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Let me come in! |
Anderson's just a few miles inside the South Carolina border, but just a few yards inside the border the Camry was lured off the highway by the siren-croon of a rustic-looking roadside store. I went in to look around and chat with Mom and Pop, and walked out with two food items I'd never before sampled: a bag of home-cooked fried pork rinds and a styrofoam container of boiled peanuts. The pork rinds were fine, if not exactly light fare, and served me well for the remainder of the tour. The peanuts, boiled in the shell in heavily salted water, were absolutely delicious-- not to mention among the most difficult things to eat in the car, but the Camry is well trained, and I'm pretty good at steering with my knees.
I guess I drove past Little Pigs Barbecue two or three times before I found the right strip mall. In this part of the world, barbecue means pulled pork, hickory-smoked and just a little vinegary. No other BBQ styles are afforded recognition, diplomatic or otherwise. I ordered a sandwich and was presented with a football-sized mound of pork with one half of a hamburger bun buried beneath, the other half perched precariously on top like a monkey-cap on an elephant. It was wonderful, certainly worth the trip, although my all-time standard remains Midgett's in Kill Devil Hills NC, (now closed, an American tragedy). I paid my compliments the owner and found myself immediately locked into a one-way conversation ("...all the way from Alaska...been here since the 50s...take it back to California...stop here on the way home to Maine from Florida...pack it in dry ice..."), but he was a pleasant enough character and I eventually managed to make a semi-graceful exit and turn back south toward Atlanta.
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