Southern Belly

by John T. Edge

  As I discovered during conversations with Georgia Gilmore’s family, friends, and colleagues, though the erection of the marker was an admirable gesture, it was a meager assessment of her life’s work.

  Georgia Gilmore was more than just a “solid, energetic boycott participant and supporter.” As remembered by almost everyone, she was a mountain of a woman, nearly 250 pounds of girth, grit, and sass. “She was a lady of great physical stature,” recalled Reverend Thomas E. Jordan, pastor of Lilly Baptist Church. “She didn’t take any junk from anybody. It didn’t matter who you were. Even the white police officers let her be. She wasn’t a mean person, but like it was with many black people, there was this perception that she might be dangerous. The word was, ‘Don’t mess with Georgia Gilmore, she might cut you.’ But Lord, that woman could cook. I loved to sit down at her table for some good greasing.”

  CHRIS’ HOT DOGS

  Talk to natives of Memphis, and it seems as though every third person has a good Elvis story. The King ate jelly donuts here, bought his bananas and peanut butter there. That sort of thing. Around these parts the local music hero is Hank Williams, and the stories are just as good.

  At Chris’, a derelict downtown institution founded by Greek immigrant Chris Katechis in 1917, they say that ole Hank would drop by late in the evening, his band mates in tow, the whole crew drunk as coots and craving chili dogs. Sometimes Hank just sat at the counter and scribbled song lyrics. Other times he and his compatriots tore up the place. And many a former counterman claims that he threw Hank out on his ear.

  These days Chris’ isn’t much to look at, just a narrow storefront divided into a rabbit warren of rooms, some of which sport improbable porthole-like showcases filled with ceramic clowns playing the accordion, others, fancy deviled egg plates.

  On the day I visit, a couple of Alabama highway patrolmen are the sole customers. I plop onto one of the dozen chrome and vinyl stools in the front room, and soon I’m munching a weenie topped with a few strands of kraut, a smear of mustard, and a thin skein of chili sauce. It’s not bad really, but only a local, weaned on Chris’ dogs, would claim to love it. On my way out the door, I spy another little showcase by the front window. The contents on display—a plastic model weenie and bun, a vintage china bowl emblazoned with Chris’ logo, and a retired box grater, presumably used for onions—make for a curious still life.

  138 DEXTER AVENUE / 334-265-6850

  MARTIN’S

  Exhibit A, for those who would argue that integration failed completely, is this old-line Montgomery restaurant, once the favorite of race-baiting politico George Wallace and legions of avowed segregationists. Now it’s home to an integrated noonday crowd who come to munch down on country fried steak blanketed in a thick, scratch gravy; fat pole beans; and crisp corn muffins.

  The façade, a faux Colonial storefront in the Country Club Centre strip mall, is a couple of notches above the norm for a meat ‘n’ three restaurant, but there’s nothing fancy about Martin’s, which has been in business since 1949. Glass-topped tables, bentwood chairs, gum ball machines by the door: it’s a country café come to town. The menu, sheathed in plastic, is covered with ads for local businesses, one of which promises, “Mickey Griffin is to real estate as Martin’s is to fried chicken.” And the fried chicken is indeed good: fat white breasts in a crisp mantle of crust; tender dark-meat drumsticks, savory and just a tad spicy.

  Over the course of lunch I fall into conversation with a thirty-something-year-old man at the next table. We talk of barbecue and football before getting around to more serious matters. “Didn’t this restaurant used to be whites only a few years back?” I ask, lobbing the question like a softball.

  Rather than being taken aback, he replies readily, thoughtfully. “I’ve been eating here for a good while,” he says. “Of course, I never tried to eat here when blacks weren’t allowed. Now you didn’t ask this but I’m going to tell you anyway. You see those two black waitresses? Well, that’s a new thing, real new. There were always black women in the kitchen, but it’s only been since around 1996 or 1997 that they let black women start waiting tables. They started out real gradual, letting them do waitressy things, moving them up slowly. Nowadays, no one pays much attention to it. Well, I guess I still do. I’m black; I notice things like that. When you’re black, you develop an ability to notice things like that, same as a dog in the wild develops teeth to protect itself.”

  1796 CARTER HILL ROAD / 334-265-1767

  MONTGOMERY CURB MARKET

  Established in 1927 by the local Jaycees in cooperation with the Auburn University Agricultural Extension Service, this is a democratic institution of the highest order, owned and operated as a farmers’ cooperative since opening day. Though there was a time when you could find dressed fryers and live lambs for sale, today fruits and vegetables reign.

  The scene is a vignette from yesteryear. Bare lightbulbs dangle above, casting harsh shadows over early morning shoppers wending their way through the old tin-roofed open-air building. The floor is poured concrete. The ceiling insulation is held in place by a net of chicken wire. And the smell of black dirt—that fecund soil so favored by farmers—perfumes the air.

  I wander down one aisle and then another, past the stall where Sherell Smitherman sells cheese biscuits and fried pies, past Morris Taylor’s display of double-yolk eggs. I stop and admire Jim Causey’s peach pound cakes and jelly rolls, and dawdle for a while at Vivian Tatum’s booth, the one with the burned wood sign that proclaims it to be Pea Heaven. I talk for a while with Donna Mims and beg a taste of one of the delicate local figs she’s selling for just a couple dollars a basket.

  It’s late summer when I visit, and there are tubs of shelled butter beans, wood slat baskets of prickly okra, cardboard flats of red, ripe tomatoes, and Chilton County peaches. Golden lobes streaked with crimson, sweet and ridiculously juicy, those peaches are the true bounty of the dog days. But let us not neglect the watermelons, specifically those black and green striped beauties known as rattlesnake melons, one of which is split open along its belly with a couple of forks poked into the red meat, just daring me not to take a taste. Without a moment’s hesitation, I sink a fork in, pull out a big meaty chunk, and spit out a few seeds. Soon I’m hefting a fat round one into the trunk of my car, bound for home, trying to remember where I put that big ole washtub.

  1004 MADISON AVENUE / 334-263-6445

  Opelika

  CHUCK’S BAR-B-QUE

  Just off the main drag in Opelika, salvation and sin coexist in a cinder-block building. Sin is served up in the guise of succulently smoked barbecue pork, napped with a mustardy sauce, and served alongside thick, meaty Brunswick stew. For the best this pit has to offer, order a plate, “chipped on the block,” with stew and slaw. Though the barbecue is good—sinfully good—it is the sacred, not the profane, that makes this place special.

  In the South evangelical Christianity is rarely subtle. Bible thumping and pulpit pounding are the norm. And yet there is something to be said for proprietor Chuck Ferrell’s sneaky attempt at securing his fellow man’s salvation.

  As I walk to the rear of the restaurant with an empty plate and a full stomach, I notice alongside the trash can a stack of bright blue pamphlets that proclaim: “Something Better than Barbecue.” I open the tract.

  “If you will take a few minutes to read this testimony, you will see how my family and I discovered that there is something better than barbecue or any amount of money or anything else this world has to offer, You cannot buy it, and you cannot earn it. It is a gift for every born again believer in Jesus Christ.”

  Need I even tell you? They’re closed on Sundays.

  905 SHORT AVENUE / 334-749-4043

  Tallassee

  HOTEL TALISI

  There was a time not too long past when any Southern town of even minor note could claim a hotel of grandeur, a place where birthdays were celebrated, balls given, honored guests housed. Sadly, most of the old dowagers have been converte
d into office buildings or, worse yet, torn down to make way for one more parking lot. Not so for the redbrick Hotel Talisi, open since 1928. Under the stewardship of current owners Bob Brown and Roger Gaithier, the hotel has been transformed into a peculiar place to stay—and eat.

  The lobby is a riot of color and whimsy: concrete statuary, papier-mâché angels, and airbrushed wedding portraits fight for the eye’s attention, so much so that you almost miss the lovely old antique secretaries and sideboards that line the walls. Upstairs, velour-covered armchairs rest on Persian rugs. Harlot-red, plush carpeting stretches on, yard after yard after yard. Crystal chandeliers hang in the formal dining room. There’s a shaggy little faux Lhasa apso dog with synthetic fur on the side table by the front desk. The overall effect is one of overwrought, faded beauty that verges upon vamp.

  Things take a decided turn toward normal in the informal dining room, where weekday buffet lunches are held. On the day I visit, the steam table is chock-full of Southern casserole cookery: Halloween-orange sweet potato casserole dotted with puffy mini-marshmallows, creamy broccoli casserole studded with ham, vats of crowder peas and green beans, and a barnyard of fried chicken. I miss two of the restaurant’s specialties: a turnip green casserole larded with cheese and horseradish, and a squash casserole made with ranch dressing. Yeasty cloverleaf rolls, little tubs of tomato conserve, and vinegary cucumbers round out the feast.

  On my way out, I stop to talk with Bob. “You’ve got to come back on a Sunday,” he tells me. “My sister plays melody on the piano and accompanies herself on the organ. Plus that’s when we serve that famous squash casserole. We do it the old-fashioned way; we don’t use any of that Campbell’s soup mix in it, just ranch dressing.”

  14 SISTRUNK STREET / 334-283-2769

  Theodore

  BAYLEY’S

  Bill Bayley was a big man. Big size. Big ideas. Said he was the inventor of West Indies salad, a layered assemblage of onions and crabmeat, cooled in an ice-water bath, beloved by coastal folk. Said he was the first man to batter and fry crab claws, too. During Bayley’s lifetime, few people took issue with his claims to fame. I’m not inclined to argue, either, for if you go looking for good eats near the Alabama shore, you will find yourself on his trail.

  Before he became a restaurateur, Bayley worked first as a steward, later as a chef for a shipping company. In 1947, along with his wife, Ethyl, he opened a restaurant south of Mobile on what is now Dauphin Island Parkway. They started out small. He worked the kitchen; she worked the front. But talent bears fruit. What began as a one-room grocery was soon a grand dining hall.

  Bayley was Falstaffian, a cigar-chomping man of great appetites. He was a show-man who, in a bid to lure families with children, rented projectors from the local library and showed Westerns and cartoon shorts. At his core, however, he was a cook, expert at frying chicken and all manner of fish.

  Family and friends tell a number of stories about how he came to assemble West Indies salad, his trademark dish. Bayley often told reporters that he dreamed it up when he bought a tow sack of lobsters, while sailing the West Indies. But his son, Bill Jr., opts for a more direct, less romantic explanation. “He loved cucumbers and onions in vinegar and oil and he always put ice water in it,” Bill Jr. told a newspaper reporter. “I guess that’s how he came up with it.”

  Fried crab claws came later, say the early 1960s. After years of busting open crabs, pulling the sweet meat from the shell and claws for West Indies salads, the elder Bayley devised a better way to crack a claw. The result was a drumstick-shaped edible, with a thin crab pincer (the handle) at one end and a fat ball of crab (the treat) at the other. Rolled in meal or cracker crumbs and fried, the meaty end of the drum-stick proved the ideal appetizer, especially when dipped in a lemony cocktail sauce.

  Bill Bayley died a while back. In succeeding years, fried crab claws, like West Indies salad, have spread far and wide. But south of Mobile, at what locals still call Bayley’s Corner, it’s possible to taste these dishes—along with stuffed shrimp and crab omelets and homemade onion rings—in situ, in what was once a catering kitchen for the elder Bayley’s restaurant and is now a porcelain block–bedecked roadhouse, under the direction of his son.

  10805 DAUPHIN ISLAND PARKWAY / 251- 973-1572

  See Bill Bayley’s coveted West Indies Salad recipe on page 30.

  Tuscaloosa

  DREAMLAND

  They moved John Bishop’s throne inside after he passed away back in 1997 at the age of seventy-six. Put it right in the middle of the place, hard by the entrance to the bathrooms. For years, maybe even as far back as 1958 when Dreamland opened, the oversized redwood chair sat out back underneath the carport near the pit, and it was there that Big Daddy, as he was called, received guests. With a Sherlock Holmes–style pipe protruding from his lips, and a Dreamland gimme-cap perched atop his bald head, he presided over a barbecue empire, selling ribs, white bread, chips, and drinks. Nothing more.

  These days, his daughter, Jeannette, is in charge, and the Dreamland empire is expanding rapidly with locations throughout Alabama and beyond. Word has it that at these branches, you can get fries and slaw to go with that slab of ribs, but here, in deference to Big Daddy, you need not peruse a menu to make your decision. The only decisions to ponder are: How many bones do you want? Barbecue or regular chips? Beer or Pepsi?

  From the street Dreamland looks like a country juke joint, nestled in the midst of a neighborhood of asbestos-shingled homes and swaybacked trailers. A soot-covered chimney rises from the back corner of the building. Through the trees you can spy the towering Taco Bell sign out on the highway. Inside there are just four booths, eight tables, and a good dozen or so stools at the counter. Did I mention that it’s dark inside? Very dark. So much so that you might deem Dreamland the perfect spot for an afternoon assignation or, better yet, a date with a couple of racks of ribs.

  On my most recent visit, it’s lunchtime and the place is at full tilt. Every table is full, so I snag a seat at the bar. I order a rib sandwich, and the counterman gives me one of those Does this silly white boy know that a rib sandwich is just three ribs on loaf bread? looks, thinks better of it, and goes off to fetch my order.

  By this time my eyes have adjusted to the light, and I turn to take in my surroundings. License plates and beer posters, knickknacks and gewgaws blanket the low ceiling. Fraternity boy doggerel is scrawled on the walls. Behind the register, a bumper sticker proclaims, “And on the eighth day, well, you know … Dreamland.”

  But what really catches my eye and gets me to thinking is that while this is a black-owned, black-run business, the clientele—at least on this spring day—is exclusively white. Now that could be interpreted in any number of ways. You could chalk it up to what my friend Lolis Elie, author of Smokestack Lightning, calls the “natural rhythm school of Southern cooking,” an allowance on the part of whites that blacks have an innate ability to cook, same as they can sing and dance and play basketball. Or you could conclude that, at least at Dreamland, integration is a fait accompli, that the Southern palate now knows no color. I’m still thinking when my ribs arrive. Crusty on the outside, tender on the inside, swaddled in a piquant sauce tasting of vinegar and tomato and maybe a hint of curry, they’re a Southern sacrament. I swab at a puddle of sauce with a slice of white bread and say my thanks.

  5535 FIFTEENTH AVENUE EAST / 205-758-8135

  Now that’s a smokestack.

  ARCHIBALD’S BAR B QUE

  Many informed eaters believe that Dreamland has gone ’round the bend. Gone Hollywood. Gone, quite frankly, to hell. I think they’re wrong. Sure, what began as a joint has morphed into a chain. But that sauce—even the grocery store version—remains among my favorites. And it’s still a pleasure to gnaw a bone in that lowceilinged room.

  All that said, if you pine for an experience that recalls what Dreamland may have been like before the crowds descended and the Bishops took their show on the road, detour west a few miles to Archibald’s, wher
e you’re likely to find Paulette Washington, daughter of founder George Archibald, hacking ribs and slicing shoulders, serving sandwiches of charred pig parts to those who are lucky enough to claim one of the five stools that face her hickory-stoked pit. In business since 1962, Archibald’s is a smoke shack archetype, the sort of place that haunts every chowhound’s dreams. And it’s waiting, just down the road.

  1211 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. BOULEVARD / NORTHPORT / 205-345-6861

  WAYSIDER

  I fell in love with the Waysider soon after I reached for a pat of butter to slather on one of those thin tiles of coarse cornbread they serve hereabouts. Miracle of miracles, it was just that: a pat of butter, a lemony yellow square of salted, churned cream, sandwiched between a white cardboard base and a thin slip of wax paper. These days most restaurants stock little plastic tubs of margarine emblazoned with names that read like false promises: Country Crock, Farm Churn, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. But not the Waysider, a Tuscaloosa institution since 1951.

  It was a good start to a great first meal at the Waysider. Soon after sampling that butter-drenched cornbread, a waitress appeared with my order: salmon croquettes, fried squash, and field peas with snaps. All good, all served with a smile. I polished off my plate and dove into a bowl of meringue-crowned banana pudding, having decided early in the meal that I would take advantage of the dietary loophole printed right there on the menu for all to see: “You may substitute dessert for one of the three vegetables that come with every lunch.”

  But it was not until recently that I had the opportunity to sample my first Waysider breakfast. Approaching the red and white shingled house, I could smell the frying ham at twenty paces. By the time I was on the front porch, I swear I could already taste the buttermilk biscuits. Owner Linda Smalley led me to one of the fifteen-odd tables scattered about the dining room, and I strapped on the feedbag. I ate pluperfect buttermilk biscuits dunked in redeye gravy, those same biscuits crumbled in brown gravy, a good rasher of streak-o-lean, a couple of eggs scrambled soft, a few slices of red-ripe homegrown tomato, and an ocean of salty, firm grits. I didn’t learn until it was too late that if you ask nicely, the cooks will whip up a batch of elephant-shaped pancakes—no doubt a nod to the University of Alabama mascot. The toddler two tables over looked happy with his, dissecting the great animal’s trunk with a fork and smearing pats of butter over all.