I'm not talking about hamburgers either. I'm talking about the good old fashioned story. Every word the truth from my lips except those words I change to make the story better for the sake of the telling.
Allow me to furnish an example:
Back in the 1980's my dad and a bunch of his friends got their pig cookers together and cooked bunch of pigs for a church charity fund raiser for someone or other who needed help paying their doctor's bills. They got together at about dark at a local plantation farm to cook the night away. The pigs would be done about sunrise, they would let them cool enough to be touched, then they would fall in an chop the whole batch for plates.
I wasn't that old at the time, well, I was old enough to want to go, but not old enough that dad would let me do more than throw wood in the burn barrel. Just so you know, I was in my twenties before I could shovel coals, and I was in my thirties before I was allowed to actually help cook one. All under my father's watchful eye.
So here I was not yet driving, but hanging out with these seasoned cooks for a night of wood smoke, conversation and barbecue. Gas was just starting to come into fashion, so maybe four cookers were gas while the rest were wood coals.
Long about way past my regular bedtime I had about had my fill of talk about politics, philosophy, weather and invention and made my way back to dad's truck to have a nap in the front seat. I don't know how long I'd been snoring when the whole area was rocked by a huge explosion. I jumped up so fast I banged my head on the roof of the truck, and the dent is still there today.
Half dazed, I stagger out of the truck to well ordered chaos, men were gathering buckets here, hoses there, others doing head counts and trying to find the cause of the explosion. There was smoke everywhere, but nothing appeared to be damaged anywhere. All the vehicles were intact, all the cookers were intact, no ruptured gas lines. As the smoke started to clear folks investigating the scene started to pick up the smell of propane gas. They traced it to one cooker, and peaked in the fire door. These early gas cookers were just wood fired cookers who had outfitted tobacco barn burners into the bottom, so the door you shovel coals through was still there and it was from there that they lit their burners.
This cooker's fire was completely out, but the gas was running and there was the smell of cooked meat about it. They opened the lid to find a completely empty grill. There was no pig left. There wasn't much of a sign that there had ever been a pig there, but they all knew there was. They all loaded their cookers at the same time and helped each other position the pigs. By flashlight they looked for the pig but didn't find it.
The sun came up that morning and we all set out scouring every inch of the place looking for that pig. Some of the men even shimmied up ladders and looked on the roof of the equipment barn. We never found hide nor hair of that blown up pig.
That my friends, was a whopper. By way of comparison, I'll tell you the absolute truth of the story as it happened.
Back in the 1980's my dad and a bunch of his friends got their pig cookers together and cooked bunch of pigs for a church charity fund raiser for someone or other who needed help paying their doctor's bills. They got together at about dark at a local plantation farm to cook the night away. The pigs would be done about sunrise, they would let them cool enough to be touched, then they would fall in an chop the whole batch for plates.
I wasn't that old at the time, well, I was old enough to want to go, but not old enough that dad would let me do more than throw wood in the burn barrel. Just so you know, I was in my twenties before I could shovel coals, and I was in my thirties before I was allowed to actually help cook one. All under my father's watchful eye.
My momma set her foot down, I wasn't going, and I didn't. I watched TV, brushed my teeth and was in bed by 9pm same as it ever was.
Dad and the rest of them got good and rip roaring drunk talking about women, hunting, fishing, eating, and cooking. Then the place was rocked by an explosion, they all staggered out and found one of the gas cookers with its fire out, and the lid askew enough that one of them thought to open it. There was no pig, and only just enough meat smeared around the inside to prove beyond doubt that they had put a pig on it.
They never found hide nor hair of that blown up pig.
That is the truth as told to me by my dad and backed up by the solemn word of every other man there that night. Which story was better?
Here I promise you will always read the better story woven from threads of truth. Just like the sauce. Delwood's Eastern North Carolina Style Barbecue Sauce is the absolute truth as taught to me by my father. How you use it, creates the whopper. My dad used it for barbecue ONLY most of his life and only late in life did he start to use it on chicken. If he were alive today and you were to tell him how amazing it was as a marinade, or sauce on vegetables, he would likely accuse you of telling whoppers of your own. His recipe is truth, but together we're going to tell a better story.
-Delwood Cavenaugh II
April 16th 2012
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