Our friend Stan Meadows called in to chat from the road yesterday. He is now semi-retired from Trenasse, and has taken to a newly-purchased motorhome with his hound dog LW for a trek across our great land.
Stan travels a bit more sensibly than the Marys, staying in each place for 5 or so days, to get the feel of it. Right now he is in the Ozarks, where he has discovered some great barbecue and fried chicken.
I had hoped he’d pass through the Tamale Trail up the Mississippi Delta, but he went straight to Missouri to sample great barbecue, which I had no idea Missouri was known for. Stan attributes it to the local plentitude of hickory wood for smoking.
So far he has dropped in on a place called Smalley’s Convenience store where his world was opened by country gravy. Yes, country gravy, he says. His tip for making it special - honey. Which seems like cheating.
He’s also impressed with Arnold’s 21 Burgers, where there is an actual pig named Arnold. No wonder he left the city - you just don’t see that. But mostly we talked about the food Stan has been cooking right at home in the motorhome,(like these frying pork chops on his open grill), and the culture around that lifestyle. Very different from the one he lived in the Warehouse District here, and the beaches of 30A.
Stan is going to keep us abreast of his discoveries on the road, and we’ll see if he really does get kicks from Route 66.
