Whole Hog Culture in West Tennessee

Political Incorrectness & BBQ Correctness

I have never understood picky eaters. As a child I was taught to value all food. As a chef, nothing interests me more than transforming less popular foods into dishes fit for kings. So when I heard that Chester and Henderson counties in Tennessee still smoke hogs whole, I told Wro we were going back to the Volunteer State for a history lesson.

I thought we’d fly into Jackson and do nothing but visit smokehouses and eat pork for a entire weekend, showing Wro how American pioneers turned every part of the hog into a delicious treat. He did some research of his own though and talked me into following the Tennessee River as it meanders from Mississippi to Kentucky. Since it all sounded educational, I could hardly say no.

Being a lifelong Johnny Cash fan, “I’ve been talkin’ about Jackson, ever since the fire went out.” I pictured a wild little town with a rough section of honky tonk dives. Instead we found a busy city of over 60,000 people, most of whom seemed to be practicing for the NASCAR circuit. We headed south because that’s the direction that rivers flow. Then we learned that the Tennessee is a perverse river that does everything backwards.

Wro wanted to visit Shiloh ever since I told him we were returning to West Tennessee. Shiloh is one name (Pittsburg Landing is another) given to a great battlefield of the Civil War. As names go, it’s perfectly suited for a place on a river that runs backwards. I’ll explain that after lunch.

Gone with the Wind

In Henderson we stopped at Bill’s, a place that has built a reputation for smoking whole hogs.

Billy Latham greeted us with a big smile and full disclosure.

“I sure hate to disappoint you, but I got bad news. I had hernia surgery again last year and I can’t lift 300 pounds of pig any more. So I’m smoking ribs and shoulders, just like everybody in Memphis and everywhere else,” he confessed.

We tried some pulled pork sandwiches and talked. Latham told us that he bought the business in 2000 to “get retired from logging.” It had belonged to Harold Thomas before that for about two decades until injuries forced Thomas to close. Latham told us that just a few years earlier there were nearly a dozen places in the area practicing whole hog barbecue. A customer shook his head as he rattled off some of their names, which he then summed up as “gone with the wind.”
Latham left us with some good news though.

“There’s an old girl down the highway who still does it right - Liz. She’s got a brand new sign so you can find her if you keep your eyes open. But I’m afraid we might be the last of it. The kids today don’t appreciate the whole hog like their grand parents did and it’s hard to find anyone who wants to go into the business. The younger generations don’t see fit to work hard and whole hog is hard work.”

After getting directions to Liz’s for our return trip, we headed south, up river, to Shiloh.

What’s in a name?

The best names are spelled with irony. The word Shiloh comes from the Bible and means “peace” in Hebrew. In American history, it evokes the bloodiest, most relentless realties of modern warfare. General U.S. Grant made his name there, becoming the “Butcher of Shiloh,” a thoroughly modern warrior willing to sacrifice lives for the sake of victory. After Shiloh produced the worst body count in the history of American warfare, all the romance of the Civil War was gone with the wind.

At Shiloh Visitors Center, a 50 year old video summed up the battle. Grant’s army was losing until the Confederacy lost their leader, Albert Johnston. Then Union troops rallied and won. Afterwards, Confederate resistance was reduced to a series of guerilla raids led by the infamous slave trader Nathan Bedford Forest.

Being from a part of America where the slightest violation of political correctness can get a person kicked out of town, it amazes us that a ruthless slaver is still honored like a hero in the woods along the Tennessee River. His name still graces schools, businesses and even a national park.

Shiloh’s battleground made me think of Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado who wrote that the best fruits are those fertilized with human blood. That theory will be tested here. Peach orchards that figured prominently in the battle were recently replanted and should bear fruit around 2010.

Catfish Slept Here

Thinking about peaches made us hungry so we headed to Hagy’s Catfish Hotel. Even on the banks of a river running backwards, catfish don’t actually rent rooms in this hotel. In the 1930’s, this place had become a popular political campaign stop because of its fresh-from-the river catfish. A Tennessee governor suggested that Norville Hagy open a restaurant and three generations of Hagy’s have been serving them ever since.

The river does not supply the fish anymore, local farms do. But the reputation is still wild. USA Today named it one of the ten best fish restaurants in America, and Wro and I put great value on USA Top Ten lists (we supplied two of them ourselves). We debated over grilled, Cajun grilled or fried catfish and decided to order them all. We both liked fried the best, with just a little cornmeal in the breading.

Liz’s

After letting Wro shop for battleground souvenirs, we headed downriver toward Liz’s in Henderson and a date with American heritage. We saw the sign Billy Latham told us about, walked in and explained that we have come all the way from California and would love to visit.

Liz told us that we’d have to wait because she was expecting a customer with a take out order. Wro explained that we wanted badly to become customers too, as soon as possible. Liz just stood there with her arms folded, gazing at her parking lot.

Across the room, her husband Ike sat in a rocking chair under a large American flag. He finally responded to Wro.

“What kind of customer would you be wanting to become?,” he asked.

“Can I specify parts of the pig?”

“What would you be wanting to specify?”

“Could we get some middlin’s? And maybe a little belly and jowl? And a rib or two?,” he asked. I thought I saw Liz’s eye twinkle and Ike smile.

“Middlin’s are the best part if you ask me. I think we can fix you up,” Ike said, rising from his rocker.
A few minutes later, Ike emerged with two plates full of magic - side pork, hog cheeks, belly and ribs transformed into the most delicious meat on earth by over 20 hours of exposure to smoke while resting between the skin and bones of a 300 pound pig.

We dined like kids - dangling spaghetti-like strands of middlin’s three feet in the air and letting them drop into our mouths. Ike got a kick out of how much fun we had letting those delicious “noodles” slide onto our tongues. He and Liz told us their story.

Liz and Ike Kinchen run this place together now but for years Liz ran it alone. Ike put in 50 years working on heavy machinery for a construction company until they both retired in 1998. Then in 2003 their realtor called and told Liz things had gone really wrong.

“That boy that had my place turned nasty. He was past nasty in fact. The state of Tennessee closed him down. When I came down here with the landlord, I told him I had to think long and hard if I could handle it. There were dirty dishes and dirty underwear all over. And that was nine months after he had cleared out.

“He didn’t take any meat with him when he left. So when they turned off the electricity for non-payment, it rotted. When I opened up the doors of the cooler, maggots ran out all around. Maggots big as my finger because they been eating real well for maggots,” Liz explained.

“It took us six full weeks just to clean the mess up, with one boy helping. You know what it is? Young people just don’t want to do hard work,’ Ike added.
Ike then showed us what hard work whole hogs are, even from the point of view of a man who did 50 years of heavy construction work. He took us to his smoke pits and showed us four 300 pound hogs in various degrees of smoke exposure.

Business is getting back to “pretty good” in Liz’s words. They sell five whole hogs worth of pig meat any week of the year and a dozen in a busy week. Liz said it’s weird how different people like and dislike different parts of the smoked hog.

“Some like dark others red, some fatty, others dry, some stringy, others anything but,” she explained.

We also tried some white and some red slaw ( with BBQ sauce), black eyed peas and fried potatoes. Several visitors dropped by for carry-out orders while we were there. One of them, Gary Carroll, told us that he “needs this pork several times a week.”

“When I was in high school, we would always have to take our dates home by 12:30 a.m.. Then we’d head over to Jack’s Creek, which was the closest whole hog BBQ to where I lived. There were two pitmasters back then in Jack’s Creek: Ee’d go to Tick Massengill’s; Mr. Taylor had the other one. Tick always turned a hog at 1 a.m., so we’d get the pick of that fresh-from-the-smokehouse meat. It was expected that we bring some home with us,” he recalled.

When Wro and I finally pulled ourselves up and out the door, as full of pig meat as humans and bears can be, Liz called after us.

“You two are welcome back here anytime.”

I do not believe I have ever felt more honored.

Back in Jackson we were too tired from all the heavy eating to go looking for those honky tonks Johnny Cash sang about.

Another Riverside Attraction

Since food is our main interest in traveling, we are attracted to all aspects of agriculture. So we headed to Milan and the West Tennessee Agricultural Museum. Over 2,600 implements were on display there and one can learn almost anything one wants to know about cotton. A docent told us about the wondrous future of cotton bio-technology. We were even told that seed companies allow farmers to save their own Bt seeds and replant them each year. This was the only place on earth we ever heard that.

Being inedible, cotton doesn’t hold our interest as long as things you can eat. So we moved on toward the Tennessee River Folklife Museum. This place sits atop the highest point in West Tennessee in Nathan Bedford Forest Park, named for the slave trader who was either a terrorist or a freedom fighter during the Civil War, depending upon who is describing him.

The museum tells a marvelous story about coping with unfortunate circumstances - namely about farmers who were displaced by “Mister Roosevelt’s damned dam.“ The Tennessee Valley Authority flooded the region’s farms and graveyards in the 1930’s and forced the residents to learn how to live off the water. A “Braille boat” in the museum was made completely out of farm machinery. The man who built it refused to ever cash the check the government gave him when it took his land.
Another exhibit chronicled the photography of Maggie Lee Sayre, an autistic photojournalist who worked exclusively with a Kodak Brownie camera. She shot river life from 1930 to 1960 with incredible professionalism.

Pearls before Swine

A few miles from the museum we found pearls without oysters, which seemed appropriate on a river that runs backwards. Tennessee’s official state gem is grown from Washboard mussels at Tennessee River Fresh Water Pearl Museum & Farm, the only freshwater pearl-culturing farm in North America. Jolly owner Bob Keest showed us around and explained that the farm gained notoriety after National Geographic used a photo of Liz Taylor wearing a necklace that featured the most famous natural pearl in the world surrounded by scores of cultured pearls from Tennessee.

The farm exports most of the iridescent shells of its mussels, some $50 million a year worth, to Asia where they are used to stimulate cultured pearl industries. The farm uses pearls as a lure for tourism.
“We could never produce enough to make a living in mass market wholesaling,” Keest explained.

He told us that divers, who have replaced Braille boats, can retrieve 200-300 pounds of shells a day. We watched John Nerran, a second generation diver and a pearl artist, emerge with a load of mussels. John hand-opened his shells and scraped out the meat, which is fed to fish. Since Wro and I are rather fond of mussels, we were astonished at this generosity to catfish, who sometimes grow here to be 100 pounds.
“Remember, the mussel’s main purpose is to filter the filth of the river. It’s not likely fit for human consumption. And since mollusks can reproduce a million times a year, there is no threatened shortage,” Bob explained.
The hand shucking is strictly for tourists. Most of that work is done off-premises by an automated shucking machine. Keest said the smell compared to that of the worst of meat packing plant.

As we dined on a good lunch of fried chicken and southern side dishes, Keest explained his “Little Back Sambo,” a lawn ornament installed at a cross street on the property. He said he was amazed that people had complained about it, “even a woman who works for me.”
Keest isn’t the kind of guy who bends in the fickle winds of political correctness.

“I wasn’t going lose my little black boy. So I got me another one and had this lady paint his face white. Now I got a little black boy and a little white boy. Who can complain about that?” he explained.

In the gift shop, I noticed a poster supporting the local county sheriff’s office. Sixty four officers peered down at visitors and all of them were white. I was beginning to understand how Nathan Bedford Forest remains a hero in these hills.

Lexington Q - Not North Carolina

On our way back to Jackson, we stopped in Lexington, a town with even more whole hog heritage than Henderson. First stop was Scott’s Bar-B-Que.
Owner Ricky Lynn Parker explained that he had been “pretty much adopted” by B.E. Scott, who founded the place in 1960 and taught him everything he knew. Parker bought the place in 1989 and claims that absolutely everything is still done “exactly as Mr. & Mrs. Scott did it. And we only do whole hogs.”

Parker also said that he would never have gotten into the business if he didn’t “do fine working 80 hour weeks and sleeping about 3 hours a night.” He said that his wood is all hickory and comes from Savannah, where we learned about Shiloh. I love it when circles come together like that.

Scott’s Bar-B-Que smokes pigs in an open pit for “just less than all day and all night.” Parker was too busy filling a catering order to talk much, so we headed down the road to Curt’s Smoke House and the future of whole hog barbecue.

Curt Blankenship bought a barbecue that had long been called Hay’s, named for a man who also owned a butcher plant that supplied all of western Tennessee with whole hogs.
Curt told us he was 29 years old and that his favorite part of the pig is middlin’s. Something new, something old.
“I bought the place April 13, 2007. Hay’s sold the butcher plant to a Florida guy who pledged to keep supplying whole hogs. So, I don’t think the whole hog culture, as you call it, is going to disappear,” Curt said.
In another example of circles closing nicely, Blankenship told us he learned his way around a pig pit working for Ricky Parker at Scott’s.
Curt is his own pit master. How hard is the work?
“I go home at 2:30 a.m. and am back at work at 7 a.m.. My brother and my Dad fill in, so I can get a break,” he said.

“I do it because it’s a way to please everyone. There’s not too much in life where you can do that,” he declared.

We left feeling a warm glow from knowing that we had probably not eaten our last middlin’s in West Tennessee. And that there are still young men who like hard work and value old ways of doing things which, sometimes, can please everyone.

If You Go

Airlines

American Airlines serves Jackson.

Lodging

Supertel Inn

1890 Highway 45 Bypass Jackson, TN 38305 877-477-5817
This is a fledgling chain with just three properties on line when we stayed, but scores more in the works. This one was a former Hampton Inn that didn’t want interior hallways, a requirement for all Hamptons now. I like front door access to my car in warm weather. The free Wi-Fi worked easily and that isn’t the case in a lot of luxury hotels. Nor is a free breakfast.

Whole Hog BBQ

Liz’s BBQ
311 South Church Ave.
Henderson, TN , 731- 989-9700

Curt’s Smoke House
93 College Drive
Lexington, TN, 731-967-3222

Scott's Bar-B-Que
10880 Highway 412 WestLexington, TN , 731- 968-0420

Hog Slaughter
16319 Hwy 412 ELexington, TN, 731- 967-3222

Other restaurants

Hagy’s Catfish Hotel Shiloh, TN, 731-689-3327

Bill's Bar-B-Q .531 South Church St.Henderson, TN, 731- 989-4075

Roadside Attractions

West Tennessee Agricultural Museum
Ledbetter Gate RdMilan, TN, 731- 686-8067

Tennessee River Fresh Water Pearl Museum & Farm
Birdsong Resort, Marina & Campground
255 Marina Road
Camden, TN 38320, 731-584-7880, 800-225-7469
http://www.tennesseeriverpearls.com/

Tennessee River Folklife Museum
1825 Pilot Knob Rd.Eva, TN, 731-584-6356

Shiloh National Military Park 1055 Pittsburg Landing Road Shiloh, TN, 731-689-5696
Shiloh National Military Park - Shiloh National Military Park (U.S. National Park Service)