Taking Your Cue from Football and the Gamecocks

Born in 1928 in Irwin, Pennsylvania, Jim Streeter, a.k.a. Coupe, moved to the South in 1939, lived in Raleigh during World War II, where he tried some classic Eastern North Carolina barbecue with vinegar sauce (just like one of the styles of barbecue in South Carolina around Kingstree), and the rest is history.

Question: How did the list get started?
Answer: As the different Members of Gamecock Central would travel to games, when they came back they would make a post saying about the good barbecue place they had found. Then before they traveled to a game, they would ask where was some place that had good barbecue. Before we knew it we had a good BBQ list. Then Brian Shoemaker, GamecocksCentral’s Owner, set up a BBQ Page, and I have been looking after it for some time.

Q: Tell me about becoming a Gamecock and what that means to you.
My bussiness partner in South Carolina was a Star Gamecock in the 1930s. 4 Letterman, Bru Boineau.
Q: I’m guessing you’re retired?
A: I tried to retire in 1989 and have retired several times since then. I was a sideline Photographer for awhile, but I realized that I was getting too old and couldn’t move fast enough.
It’s not the Running Back that gets you its the Linebacker that is going after him.
Q: As a longtime pilot, you used to fly first a 1941 J3 Cub, then later a 1946 Champ, and finally a 1946 classic Ercoupe. Is that where Coupe came from?
A: My handle on Fighting Gamecocks Forum ( I started this Message Board in 1997 and later merged with Brian Shoemaker’s Gamecock Central) was Ercoupe, but later shortened to Coupe.
Q: You used to race stock cars?
A: I drove Modified/Sportsman Stock Cars in the early 50s back when Big Bill (Bill France Sr.) France was getting started.
Q: What’s your earliest memory of barbecue?
A: 1939 at the age of 11. Frankly the Vineger & Pepper turned me off at first.
Q: When did you become acquainted with South Carolina barbecue?
A: I owned and operated Streeter’s Moving and Storage in several locations in North and South Carolina, from 1958 to 1989.I first discovered Mustard Base BBQ when I opened a couple of Branch Offices in South Carolina. So, Mustard Base in 1959, vinegar and pepper base in 1962, and in 1966 Ketchup Base and Tomato Base. We have a unique situation in SC with four different kinds af sauce.
Q: Were your parents or any relatives involved in backyard (or other) barbecue preparation?
A: No, but my Dad was a butcher and he knew good Pork.
Q: What do you think happens to people to transform them into what I call a “barbecue obsessive” like myself?
A: Its sorta like Opium.
Q: Having eaten South Carolina barbecue for years, I’ve always thought that it doesn’t get the respect nationally that it deserves, unlike, for instance, Texas or North Carolina Cue. Why do you think that is?
A: We just got a late start publisizing it.
Q: Why do you think people get so very passionate about what is, after all, is just food?
A: “Its a way of Life.”

Reed Their Lips: Try the Backyard Barbecue Pit in RTP

During my not-quite-yet illustrious career in journalism, I’ve interviewed presidents, secretaries of state, Shuttle astronauts, CEOs of every ilk, movie producers and celebrities of the moment galore, but I can’t remember being as excited about meeting someone as when I sat down the other evening with John Shelton Reed and his wife, Dale Volberg Reed. Admittedly, the fact that we were meeting over barbecue that the Reeds had raved about may have influenced my enthusiasm more than a little.

Forget that Reed’s a Kenan professor emeritus at Chapel Hill, arguably the foremost authority on the sociology of the South, not to mention that he is the only sociologist to be included in Roy Blount’s “Book of Southern Humor.” What matters here and to you is that the ink is barely dry on the pair’s forthcoming “Holy Smoke; The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue.” Although I gobbled up its 300 pages with almost the same delight that I’d sit down to a judging of whole hog, you can’t read the book until November — and I promise to tell you more about it in October. However, you can eat at the Backyard Barbecue any time it’s open, and I’d highly recommend your doing so. Reed and I began our visit to the restaurant in the same way that other hardened barbecue addicts sometimes whet their appetite, with a visit to the woodpile and the barbecue pit.

There we saw a big pile hardwood, a chopping block for splitting it . . .

the fire that sent the smoke billowing from the restaurant’s chimneys and huge haunches of pork, sizzling and crackling on its way to the table.

And that’s where we bore witness that the barbecue at Backyard Barbecue Pit has a pit!, where the pork and chicken and ribs are cooked in exactly the same way barbecue has been cooked in North Carolina for centuries — over hardwood coals, slowly for hours and with the administration of a mop, a thin vinegary sauce toward the end of the cooking process. And that’s what Reed found so encouraging about Backyard Barbecue — that it was a new restaurant, and one that served authenthic, true N.C. cue.

“One of the things we talk about in the book,” Reed tells me when we get to the table where our wives have ordered us plates of cue, “is what’s going on in the mountains of North Carolina, and on the coast and in major cities, where many of the people grew up somewhere else. Their idea of barbecue isn’t pulled pork with the vinegar-based sauce. And consequently what you’re getting is branches of national barbecue chains. Other restaurants have sprung up from local entrepreneurs, many of them who are coming out of competition barbecue, opening up Kansas City-style or Memphis-style restaurants. I love Memphis barbecue — in Memphis. I like brisket — in Texas. I have nothing against these barbecues in North Carolina as long as they’re labeled an exotic species.” Also sprach John Shelton Reed. Amen.

It was adquately clear that the Reeds relished Backyard’s barbecue. The pork, available chopped, is classic — bristling with pepper and vinegar and embued with that unmistakeable blend of hickory and fat-hitting-the-fire flavor that makes you want to pick it up with your fingers so you can smell it again an hour after you eat it (Unless, of course, you have my wife’s obsession of washing your hand AFTER you eat, something I’ve never understood.) My wife liked the ribs, a style of barbecue that’s not traditional to barbecue restaurants in the state — although I’d love to stand corrected. She described them as almost candied and my little bite of them made me want more (Didn’t your momma teach you to share, I kept thinking) — rich, smoky and tender. But the sides were nearly as good as the cue, prepared with someone’s soul-food recipes. And doesn’t barbecue qualify as soul food, especially if it’s prepared by a black family . . . in Durham . . . using their traditional recipe? The Random House Dictionary defines soul food as “traditional black American cookery, which originated in the rural South, consisting of such foods as chitterlings, pig knuckles, turnip greens and corn bread.” Maybe the Backyard Barbecue Pit will expand their menu as time goes on. I’ll certainly be back to see.