It’s not about the pork.
It’s about the occasion to exhale, the chance to be in a space with people, throw back a beer, tell a good story.
Did you know that Memphis’ firebrand Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey just got back from a weekend at the Esalen Institute in California, where he chilled out and took some get-in-touch-with-your-feelings classes? He tells a funny story about it. And he told it at a booth at the MIM barbecue fest lastweek.
It wasn’t the angry D’Army, stirring up passions about race. It was the warm, friendly, self-effacing man who let his guard down around barbecue.
And Al Lyons’ bad knees?
Next year’s chairman of Memphis in May has been walking around his neighborhood with a big backpack to get in shape for a summer trip. Except that now his knees have given out. His story, told in another MIM barbecue booth, brought a laugh and commiseration.
Winding through the tents of the barbecue festival are the connections that bind people together. You see folks you haven’t called for a time. You catch up on who is sick (Pat Tigrett’s mother is in the hospital) and who is beating disease, who has a son graduating this year, and who has a son who will have to go back because of that bad grade in English composition.
Nothing really big changes around the barbecue grill.
The war is still out there. Along with senseless violence, ignorance and greed, all of which can fill up your craw and make you want to gag.
Standing there waiting for ribs fills you up with something else.
It’s a moment to savor, a moment to stitch together much of what is good about the South.

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