Skylight Inn BBQ is one of my go-to’s for delectable down east wood smoked pork. A place where Carhartt and plaid meet the dress code of the day. Men, with their names embroidered on blue collar shirts and ladies dripping with southern charm, all converge on this little place along the vein of country life most days between high noon and sunset.
Fords, Chevys and Ram trucks, with a Toyota or two scattered about, are the modern day covered wagons which have found a resting place amidst an old gravel lot riddled with potholes and tire tracks. It’s a place of comfort for every soul who crosses the threshold of this hidden gem.
Over the years, Skylight Inn BBQ has graced the pages of Our State Magazine, Southern Living, and Garden & Gun. There’s a reason for their notoriety…they simply serve some of the most mouth watering whole hog you’ll find anywhere east of Lexington. Low and Slow Smokehouse in Johnston Co., B’s in Greenville, and Wilber’s in Goldsboro, rank in my top four. Well, Sam Jones, too, but he’s an automatic shoe-in.
Since 1947, the Jones family has remained true to their holy hand raisin’ craft and for that, they’ve enriched the bellies of many North Carolinians, and some foreigners, too! Founder, Pete Jones, once said, “A place like this don’t need any sign”. I suppose word of mouth and wood smoke wafting across Pitt Co. is all the persuasion needed to attract us flies to the honey.
Me? I recently had the medium pig tray with a slice of corn bread and baked beans. I was feeling a bit weak in the knees so I sprung for some tater salad and ‘nanner puddin’, too. The other white meat was so tender with a sweet sauce just slightly doused on top like a blanket of love. It was as if I was consuming pork flavored cotton candy. I’ll save the details for my food blog one day, but rest assured, it’s worth the hour and fifteen minute hunt from Raleigh. My only regret? I didn’t order the large.
Farmville, NC is more than just farms. It’s also about food. Delicious southern food. The type of food typically found on the grounds following a holy hand raisin’ Sunday morning Baptist revival. Lip smackin’ and finger lickin’ kinda good. Just walk up, order, wait, and behold, an angel of deep fried goodness will bring forth the most mouth watering food a person’s pallet could ever hope for.
Me? I sauntered back to my truck with a Small Wing Ding Dinner and an apple pie turnover afternoon snack. All this for the low, low price of a Lincoln and a few presidential jingles . Winner, winner, chicken dinner! And, for the road, I tucked away a pint of their famous chicken salad. It’s out of this world scrumptious, which may be why they call this little road side slice of apple pie, “Little Rocket”.
Like a young child, clinging to his parent’s leg, sheepishly peering around the side as a stranger bids a salutation, the shyness of the morning sun peeks through the shroud of clouds as if its courage is yet to be mustered for another day. The sun’s hues are but a blush one may feel when afforded an unexpected compliment. As the moon drops below the horizon, it tips its hat as if to bid adieu to its daytime friend.
On this morning, it wasn’t the view that garnered my attention, but the sound.
Several summers ago, the First Lady and I rented a vintage 1930s beach cottage on Pawley’s Island named, ”Eaves Drop”. It was a special place where gobs of families had gathered over the decades to share their lives together, break bread to celebrate their connections, and were certain to build new memories worth writing a book about someday. It is a no frills type of place. No paint had ever adorned its rustic exterior shell. It appeared as if only a few gallons of varnish had graced its cedar scales. The salt had grayed its skin, rusted its joints, and laid low the limbs of its youth. Some may say this place was undesirable, void of the trappings found in most vacation homes. We thought a little benign neglect should never douse the dream of a charming beach cottage. We found it perfect.
Its rear porch was connected to the island’s sandy shore by a long, splinter riddled boardwalk. Like a stone, rounded by the friction of the stream that runs over it, each board had been whittled by the blowing sand that crossed its bones. Silence on this island is a commodity, peace, an amenity, and people are scarce, but polite. No buildings rise above the horizon there, only shore birds as they search for their next meal. Maybe old bait left by a solitary fisherman or a Nabs cracker dropped by a child.
There’s not much to do on the island. No putt-putt, go carts or arcades. Only water, sunsets, nature, and lots of time to read books.
For some, reading is a pastime best enjoyed resting along the shoulders of water. Whether it be beside a pool or on the precipice of champagne foam as it runs up the beach and tickles your toes. Books are the foundation of education. Most are good in training our brains how to think, behave, and do, or not do, what others have done who’ve come before us. Fiction can entice our imagination and tease our senses. But, among the many things a good book is useful for, propping a window to invite the ocean in, is undoubtably one of the best.
The sandy beach, just outside our bedroom window, sat all night like a faithful wife awaiting her sailor to return home from battle. The shore, scattered with shells and ghost crabs, welcomed the roll of each wave throughout the sky’s slumber. It was like comfort food for my ears. As my eyes began to focus that morning, I was drawn ever near to my old, salty friend. The air was still and the birds were just beginning to rise from their night’s rest. The ocean beyond the break was remarkably calm, unfettered by the wind. The sound of the incoming tide hitting the beach was familiar, one which I enjoyed as I periodically awoke while the moon was still on watch.
I’m thankful for that book which lent its strong spine to conspire with the window to welcome the ocean in. It laid steadfast on the sill as we slept through the night.
Melville, Lee, Twain, Steinbeck, Faulkner, O’Conner, and E.B. White could have all worn the yoke of service well.
But, I thought, the next night I should choose another spine, one also well known, upon which to press the window sash upon. It wasn’t fair that just one book serve to indulge our senses as we slept. I was sure jealously would soon creep from the shelf upon which they perched. Not just one book should lie in servitude to lift my spirit and galvanize my salty soul. So, who received the nod on night number two? If I recall, Hemingway was next in line as his book, ”The Old Man and the Sea”, fit the moment and the scene as well as any.
Unlike the kale smoothies and endless asphalt veins of the more progressive thinking urban centers, the yellow brick road of small town livin’, greasy spoon diners, and sittin’-a-spell attitude is as sweet as the tea I’m known to hold in my right hand. Climbing the oak branches of memories to better see the past of easier times is an exercise in good mental health.
Days when dinner on the church grounds was a bushel basket full of fun, fellowship, and deep fried food. The social committee was run by the lady’s bridge club and we knew they meant business. The meals they concocted in casserole dishes and steeped in crockpots are legendary.
As kids hopscotch through the sandbox of country living, they learn lessons not known to children reared inside the big city limits. Wrangling frogs, crawfish, bluegill, and an occasional feral cat are embedded in the syllabus of southern backroad upbringing. Grown men cook pigs all night, swirl secret vinegar sauce recipes, and can feed a whole VFW Post from one hog who sacrificed its all to delight our stomachs. Honeysuckle vines are nature’s sweet nectar which we once politely shared with butterflies and hummingbirds. Tonka trucks hauled our little plot of earth from one side of the backyard to the other. The red clay mud puddles we trod strengthened our constitution to fend off any virus which dared cross our path.
Small towns are places where thoughts are encouraged to meander, ideas are allowed to simmer, and the pace of life is invited to stop and smell the Gardenias.
Front porches are a commodity, rocking chairs a necessity, and sidewalks are the pathways to friendships. Life is best lived beyond our front door, not sequestered by windows and walls. It seems as though we’ve divorced ourselves of front porches. Where we once perched, eagerly awaiting a neighborly delivery of snap peas, has morphed into rear patios, like hiding places from the girl scout paparazzi.
I don’t see folks lounging on front porches much anymore. Perhaps it’s because of air conditioning, mosquitoes or people just don’t like people much anymore. What once was an open invitation to sit a spell has become a medieval moat for solicitors and those who cycle two-by-two. The late Lewis Grizzard once said, ”It’s hard to get drunk and fall off a patio”. I believe that to be true and not nearly as fun.
Mass transit in cozy little towns south of the Mason-Dixon line is typically defined by the rear gunnels of a pick-up truck loaded with passels of little leaguers, leather gloves in hand, with sandlot dreams with hopes of hitting a walk-off home-run. Sprinkled about the acres of farm land and row crops are big green, red, and blue tractors that rumble down thinly laced backroads as if they own it. Loud pipes, lifted chassis, and oversized tires are essential equipment for those who embrace the monster truck life. Moms in grocery getters look different here. Absent are the european SUVs and Prada accessories. Here, we have country Cadillacs, 4×4 suburbans, which double as huntin’ buddy haulers, and an occasional modified school bus ‘bacca wagon when needed in a pinch.
There’s poor people, rich people, good people, bad people, and just plain ol’ people. There’s those who’s hearts are wrapped with a selfless desire to serve their community. We call them, “salt of the earth”, people. Citizens of all religions live here, but we know for certain the southern baptists throw the best picnic parties and the local Pentecostal Holiness Church can raise the roof as well as any WWE wraslin’ show.
County roads are named for patriarchs, matriarchs, war heroes, and first responders who’ve passed much too soon in the line of duty. We’re a group who deeply care for our neighbors, even those who’ve made poor life decisions and just need a hand up. There’s nothing a neighborly food tree can’t cure when convalescing at home due to some unfortunate ailment.
Time is abundant and it’s the currency of our lives. Without it, I’m afraid our souls would become bankrupt. We steward our time well by sitting still. Our ears delight in the softness of silence. As we ruminate on the sweet cud of country living, our hearts connect with all the gifts only a small town can bequeath.
So, grab a Rand McNally and find your next small town destination. Here, you’ll find a cold Mason jar full of sweet tea and a rocking chair reserved just for you. You may even meet a friendly neighbor with a Tupperware bowl full of snap peas. Slop some authentic sausage gravy on a homemade buttermilk biscuit, savor the gas station fried chicken just off Main, and be sure to stop and smell the honeysuckle. The hummingbirds and butterflies here are cotillion cordial and don’t mind sharing.
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple and a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me”, once quipped a young poet, Jenny Joseph, as she dreamed of the nonconformity of aging. “And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves…and make up for the sobriety of my youth…and learn to spit”. She is a woman I would have liked to have known.
My grandfather, as if it were his religious obligation, embarked upon a daily pilgrimage to the local Hardee’s to sit with other men of his ilk, drink black coffee and debate which heirloom tomato grows best in direct sunlight. When the world’s ailments had been measured, blended and baked, they would leave with their cigarettes still smoldering in the small aluminum ashtray with thoughts of tilling their gardens and chasing crows from the vegetables that thrived there.
Not unlike my grandfather, these six men seem to have similar kindred spirits and can balance the scale of small town gossip as well as any Southern Baptist women’s bridge club could deal. I felt compelled to sidle up at the adjacent table hoping to glean some down east North Carolina wisdom and maybe an off-color joke or two.
Some would think they said nothing much at all. At least nothing of any real value. They mumbled to one another, sat quietly at times with n’er a word spoken, and would laugh spontaneously as if voices were running circles in their minds. If those were my only observations, I would have missed what was really unfolding before me.
Some say it’s important to read between the lines. I feel it’s equally important to listen between them as well.
Amongst conversations regarding the high price of shrimp, cold fish for breakfast, who’s been arrested, a close encounter with a ‘78 Pinto and the perplextion of a Highway Patrolman they saw walking along the roadside, one asked the other upon sitting down, “what’d you do today?” “Nuthin’!”, said the other, which I found highly unlikely. I’m sure there were some “goin’s on” being held close to the vest. I believe these men were weaving their lives together as a hay baler might rake and bind his crop in the field. The blessing they brought to one another goes unspoken, but they knew.
When I am an old man, I shall find friends like these who care not one bit about fashion, coiffed hair or eloquent speech. I shall eat ice cream and spin threads of days gone by and laugh, as if voices are running circles in my mind. I shall covet times of friendly communion over a biscuit and mumble words of truth…tall, true or just stretched. The story of fish caught as a teen will be likened to “The Old Man and the Sea”. And, I shall share my life, as imperfect and flawed as it will be, with men who love me. Wisdom will be dealt, like hits in poker, and no one will fold when life’s storms roll in. And, I will spit, a lot.
Becoming an old man can wait. As Jenny Joseph proclaimed, “but maybe I ought to practice a little now. So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised when suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.”
Palm readers are a suspicious lot. For ten dollars, they’ll tickle your hand, pique your curiosity and then push you down the splintered path in search of the Candy Castle only to find a Kale milkshake wrapped like a Snickers bar eagerly awaiting at the cliff of despair. Instead of prognosticating my future by studying the lines engraved across my hand, they’d be better suited predicting what I had for lunch simply by noticing the bbq sauce still stuck under my pinky fingernail.
Unlike the hocus-pocus of palm ticklin’ that transpires behind the neon signs that dot the highways and byways of rural America, the lines that develop on one’s face, over time, tells bushels of stories and all are mostly born in truth. Some, we’d love to share, while others are simply too painful.
The four lines on our brow might represent the passing years of harboring, feeding and transporting our little lambs hither and tither with cab fare being paid only in Goldfish and boogers they wipe on any surface their little hands can reach.
For some, our etched lines have evolved from worry, anxiousness, loneliness, addiction or anger. While others, the crimps we see, like small ripples in the champagne surf, are cultivated with smiles, laughter and the funny faces we made with our children when we, as parents, were still the cool ones.
Our lines are indistinguishable unless we know the origin from whence they came. Although each little facial tributary is different in size, shape, and depth, I believe each is unique and have carefully formed as we’ve mounted the peaks and slunked through the valleys of our lives. It’s too easy to hang the mantle of facial crinkle on gravity, old age or genetics. Years have been laid down, like fossils, that are eager to be discovered, their stories told, and for others to embrace. Erasing those lines with creams and potions is akin to tearing pages from our history books. There’s wisdom, experience, heartache and accomplishments that reside on a face only a mother could love.
I marvel and wonder with awe at the stories this gentleman might tell. He looks like he’s lived a hard life. His complexion is a bit salty. Perhaps the neon moon has taken its toll. Maybe those he loved, somewhere along the way, stopped loving him. I guess we’ll never know. Only conjecture can satisfy our sense.
This is the face I want to listen to. To read, like a history book. To discover his past, the wisdom he’s netted and delight in the real life he’s lived. Palm readers need not apply. I got this one.
I awoke this morning with an epic eggnog and skillet brownie hangover. One that no amount of red Gatorade or black coffee could cure. It’s a new year and a new opportunity to be a new me. Unlike the fairy dust, fireworks and fanfare that had laid me to sleep, I surprisingly felt and looked the same this morning as I did the morning after Cinderella dropped her slipper.
As I often struggle to remember what I had for lunch the day before, I have an overall sense that 2021 was a partly cloudy year. Though I may not recollect all the peaks and valleys, I feel certain of the plateaus. The level places in life where I seem to find the most comfort. The current is calm, the wind is light and the sun shines upon my face just enough to keep me warm. Some may believe aspiring to reside on a flat rock lacks ambition, gumption and vision. I see it differently.
Life will always, and faithfully, fill its coffers with shadowy paths of despair and disappointment. Although not promised, most of us will, at times, plant our flags of delight on the mountain tops of exhilaration and accomplishment. But mostly, I hope to dwell somewhere in the middle as one cannot live within the beauty of the Caribbean coral and the hurricane winds of destruction where days seesaw between the doldrums of the deep and the towers of ivory which flirt with the sky.
As I coax my crystal ball to divulge its secrets for the new year, it feels more like asking the mirror on the wall “who’s the fairest of them all”? The answer can be more truthful than I wish and typically is, “not you.” It’s akin to a mirror hung above the barkeeps shoulder with the words inscribed, “No wonder you’re going home alone tonight”. The check mate of reality shows me the mirror simply reflects what it sees, not what it’s seen or will see. The mirror is but an honest evaluation of the present day. In its truest sincerity, the mirror can only analyze the life created by the person standing before it.
So, let’s start this year begging for more cowbell. Seek others that make us better. Peer across the crevasse of the great glacier to others different than ourselves. Let’s not just build a bridge to assist the proverbial chicken to cross the road, but build relationships with those who will enrich us and us, them. Doing so takes little talent and never requires us to stop eating Bojangles.
There are no tricks, spells, or magic potions of success in the new year. Hard work, focus, prayer, and loving thy neighbor usually seems to bring the increase. I hope for valleys not as deep and my fair share of peaks to mount. I pray my reflection in 2022 will resemble more the goodness of God’s glory which surrounds me and less the flesh of my bones that comes to steal and destroy abundant life.
For now, I’ll enjoy my plateau of solace and dream of what’s to come. Cheers to you 2022, but please cool your heals of anticipation as I have no plans to develop an intimate relationship with my local gym, divorce my Chick-Fil-A habit, pour my sweet tea down the drain and, I’ll be sure to ring my big, boisterous bell ‘til all the cows come home.
Facing Southward 