There's something about Friday evenings that I love. Relief that the work week is over, and the excitement the weekend brings is something that puts me in a good mood.
I live in a "dry" county and for people reading this column that are not from around here, this may sound strange but it's true. Dry counties are fairly common throughout the south. By dry county, I mean that the sale of alcohol is illegal. Several years ago, Jasper which is the county seat of Walker county, voted to allow alcohol sales, but for the rest of the county the sales of alcohol is forbidden. The county next to Walker County (Jefferson) is wet and the county line has been a place of intense commerce on Friday evenings for as long as I can remember.
I imagine that since prohibition, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of beer, wine, and liquor have been sold on the county line.
I knew a guy that started a package store when I was a teenager and he had a bunch of washtubs and started filling them with ice and beer before noon each Friday. By dark, he had sold a mountain of beer. There is no telling how much money he made.
These days, since Jasper can now sell alcohol, most of the traffic on the county line is headed for Greentop BBQ. In the Greentop, you'll find an eclectic mix of people. There will be regulars sitting on their favorite bar stool sipping a cold Bud but you will also find a preacher and his family from the Baptist Church that stopped by to have a heavenly meal and wash it down with sweet tea. You will also find, coaches, professionals, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and folks from the media.
This evening Jilda was too tired to cook so I asked what she would like me to fetch for supper. She got that longing look in her eyes and said, "are you up for Greentop? I'm always up for Greentop. So that's what we had for supper and that's what gave me the idea for this post.
They also ship worldwide. If my friends in England want a taste of authentic BBQ from the south, let me know and I'll hook you up.
When I was in college in Oklahoma (1949 - 1953) it was a dry state, selling only 3.2 beer. We would run up to Arkansas City, Kansas where they had package stores. One needed to buy the booze in the package store, then restaurants would sell the ice and chasers.
ReplyDeleteBack in Oklahoma, all the roadhouses had shelves under the tabletop for the illegal booze. I suppose one was to claim that "it was there before we sat down", in case of a raid.