For Barbecue in Memphis, the Taxi Driver Knows Best

There are nice air-conditioned buses on which you can meet pilgrims from Japan to Juno, some on their first trip and some on their twentieth trip to Graceland. I regret to not have been on that coach because I missed the chance to sit with the Irish family dressed in skintight rhinestone studded suits and to watch their young son with teased hair croon with the senior citizens. I later saw him air-thrusting his pelvis in the aisle of the Elvis gift shop next to the parking lot at the King’s home. Despite being deprived of that life changing bus trip, not taking the bus meant that I would meet Larry, a Memphis cab driver. And it was Larry who took me and my girlfriend to a barbecue lunch at the Mississippi Grill.

Memphis is celebrated for its variety and quality of smoke pork with tomato based barbecue sauces. The Carolinas offer their vinegar sauces and Texas boasts its beef brisket, but Memphis style is a quintessential plate of barbecue. Baby back ribs and pork shoulder. The town came into focus after reading an extensive review about its downtown institution, The Rendezvous. The restaurant’s walls are crowded with awards and tributes from celebrity photos and politicians. Regulars are shown directly to a table while the rest of us wait and get blasted with the hot seasoned air from the kitchen vent. After all the anticipation and pomp, the service is curt and the ribs dry. The main problem here, as is the case with all barbecue, is volume. Barbecue can not be cooked, stored and served in large amounts. We had been in Memphis for over forty-eight hours and had struck out twice (see “Beyond Beal Street part 1 regarding that).

When I told Larry about Rendezvous, he chuckled and agreed that the ribs were too dry.

So I asked him where he gets his barbecue fix.

It was little place, a cousin had introduced him to it, nothing fancy, and it was in a bad neighborhood.

“Yes, yes, yes and yes”, I thought to myself.

Travel guides and television programs styled on food adventurism do a good job selling the idea that authentic is best, and the best is found in little known and hard to reach places. This axiom can be interpreted as romantic, quixotic, and even a little arrogant, but for most part it is true.



Mississippi Grill is not a place written about nor is it a place stumbled upon. Our journey from downtown showcased metropolitan Memphis’ industrial sector and its various neighborhoods, many of them poor. It was the middle of the day and nobody was walking on the streets, a past time I saw few do at any other time of the day. If you drive up to Mississippi Grill you would not know it was open until you smell or see, whichever first, the small cloud of wood smoke hanging in the air. The building is non-descript and unannounced, aside from the decades old hand painted signs above the door and on the sides. The shades were drawn in the windows. Larry was not even sure the restaurant was open.

As I was about to pass through this door, in this seemingly neglected building, on a forgotten block in a city I knew nothing about, an instinct kicked in telling me to reconsider. But two things pushed me on: the complete endearing nature of Larry and the devastating smell of slow cooked pork. Any remaining anxiety vanished immediately upon entering this well worn, but cozy room lined with three tables and a pay phone. All of it held down by a lovely large woman behind a counter.




There were a few other customers sitting and drinking beer at a counter and a table. A television drilled to the wall had the local news on. At one point somebody came through the door, greeted everybody, used the phone, and then walked out.

We all stepped up to the counter and followed Larry’s lead. Burnt beef tips, rack of baby back ribs. The meat truly fell right off the bone once lifted off the plate, a sign of patient slow smoking. The burnt tips were especially delicious. Typically drenched with a tangy sauce and lined with crispy skin over the tender and well marbled meat inside.

Good barbecue is both rewarding and punishing. It begins with the evocative smell of the burning hickory, which activates your imagination and saliva glands. Then there is the sight of the meat, lush and when piled on your plate, exciting and a bit daunting. Those first few bites are always the best, of course. The flavors of the sauce open up while you discover more about the subtleties of the dry spice rub on the meat. The fat is buttery, not stringy. When faced with a variety of meats, you rush to try each one as well to pay attention to the sides, which can be divine or distracting. The meat inevitably sticks between your teeth. Your hands and face are a mess. Then the weight of this meal hits you.

Because I eat too fast and tend to ravage good meat, I have experienced real moments of lightheadedness and ringing in my ears when working towards the end of my meal.
I moderated my consumption on this occasion because Larry, who really did not know me, might be alarmed by my vacuum eating, and would feel responsible for my well being. We drank sweet tea to wash it down, although forty-ounce malt liquor was also an option.

So Mississippi Grill was the gold mine we had looked for and Memphis barbecue was finally living up to its name. It had just been a matter of finding the right person with a cousin who knew a little place. Later that day we walked through the rococo entrance of Graceland bloated on good southern food and I felt that the former owner would have approved.

On our last day in Memphis there was one last restaurant that required inspection.

Payne’s BBQ sits in a former garage and filling station on a remote boulevard lined with partly occupied small shopping centers. This time we were with friends, also from out of town, who we strong-armed into finding the place. A few miles on local streets and doubling back once, we found Payne’s serving the lunch crowd. Unlike Mississippi Grill, which operates completely under the radar and caters to the neighborhood clientele, Payne’s is better known and has two locations with costumers from all over town.

The exterior of the Lamar Avenue location is bunker like. The conversion from garage to restaurant was accomplished mainly by filling in the bay doors with a lattice of brick. On the other side of the wall is an austere big open room with a few picnic tables in the middle. The ladies behind the counter were dressed in white shirts and an older man managed the smoker off to side. Such division of labor seems typical to these restaurants. The men seem to exclusively deal with the smoker and the meat, while the woman work dish out the sides and deal with the transactions.

I enjoyed a half slab of ribs, and sneaked tastes of the pulled pork sandwich and the smoked sausage. The sausage I found a little dry, but the ribs and pulled pork were excellent. The ribs were the classic match of sweet sauce with a kick and tender well-seasoned pork. The proper smoking and crackling fatty skin did all the work. The leftovers were put in a lined bag that filled our car with that distinct scent all the way south to Oxford, Ms. The ribs made their final appearance 12 hours later after a Faulkner inspired campaign through that college town.



Locations for restaurants mentioned:
The Rendezvous
52 South Second St.

Mississippi Grill
Mississippi Avenue and E. Trigg
(approximately)

Payne’s Barbecue
1762 Lamar Ave

Cold War Gothic at The End

If you are like me, you have a taste for mid-century public works, especially those built for national security and inspired by paranoia. On the eastern most point of Long Island, New York, 120 miles from Manhattan, is the Camp Hero State Park on Montauk, Point. Camp Hero had many surveillance and defense roles throughout World War II and the Cold War, part of which generated its own conspiracy theory, known as the Montauk Project.

Montauk Point has been a place of interest for the military since George Washington authorized the lighthouse there in 1792. Montauk falls strategically between New York City and Boston. The point juts out with the vantage of Long Island Sound, three states’ coastlines and the boat traffic heading from the ocean to the cities of New London and Groton, Connecticut, homes of a Navy submarine base and a submarine manufacturer, respectively.

During World War II Camp Hero was armed with 16’’ naval rifles intended for German battleships. The installation was disguised as a New England fishing village to counter the threat of spy craft. Such a threat arrived on June 13th, 1942 when eight German spies landed down the coast in Amagansett. The spies were from Operation Pastorius, a sabotage mission to take out major infrastructure around the U.S. The mission failed, as one of the spies turned himself in to the FBI and the rest were apprehended.

When the War War II ended, Camp Hero transitioned to meet a new threat of Soviet bombers armed with nuclear weapons. Now that attack was expected from above, the Air Force took over the facility and modernized it into the iconic Cold War specter we know today.

In 1958, the Air Force installed a SAGE radar system, featuring the AN-FPS-35 radar spanning 126 feet, manufactured by the Long Island based Sperry Gyroscope Company. It is the only radar of its kind presently standing. The radar was designed to detect air attack from 200 miles away, and was part of the far-reaching early detection network of NORAD. All data was sent from Montauk to another facility in Hancock Field in Syracuse, New York. The radar used frequency diversity to evade electronic counter measures, and at the time was advanced because of that capability. However, as the Space Age produced superior surveillance, the radar became obsolete in the 1970’s. The installation was closed in 1980.



A visit to Camp Hero, now Camp Hero State Park, is like a picnic at all those other decommissioned post-war military facilities of your youth. Here is a table to have sandwich, and there is a fence with a boarded up structure behind it. The woodsy color scheme of the park’s placards communicate “family fun in nature”, but the “Do Not Enter Building” stenciled across the subterranean hatch door, and the, “Danger, Live Ordnance-If Found Do Not Touch, Contact Police” posted on the hiking trail, keep everyone on their toes. These warnings signs are the hieroglyphs on the ruins of the Nuclear Era-artifacts that tell the histories of what went on here.


The warren of paved roads and footpaths in the park meanders through a dense coastal forest of hardwood trees, a maritime arboretum by default, thanks to the military. The sylvan surroundings contrast with the haunted industrial relics hiding about. Without warning a path in the woods will dead end in front of a boxy concrete-block building, or later, open up to a circular pad in the ground where a gun platform sat. Make your way down one of these paths and you will walk along the bluffs overlooking the expanse of the Atlantic. You arrive at the beach and behind you, sticking up out the woods is the rusting sentry on its concrete lookout, mummified but still watching.

Welcome to the Launch of Lodge Porch

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

You are looking at the official,much anticipated, often Queried and speculated on arrival of Lodge Porch, a gathering place for stories of and ideas on things
big and small .

Lodge Porch introduces itself to you brimming with essays and short stories on subjects such as: the land of electricity, forgotten highways, our food-from source to plate, the many sides of Memphis, bridge noir, games on the subway, important polls on heroes-christmas presents, and a sales pitch for condos in Guantanamo bay.

You may begin your tour by scrolling down or exploring the Directory of Departments to your right.

Trip Notes Part I: The Land of Electricity

Photo credit: Bill Seeley

Go to your wall. Flick the light off. Flick it on. Amazing stuff.

Where did that electricity come from? Could be from the several nuclear and coal power plants in your state, or perhaps from a wind farm somewhere, but probably not that. If you live on the eastern seaboard, there is a good chance it came from a place very far away to the north, in Canada.



Go get in your car and drive due north. Drive until the trees become short and sparse, and the sky immense. You are now alone on the Route de la Baie James. Continue driving until you need to sleep. Pull over near a truck stop-helicopter landing pad-cafeteria and sleep. Wake up and keep driving. Overhead is a chain of power lines that guide you north. You drive to where the lines and the road terminate. You are have arrived in the town of Radisson, Quebec, 1000 miles north of the U.S border.



Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

Congratulations, you have left planet earth, and are now on planet Hydro Quebec.

Radisson is home to around 500 people most of whom work for Hydro Quebec, a state-controlled power company. Right outside town is a fifty-three storey dam and behind that dam is an inland sea stretching for 1,095 square miles- the Robert-Bourassa Reservoir . The Robert-Bourassa Generating Facility, also known as LG2, maintains a capacity of 5600 megawatts of energy, enough juice for around 5 million homes. Hydro Quebec is helping to keep the lights on in your apartment, many miles away.

What you find around Radisson is simply awe-inspiring. The scale of the infrastructure, the diluvial wake of its construction and the iron clad determinism of it, eclipse all life. The spillway maybe the most jarring and impressive sight in the facility. Acting as a release valve for the dam, the spillway is a colossal series of stairs cut out of the limestone leading from the reservoir back to the river below the dam. Its size is put into perspective when the school bus parked in front of it looks no bigger than a go-cart. The right angles, concrete, wires and giant machines that make up Radisson, frame what feels like a lunar set from Buck Rogers. All of it is found at the end of one road, in the middle of the wilderness.

Photo Credit: wikipedia.org

The project, as with all other large public works, stands as a pure hubris against the landscape. Behind Hydro Quebec is an embolden mission to provide electricity to a growing province that had once envisioned a future separate from the rest of Canada. Former premier Robert Bourassa, a "Canadian New Deal " style populist, initiated the hydro works with his James Bay Project in the 1970's employing thousands and readying the province for a modern era.

The on going legacy of the James Bay Project is and will always be defined through its complicated and difficult compact with the Cree and Inuit Nations that live here. Hydro development has brought jobs and financial compensation to the nations. But it is unclear how much these groups have directly benefited from this agreement, especially in relation to what is the incalculable cost of permanently altering their traditional waterways and hunting grounds. These first nations continue to modernize as they take stock in their natural patrimony. In the late 80's and early 90's the Cree took a stand and successfully suspended plans for hydro development on the river and watershed to the north of the La Grande. Those rivers, The Great Whale and The Denys, are among the few intact wild regions in Quebec.

A few years ago, I had the fortune to visit that region with three other companions. It is from Radisson, the seat of the James Bay Project, that the traveler steps off the grid into this land.

I remember waiting at the airport for our plane. I looked around the hanger at the gear and the float planes. This is a place on the edge of something big and challanging. When we met our pilot, I became excited and nervous at the prospect of what lay out there, so separate and beyond.

Photo Credit: John Lehrman

My notes prior to boarding our plane:

After a 22 hour car ride we have arrived at Radisson. After visiting the dike and overflow channel we waited for our flight into the bush. As we waited, Jean-Marie of Wamidigi Air told us about his expedition to the South Pole. An experienced pilot and certified bad ass, he regaled us with stories of backcountry danger. He feels even after visiting all the continents of the world and their most extreme locales, Northern Quebec holds the most excitement, expeditions and wonder.

Photo C redit: Bill Seeley

Next Installment: "10 days to the Bay on the footsteps of A.P Low"