Fellow Transplants

[omegajim]

There are actually a couple "towns" like that out here. They're basically just sheep stations (we're the biggest sheep state in the U.S.)

so the next time I eat a gyro, there should be a big thank you for Wyoming?

[noahmercy]

You're killing me, 'jim! I haven't had a good gyro in almost ten years! (Drooooooooolllllllll...) I miss Plaka's.

And if you want to hoist a cold beer in our direction the next time you're enjoying some well-spiced lamb with tzatziki sauce on a fresh pita, you sure won't hurt anyone's feelings out this way!

[HAMMERPETE]

I also grew up a military brat. Moved somewhere every three years.
Originally born in Florida. While I loved Florida...I hated the people that infiltrated the state and used it as THEIR vacation spot. Basically pissing on the locals.

I spent a few years in San Diego growing up. Moved around then joined the military and was hoping to get SOCAL. I got FLORIDA. Then I met Rae. We took a trip out here to visit. That was all it took. My so called family imploded after my Mom passed from cancer.

I can honstly say I don't miss the humidity or the bugs. I'll also trade hurrincanes for wild fires and santa anna's any day. I have family in the area of ATLANTA that I do miss....but I have a feeling they will come to visit soon.

[GeorgiaRoller]

Originally Posted by HAMMERPETE

My so called family imploded after my Mom passed from cancer.

I swear family can be either a blessing or curse or both at the same time. Everybody has got to find their own happiness and their own path to follow that's for sure.

[stp1971]

Originally Posted by HAMMERPETE

I have family in the area of ATLANTA that I do miss....but I have a feeling they will come to visit soon.

You better lock up the jewelry when they come.... crap.. you talking about us?

As soon as February rolls around we will be buying the tickets. Already put in for the time off. He was totally shocked about the 7-8 month advance notice. Of course asking off for 8 working days was a shock too!!!

Well I grew up in Atlanta and was transplanted at the age of 2 to EastBumble Douglasville when I was a kid. While only thirty minutes from Atlanta back then it felt like (and seemed like) a whole other world. They spoke this weird language which resembled Barnesvillian but with a different twang.

Went in the Navy and spent 8 years between San Diego, Memphis, Jacksonville, and Norfolk. Met some really good people and three of which are part of the family now.

Moved back home after I got out of the Navy to spend time with the folks and I met the Love of my life "J". Which in fact today is our two year anniversary!!!

[omegajim]

You're killing me, 'jim! I haven't had a good gyro in almost ten years! (Drooooooooolllllllll...) I miss Plaka's.

so you're drowning in sheep and not a single gyro house in state?

it's almost as if wisconsin exported every single drop of milk and cheese product.

[GeorgiaRoller]

Originally Posted by stp1971

They spoke this weird language which resembled Barnesvillian but with a different twang.

How dare you!!!.....................Wait, what do I care I'm not orginally from here anyway. I still can't understand Milo.

[intimid8er]

I was born and bred a Yankee. Upstate New York. Albany/Rensselaer to be exact. Spent a lot of my time further north in the small town of Hague on Lake George too. Had relatives sprinkled from there to all points in between from there to Vermont. Every weekend we were always off visiting someone somewhere in the country. I am an only child so a lot of times while visiting these relatives, they might not have had children or had adult children so I had to make do and find ways to entertain myself in the woods or on the farm.

It was a nice balance of learning city life in Albany, and during the weekend, learning about country life. As I got older I got a dirtbike ('81 Yamaha MX 175), and we would take it with us on trips, or at home, we lived near the outskirts of the city so there were plenty of places to ride. I believe this shaped a bit of my personality in a way, because none of my friends had a bike. So when I rode, I couldn't afford to take unnecessary risks and put the bike at risk mechanically, or myself at risk for harm. So I learned to be very self reliant, and restrained while riding whether in the city or in the country. Didn't matter. Had to preserve the equipment and the body.

My grandparents had moved down here (Tampa Bay area) in the late seventies and I'd been a frequent visitor. It was a marvelously different world. They lived near the beach. There was a whole different culture going on than what you experience in the Industrial Northeast, it always intrigued me. So after an abysmal first year of college. I decided to come down here and clear my head, get my act together, and get back in the game. One day while flats fishing in December, standing in seventy some odd degree water up to my waist with a fish on the line, I decided that if I wanted to be doing this up home, I'd be in a shanty, digging a hole, on some godforsaken windswept lake in the middle of nowhere in the great North Woods. Not wearing shorts, standing in the water and hoping to god a shark wouldn't sneak up on me.

So I enrolled in a local community college (over by Noahmercy's beloved Tarpon Springs), promptly got on the Dean's list, and then transferred over to the University of South Florida. After graduation, I kind of listlessly drifted around. I had a steady job, but I needed a "real" job. But I thought I could pick up and move around, or still have time to see other places. I then got my "real" job in the field of finance, and then life happened. One day begets another and you believe that your job is not portable, and that the place might fall down without you, and you get bills, and responsibilities, and the roots start growing slowly and then they get stronger. Then you meet a girl, that girl becomes your wife, and then her family becomes your family. The family you left 1500 miles away just become voices on the phone. Then you have kids, and buy a home. Here I stand. 22 years later. Never fully settled that this is my home. There's something always nagging me that there's something out there that I'm missing. My wife shares the same view.

Who knows what the next chapter holds? Maybe set up a BBQ shack? It isn't beyond me to set up shop in a beachside shack in the Caribbean. Or hell, move to some area that doesn't even have BBQ and set up shop there. Cold, hot, mountainous, flat, desert, jungle...don't matter...

[stp1971]

You could always set up shop in GeorgiaRollers's neck of the woods. No good BBQ for at least 10 miles around.

By the way,, I can't understand Milo half the time either GR.

[omegajim]

i can't believe there is a significant portion of the south where one cannot find some variant of delicious bar b que.

[stp1971]

You know right?

Actually this Saturday in Vienna Georgia they are having one of the country's largest BBQ competitions.

I cannot wait till this Saturday!!!!

We are attending a Veteran's Ride in Tallapoosa Saturday morning and then heading south immediately afterwards.
Hope to find warmer weather and can not wait to see who will win "Miss Pig's Butt" swimsuit competition!!!

[intimid8er]

Originally Posted by omegajim

i can't believe there is a significant portion of the south where one cannot find some variant of delicious bar b que.

It's usually done very poorly.

Don't know how that works Jim. It's a real headscratcher. I think Mrs. Intimid8er and I figured it out. You could serve cow chips. As long as there's sauce to put on it. People will eat it. And line up for it too.

These guys that open joints, either pass the quality control on to underlings who don't care, or they dilute the process in the name of profit. They'll be willing to put out a substandard product in belief the sauce will carry them, or the public is too dumb to know good BBQ and that smoke and sauce will be the defining characteristic of the meat.

Good and well.....Noble to be sure....but if it's done poorly, or haphazardly....it shows. I've found BBQ to be a sliding scale or graded on a curve. Poor BBQ is usually rated as "Good" by the general public. Good or Fair BBQ is excellent. And Excellent...(which you almost never see at a shop...maybe on the competition circuit, but a rare bird out of it) BBQ is heaven on earth. What's amazing is absolutue crap, is sold daily, and people find it "decent" enough to return. What with a BBQ shop in nearly every neighborhood down here it's amazing they survive. It's the only genre I know of were lowering your standards is rewarding.

Good BBQ shouldn't need sauce. Sauce just is a way of covering up mistakes or poor process.

[intimid8er]

Edit: Sean will get some good BBQ in Vienna. The guys that compete on the national level make that one of their stops.

[GeorgiaRoller]

Originally Posted by stp1971

can not wait to see who will win "Miss Pig's Butt" swimsuit competition!!!

Your such a redneck.

I hear by gift the town of Tallapoosa to the great state of Alabama.

[NCxM50]

Originally Posted by intimid8er

It's usually done very poorly.

Don't know how that works Jim. It's a real headscratcher. I think Mrs. Intimid8er and I figured it out. You could serve cow chips. As long as there's sauce to put on it. People will eat it. And line up for it too.

These guys that open joints, either pass the quality control on to underlings who don't care, or they dilute the process in the name of profit. They'll be willing to put out a substandard product in belief the sauce will carry them, or the public is too dumb to know good BBQ and that smoke and sauce will be the defining characteristic of the meat.

Good and well.....Noble to be sure....but if it's done poorly, or haphazardly....it shows. I've found BBQ to be a sliding scale or graded on a curve. Poor BBQ is usually rated as "Good" by the general public. Good or Fair BBQ is excellent. And Excellent...(which you almost never see at a shop...maybe on the competition circuit, but a rare bird out of it) BBQ is heaven on earth. What's amazing is absolutue crap, is sold daily, and people find it "decent" enough to return. What with a BBQ shop in nearly every neighborhood down here it's amazing they survive. It's the only genre I know of were lowering your standards is rewarding.

Good BBQ shouldn't need sauce. Sauce just is a way of covering up mistakes or poor process.

I happen to be lucky enough to live about 30 minutes from a little joint called Bunns BBQ here in NC. Easily some of the best I've ever had, the trick is actually getting some. He doesn't open until 4 on weekdays, and once he sells out, he closes up shop. He opens at 10 on Saturdays, and he's usually sold out and closed up by 1ish. He does BBQ and he does ribs, and he does on batch per day of each. Line runs out the building, and people come in and buy enough to feed entire clans all at once. Don't get in line in time, you don't get any BBQ. Oh, and he doesn't serve sandwiches, he doesn't make slaw and he doesn't do sides. He does bake buns, and he does make a nice Carolina style sauce, but using either is your choice.

[inspiron]

Originally Posted by NCxM50

the trick is actually getting some ... Don't get in line in time, you don't get any ...

Where is that "out of context quote" thread again?

[intimid8er]

Originally Posted by NCxM50

I happen to be lucky enough to live about 30 minutes from a little joint called Bunns BBQ here in NC. Easily some of the best I've ever had, the trick is actually getting some. He doesn't open until 4 on weekdays, and once he sells out, he closes up shop. He opens at 10 on Saturdays, and he's usually sold out and closed up by 1ish. He does BBQ and he does ribs, and he does on batch per day of each. Line runs out the building, and people come in and buy enough to feed entire clans all at once. Don't get in line in time, you don't get any BBQ. Oh, and he doesn't serve sandwiches, he doesn't make slaw and he doesn't do sides. He does bake buns, and he does make a nice Carolina style sauce, but using either is your choice.

Ha..ha! I'm chuckling because the way you've described where you live. A 30 minute drive actually takes you somewhere. 30 minutes from anywhere, where I live, barely nets you ten to fifteen miles as the crow flies!

We've got a place 7 miles from here that would take me nearly an hour there and back to get to. But I'm not sure it'd be worth it. It's one of those legendary houses like you're talking about. The line forms early, and they close when they sell out of the day's allotment. They learned to start catering to the workday lunch crowd. However, once the meat is gone. They lock up.

[noahmercy]

There's a small chain of BBQ places north of Tampa Bay called Pit Boss. They used to have some really good Q' and if you liked sauce, they had a few good ones to choose from.

The best I've ever had, though, came from a place in Jacksonville. We called it Wilkie's (it might have been Wilkinson's, but I disremember now). It was just a little trailer on a weedy dirt lot under a big oak tree in a run-down section of town. Wilkie was an old black fella' and usually only had one other person in the little trailer with him and they both worked like fiends. I remember one time standing in line waiting for some of his bar b q along with bikers, businessmen, shoeless mothers with naked babies on their hips, and gangbangers. His food erased every socioeconomic and ethnic line it was so good. I always maintained that they should have served his food to the UN...we'd have had world peace in no time!

Dangit! Now you guys have got me thinking about one of the other restaurants I miss in Florida! Thanks a pantload...

[intimid8er]

Originally Posted by noahmercy

Dangit! Now you guys have got me thinking about one of the other restaurants I miss in Florida! Thanks a pantload...

Glad we could oblige!

[slammansam]

Gee where to start.
I guess I'll go WAAAAAY back to when I was a working teen and move forward from there.
Started out in Yorktown, Indiana and moved to Muncie, Indiana as a child.
Went to work at the local gas station and made a few bucks that started a itch that I just had to scratch.
I took off at 17 and hitch hiked to San Bernadino, CA stayed long enough to see the Pacific and get to know the area.
Hopped a Greyhound and headed back east thinking about home so I returned although briefly.
A few weeks later I was off again only this time to San Antonio, TX stayed a year or so and that itch started in again so I headed East to Fort Myers Beach, FL.
Stayed there 3 years and did alot of gambling on greyhound racing. Actually made a living betting the dogs.
Met my wife while back in Indiana attending a friends mothers funeral and proposed to her during the calling hours. What the hell was I thinking???
We dated 3 years sometimes from afar as I moved back to Florida and she finished her schooling.
I think I might have dated a few Florida girls at the same time, but hey 1200 miles apart I didnt think it would matter much.
Besides what ya dont know wont hurt ya right?
At any rate I had visitors show up unannounced and they insisted I go back to Indiana with them.
By then I had a live in girlfriend that was not too happy to hear about my fiancee in Indiana and that I was considering picking up on the spot and departing Florida the next day.
I did and it was the best move I made.
I have been married now for 28 years 2 sons and a pretty good life.
Still stuck in Indiana but I am planning retirement elsewhere.
I hate snow and cold weather since I am a highway worker so my next move will be south Southern Tennesee, Northern Alabama, South Carolina? Definately NOT Florida, Texas, or California.
I want peace and quiet and no wannbe thugs I have to deal with.
The kids today are for the most part punks with their asses hanging out of their pants and an attitude that the world owes them something.
I dunno but from where I come from you work and earn your pay and earn respect nobody ever owed it to you.
I'm probably best suited for country life where my neighbor is at least a 1/2 mile away.