Southern Belly

by John T. Edge

  For many Southerners, Waffle House is the high altar of hash houses, and the bright yellow Scrabble-board signs that loom high above what seems like every interstate exit in the land are beacons of consistency and comfort, promising soft, scrambled eggs; crusty hash browns (scattered, smothered, and covered); and golden waffles, drenched in butter and syrup.

  Open since 1955, this Georgia-based chain of 1,200-plus restaurants has won a loyal, almost fanatical following of fans. Rather than rely on television advertising, the company has long exploited the loyalty of its customer base, most famously in its inclusion of a dozen or more Waffle House songs on each of the restaurant’s jukeboxes.

  It all began in 1984 when Mary Welch Rogers, wife of Waffle House CEO Joe Rogers Jr., cut the first single, “Waffle House Family.” Since then a couple of new songs have been introduced each year, among them a falsetto tale of discovery, “There Are Raisins in My Toast,” sung by Danny Jones to the tune of “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” not to mention “Waffle House Hashbrowns (I Love You),” by Billy Dee Cox. “You know I long for you,” Cox croons. “You melt in my mouth. I’m crazy about you, pretty golden hashbrowns.”

  Until recently, these little ditties were not to be heard outside the yellow, orange, and faux wood confines of a Waffle House, but with the release of Waffle House Jukebox Favorites Volume 1, ten of the tastiest cuts are now available on compact disc.

  Clinton

  OLD CLINTON

  BAR-B-Q

  You’ll find sawdust on the porch, gravel in the parking lot.

  I spent what seems like the better part of my childhood on a Schwinn five-speed bike, burning up the blacktop road that ran between my home and this low-slung road-house with the sawdust-covered front porch. From the pits of Old Clinton emerged the first plate of barbecue I ever tasted: sweet, smoky meat hacked to shreds, perfumed with a sauce tasting of vinegar and pepper, maybe a hint of tomato; Brunswick stew, thick with chicken, fresh pork, and corn; milky coleslaw, rich with mayonnaise. To this day, I don’t think I’ve tasted a meal that satisfies me so.

  Until her death in 1996 at the age of eighty-six, Mittie Coulter—everyone called her Lady—was the keeper of the flame. I can see Mrs. Lady now, her smiling face framed by a wreath of gray curls and blue smoke, chopping the smoked meat with two butcher knives, pouring on sauce as she goes.

  On a recent trip back home I sat down to talk with her son Wayne, who now runs Old Clinton: “My daddy—his name was Roy—he had an old country store that he started up around 1938. He used to have a pit in a log cabin over on the side where he cooked whole hogs, but they never did much to speak of. It wasn’t until the new highway came through back around ’58 that we built this place and started cooking barbecue regular. We started out with hams. Now we do hams and shoulders. My father built the pits and all, but we used my mother’s recipes for the barbecue and sauce and stew. She learned how from her mother, Nora Crutchfield, from up around Round Oak.”

  My taste for history sated, I sat down to eat a sandwich. I would like to say that it was as platonic as ever, but the pork seemed to lack a bit of the smoke I recall. Empirical truths aside, after all these years, Old Clinton sauce still runs in my veins; smoke from their pits still clouds my eyes.

  HIGHWAY 129 / 478-986-3225

  Columbus

  SCRAMBLED MEMORIES

  Once in a while on summer afternoons when I was growing up—say between the ages of twelve and fifteen—my father would escort me down to the pool hall on Cherry Street in Macon. It seemed to me the darkest, manliest place on the planet, echoing with the clink of bottles and the soft clatter of pool balls.

  We would hop up on a couple of stools, wave down the counterman, and place our order: two scrambled dogs, all the way. Before I had a chance to take a good pull from my Coke, two clunky white platters were slung on the counter before us. On each, buried beneath a molten mountain of chili, was a bright red weenie, cradled in a bun, smothered with chili, sprinkled with onions, and – this part was crucial—topped with a good handful or two of Oysterette crackers.

  When that old pool hall closed in the late 1970s, I assumed, erroneously, that the scrambled dog died with it. Turns out, they’re served all over Georgia these days—at Macon’s Nu-Way Weiners, at Monroe’s Pool Hall in Americus, at the Cordele Recreation Parlor, and at Dinglewood Pharmacy in Columbus, to name but a few.

  DINGLEWOOD PHARMACY

  Truth be told, Dinglewood gets my vote for top dog. Folks around Columbus will even go so far as to argue that their city is the origin point of the dish. And they may well be right. Lieutenant Stevens, who has been the counterman at Dinglewood since 1945, traces the lineage this way: “I learned from a fellow by the name of Sport Brown, who had it taught to him by a man named Firm Roberts, who used to run a restaurant here back in the ’20s.”

  As to how the dish spread beyond Columbus, Stevens is at a loss. But Blanford Gandy, whose brother-in-law, Roy Gandy, opened my favorite old Macon pool hall back in 1937, has an idea: “Roy went over to collect a debt from a man in Columbus back in ’42—they were betting on politics or horses, I don’t know what all. They say he brought back the recipe for scrambled dogs with him.”

  The rest, as they say, is just grease down the gullet.

  1939 WYNNTON ROAD / 706-322-0616

  Flovilla

  FRESH AIR

  For many barbecue pilgrims, this is the high holy house of Georgia smoke shacks. Founded in 1929 and run since the 1940s by G. W. Caston and his heirs, Fresh Air can claim any number of Georgia’s best barbecue spots as its progeny including Bob Newton’s Old Brick Pit in Atlanta and my favorite, Old Clinton Barbecue. Old Clinton proprietor, Wayne Coulter, recalls traveling with his father Roy to eat Fresh Air barbecue and take a look around. “He may have gone up there one day with a tape measurer to figure out how they did things,” Wayne once told me. “Everybody knew Fresh Air back then. We even fixed up the front of our place to look a little like theirs.”

  Indeed, the façades of Old Clinton and Fresh Air bear a striking resemblance to one another, but what Roy Coulter and hundreds of other restaurant owners came to inspect were the unique pits that Fresh Air has employed for as long as anyone can remember. Constructed with a firebox at one end and linked to the meat grill by an L-shaped tunnel, the pits are fashioned in such a way that they both conduct and cool the smoke as it travels along the tunnel toward the meat—a perfect solution for long, slow smoking.

  In the past few years Fresh Air has expanded, adding branch locations in Macon, Athens, and elsewhere, but for a taste of the real stuff you had best seek out the mother church, hard by the roadside in the piney woods south of Jackson. Be sure and knock the sawdust off your shoes before you step inside.

  1164 HIGHWAY 42 / 770-775-3182

  Lexington

  PAUL’S BARBECUE

  Pitmasters of the highest caliber are rarely the first generation in their family to marry smoke to meat, for barbecue cookery is not so much a learned art as an inherited one. How to kill and gut a pig, how to build a flue that draws, how to stoke a fire so that it doesn’t flare, or, worse yet, die out—that is the stuff of familial dowry.

  George Paul learned at his uncle’s knee. “He had him a barbecue place for near about sixty years,” George tells me as he mops sweat from his freckled face with the sleeve of a work shirt. “Used to be that people would come to town for court days and he started cooking out in the yard, selling barbecue to folks for dinner. I was always helping out around the pit, but it was his deal you know. Then one day he stopped; he left it with me and that was that. That next weekend, I cooked some barbecue and took it by my mama’s house to see what she thought. Had to see if it was about right. She told me what she thought and I made a few changes and I’ve been doing it this way since, oh, sometime around 1983.”

  George’s little store is a simple affair: white batten-board walls rising up from a concrete floor. Up front is his uncle’s old chopping block, a massive square of mapl
e, now concave from years of cleaver work. There’s a space heater in the center of the room, but since the eaves of the building are open to the air, it’s more often used as a place to balance a flimsy plastic plate of barbecue and stew. Everyone sits in metal folding chairs around rickety tables draped with flowered tablecloths.

  George cooks the hams—twelve hours on an open pit over hickory and red oak—out at his farm and then brings them into town every Saturday morning, where the meat is pulled from the bone and sauced lightly with a vinegary concoction. The doors open around 9:00 in the morning, and by 1:30, maybe 2:00, they’re out of the ruddy Brunswick stew, thick with corn, tomatoes, beef, pork, and turkey. The sweet, smoky pork may last a little longer, say, 2:30 at the latest. By the time they close up at three, all that is left are the bags of Bunny-brand white bread that sit on each tabletop.

  HIGHWAY 78, DOWNTOWN LEXINGTON / 706-743-8254

  Macon

  H&H CAFÉ

  During the Southern rock heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mama Louise Hudson’s H&H restaurant was the Schwab’s Drug Store of the Macon music scene, the place where bands came, hoping to be discovered. You never knew who you might find at one of the oilcloth-clad tables: Jaimoe Johnson of the Allman Brothers, Jimmy Hall of Wet Willie, maybe even Phil Walden himself, the Capricorn Records president and rock-and-roll star maker of the moment.

  “At the H&H, they didn’t care if we were white or black or purple,” former Allman Brothers roadie Red Dog Campbell once told me. “Mama didn’t say anything if we were tripping our asses off. Now she might tell me to come in the back door instead of the front when I was messed up, but really she just fed us fried chicken and loved us.”

  Along with her first cousin Inez Hill, Hudson opened the H&H in 1968. It was (and remains) a humble café, comparable to many others in the South, serving baked ham and fried chicken, ropy okra and collard greens, candied yams and sweet potato pie. Though the food was rib-sticking, the cook was the real draw. At a time when bands like the Allman Brothers were short on funds, Hudson was a de facto mother to many. She fed them, gratis. No questions asked, no IOUs signed.

  “Those boys were hungry,” Hudson told me, recalling the first time the Allmans came in, hoping to eat on credit. “Wasn’t nothing bad about them. But all I did was come out with those two plates they were asking for. I felt like I was doing something wrong, but that’s what I did. A couple of weeks later, they come back in, asking could they have something to eat. I told them yes, but it won’t be no two plates and six forks this time. All y’all is eating.”

  The Allman Brothers struggled through the late 1960s. But in time the band repaid its debt. By late 1971 their new album was climbing the charts, and their shows were selling out larger and larger halls. Mama Louise soon became a Sunday night fixture at the band’s flophouse-cum-headquarters. On the cover of their second album, Idlewild South, the band included her in the credits. “Vittles: Louise,” reads the inscription.

  Today, Hudson’s brick-fronted restaurant is hallowed ground for the Allman faithful. The walls are covered with photos of the band: Duane Allman on a lake bank, fishing pole in hand; Gregg Allman and Duane, asleep on a tour bus; Dickey Betts and Mama Louise, arm in arm. There’s even a stained-glass mushroom—a nod to the band’s drug of choice—hanging in the front window. In the pantheon of Allman Brothers Band belief, Mama Louise is now revered as a sort of saint, a kindhearted caretaker of wayward hippie souls.

  807 FORSYTH STREET / 912-742-9810

  NU-WAY WEINERS

  Before the Varsity was even a twinkle in founder Frank Gordy’s eye, Nu-Way Weiners was doing a booming business. Famous since 1916 for the sweet heat of the chili sauce on the dogs; the flaky ice in the cups of Coke; and the dark, rich chocolate milk, served icy-cold to generations of Macon children, this local chain may well have been the model for its more famous rival in Atlanta.

  The original Nu-Way looks much the same as it did in this 1950s-era photograph.

  One look at the uncanny similarity of the restaurant menus and you can’t help wondering if the Varsity stole its schtick from the folks at Nu-Way.

  Nu-Way president Spyros Dermatas is more than diplomatic: “The way my uncle tells the story, Mr. Gordy traveled all around the South, all the way down to Orlando, Florida, exploring different restaurants and concepts. He stopped in Macon and talked with Uncle George and Uncle Gus because he had heard of Nu-Way. He saw what they were selling. Mr. Gordy was very impressed. He went back and introduced the hot dog on his menu and the rest is history. You gotta give him credit; they’ve done a good job with it.”

  Macon’s citadel of greasy goodness.

  On your first pilgrimage to Spyros’ weenie stand, seek out the original Nu-Way location on Cotton Avenue. Complex directions aren’t necessary. Just head downtown and look for the 1930s vintage neon sign with its blinking promise, “Best Weiner in Town.”

  Upon arrival, snag a seat at the counter and order a chili-slaw dog. Lying in neon-hued repose on a steamed bun that threatens collapse, your hot dog will be slathered with chili and mustard, topped with finely diced onions and, if you get the slaw, crowned with a heaping helping of creamy sweet cabbage.

  Midway into your first bite, a latent culinary curiosity comes alive. Compelled to know the secret of the sauce that smothers the bright red dog, you ask: “Is that cinnamon I taste? Maybe a hint of chocolate?” Bear down hard in your questioning and you are likely to learn that, though the chili sauce is a closely guarded family secret, rich with eleven spices, the real power behind the throne is as Southern as sweet tea.

  “Since the late ’20s we’ve been spooning a little barbecue sauce on each dog,” confesses Spyros. “It’s a sweet sauce; we make it ourselves. It kinda smooths out the chili taste. We roast pork shoulders and hams, then cut them up real fine and toss them in with the barbecue sauce. First-generation Greeks started this place and Greeks still own it, but we’re Southern now.”

  430 COTTON AVENUE / 478-743-1368

  Savannah

  DESPOSITO’S

  Back in 1965 when Carlo Desposito took over the operation of this little tin-roofed fish camp at the base of the Thunderbolt Bridge, he featured three items and three items only: steamed shrimp, steamed crabs, and cold beer. If his wife, Walton, had her say, that would still be the extent of the menu. But these days their son David runs the place, and, well, he’s got some newfangled ideas. “I remember when I told Mom I wanted to start selling bottled beer instead of cans,” David says. “We really went back and forth on that one. She just didn’t want to change. And you can imagine what she said when I added shrimp salad.”

  These days you will still find the menu to be rather limited. In addition to the original three items, there are low-country baskets filled with shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes, not to mention beautiful but tiny steamed oysters, deviled crabs, David’s curry-spiked shrimp salad, and, bowls of chili, an aberrant addition likely to send Walton to an early grave. And yet, her protestations to the contrary, on many nights you can still find the woman with the curly gray hair behind the bar, attired in a T-shirt that proclaims, “I Got Crabs at Desposito’s.”

  On the night I visit, the place is packed. In the back room a victorious football team is gathered around a wooden table papered with yesterday’s Savannah Morning News. At the center of the table is stacked a collection of tin beer trays strewn with spent crab carcasses. Everyone’s drinking Bud in the bottle. On the side porch a tennis matron in whites picks daintily at a tray of steamed oysters. At the bar, members of the house dart team sit on thrones of a sort, high-back vinyl barstools with seats that David rescued from an old outboard boat. David is in the kitchen, working the steamer, slinging trays of crabs across the bar, dishing up cups of Desposito’s special cocktail sauce, a peculiar but tasty concoction spiked with yellow mustard and A-1 sauce. There’s a young kid over by the door trying to feed a quarter into the Gayety Beer Frame Regulation Bowling Game. It could be 1965. The j
ukebox rattles to life, and Dean Martin begins to sing “Born to Lose.”

  187 MACCEO DRIVE / 912-897-9963

  Ever the gracious hostess, Mrs. Wilkes

  passes a bowl of peas to America’s

  favorite newsman, Walter Cronkite.

  Mrs. Wilkes’

  There was a time not too long past when any Southern town of import boasted a boarding-house, where a drummer with a trunk full of patent medicines or an insurance salesman in town to renew a policy could expect to find a spartan room furnished with a clean bed and a dining room that offered three square meals a day.

  Typically these were rambling, clapboard homes, lorded over by a proud Southern lady of the old school, unaccustomed to earning a living by dint of the sweat from her own brow. In some cases her husband had passed away, and rather than sell the family homeplace she began taking in boarders. Others, like the mother of Craig Claiborne, the Mississippi-born former editor of the New York Times food page, stepped in when their husbands were down on their luck, unable to earn a living to support the family. In his memoir, A Feast Made for Laughter, Claiborne recalls how his mother came to take in boarders:

  “When my father found himself totally without funds, without borrowing capacities, and almost without hope, the decision was made for my mother to take in boarders. This was a logical move because a rooming and boardinghouse was one of the few paths a properly brought up and aristocratic young Southern woman could follow while holding her chin and prestige up.”

  The late Sema Wilkes came to run a boardinghouse by a less conventional route. “My husband and I were living up in Toombs county, at Vidalia, when the government wanted our farm for an air base,” she once told an inquisitive eater. “So my husband came to Savannah to work on the railroad, and when I came we stayed at this boardinghouse. Old Mrs. Dennis Dixon owned it then and was short of help, and asked would I help? I said I’d try and one thing led to another and I bought her out.”