Ed Reilly isn’t from Georgia — he was born in Jersey — but you wouldn’t know that from the way he promotes Georgia barbecue. He texted recently asking me to come to the State Capitol for a ceremony: Gov. Brian Kemp was going to sign a proclamation declaring March 25 Georgia Barbecue Day.
Ed has lived in Georgia for more than 20 years, making a living as a consultant and sales rep for Weber and other barbecue manufacturers. It galls him to see other places — mainly Texas, North Carolina, Kansas City and Memphis — extolled as the epicenters of American barbecue while Georgia gets little glory.
“We don’t get the credit we deserve,” he says, ticking off some of the whereases he sent to the governor’s office: first commercial barbecue sauce (1909), world’s largest barbecue retailer (Home Depot), some of the largest grill makers (Char-Broil, Big Green Egg).
Ed has a point. Decades ago, when barbecues usually evoked political rallies or large gatherings like the Twelve Oaks pig-pickin’ in Gone With the Wind, Georgia loomed large. “Most authorities,” The Saturday Evening Post wrote in 1954, “seem to feel that Georgia is the home of barbecue.”
Not anymore. Georgia has fine barbecue and a long tradition, but its reputation seems to have receded into the shadow of the Deep South barbecue belt.
So I went to the Capitol, as requested, and picked my way through the milling legislators, past a table of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (it was Georgia Peanut Month!), and climbed the steps to the governor’s office. There were a dozen or more barbecue luminaries there, none bigger than Myron Mixon of Unadilla, four-time winner of the Memphis in May grand prize and star of the “BBQ Pitmasters” TV series.
Mr. Wrestling 3 — for the record, I think Mixon looks more like Kenny Rogers.
When we were ushered into the governor’s office for the grip and grin, Kemp did a double-take when he saw Mixon (to the left of the governor in the photo, wearing his customary all-black).
“Why, you look kind of like Mr. Wrestling 3,” Kemp told him. “When I get some time, I’m going to knock you off your throne.”
I wasn’t sure whether the governor was talking about barbecue or wrestling.
Ed Reilly wants to promote Georgia Barbecue Day the way the state’s craft brewers have used Georgia Beer Day to bring attention to their burgeoning industry. Why not? Any state that first put chopped pork into space (Fincher’s of Macon, 1989 Space Shuttle) has a lot going for it, barbeculturally speaking.