 2015 in Hollywood myself, I can attest to Andy Griffith’s experience. Not much has changed with the barbecue scene in southern California. It got so bad that when I was driving back to Charlotte last summer as soon I hit Amarillo I nearly bathed in that sticky-sweet sauce Texans love and declared brisket my favorite food. (A few weeks later I visited my little sister, a freshman at ECU, and we went over to Ayden and the good people at Skylight Inn remedied that notion.) Stamey’s is definitely still in Greensboro, and a personal favorite. (I grew up knowing the best peach cobbler in the world could be found at Stamey’s.) Melears is gone. No trace of Chicken Corners. Barbecue Center and Honey Monk have become places of worship in Lexington aka Barbecue Mecca (that’s a culturally ignorant metaphor, but you get the gist). Hickory House in Charlotte closed last year. Sprayberry’s (best name of the lot) is still cookin’ in Newnan. Big Dave’s Barbecue is no more. And a 1989 mention in the South Carolina State Assembly was all I could dig up about Bubber Sykes Barbecue King (ok, maybe this wins best name).

It’s refreshing to hear from actual Carolinians discuss Carolina delicacies, even if they don’t agree. No worries, there’s plenty barbecue to go around.