What draws us to seek pleasure and solace in places often referred to as joints and shacks? Is this about time travel? Are they portals to a Southern past? Is it rooted in class difference, and a want to span that chasm?
John T. Edge wrote:When I talk about Helen’s with people who have never met the woman or tasted her barbecue, I speak of the fierceness and intimacy of her labor and what it means to claim an audience with her. I talk about the woodpile out back, stacked higgledy-piggledy with splits of hickory. And I do my damnedest to bring the dirt-floored pit house at the rear of the restaurant to life.