Big Joe's Polka Barbeque

 

June 27, 2005

 

I want to tell about a revelation that I had a few months ago.

 

If you own a satellite dish, you already know that the reception is so far above cable, it ceases to be an argument.  I've had both.  Recently.  I like satellite.  End of story.

 

Except for one thing.

 

Satellite TV carries a channel called RFD.  It's primarily for people who own a farm of some kind.  I do watch.  Not all the time, mind you, but often enough to say that I watch and it not be a lie.

 

It's fascinating - like watching a gristly, multi-vehicle accident.  At some point, you know you must tear yourself away and feel shame for looking at it, but there is something vaguely habit forming about both.

 

The pièce de résistance is something called Big Joe's Polka Show.  This thing goes beyond astounding.  It is jaw-dropping.

 

Now, I want you to understand that BEFORE my revelation, I would have written a column about how funny Big Joe's Polka Show was and the silly people dancing to mediocre music and wearing clothes that you only see in bad tourist slide shows produced by a high school for the local businesspersons' association.

 

But I have had a revelation and I can't anymore.

 

I know that there are people from, say, Prosciuttito, Italy, a place where good taste is not only for sale, but is the main product of the region.  What would they think of a South Carolina beach music program, or a program by Stomp?

 

I'll tell you.  They would think that music that we love was "quaint."   To some, who lived in that world of culture vultures, it would seem like something akin to watching a gristly, multi-vehicle accident. 

 

And THAT was when I realized that hinky-dinky may be somebody else's cool.

 

Those of you who know me, know that I love cricket.  I love to watch the bowlers bowl and the strikers strike.  I love to watch the judges give the finger that means "1 run."  I love to hear the fielders yell "HOWZAT?" after each play.  To me, there is nothing more grand than a five-day game between Australia and England.

 

But it doesn't matter that cricket is a harder game than baseball, just as it doesn't matter that Stomp's music is more complicated than any new atonal composition favored by the glitterati.  I doesn't matter.

 

That's why, when the State newspaper declared that some place in Florence had the state's best barbeque, rather than Henry's in Greenville, or the shack with no name in Denmark, or the OTHER Duke's in North Charleston which only serves Thursday through Saturday, I didn't complain.  I didn't wince.  I didn't froth at the mouth and swear a holy war.  Besides.  In a way, it WAS true.  To SOME people, that place in Florence, rather than the firemen in Union on the 4^th of July, or the sumptuous grilled Big Joe from the friendly midlands bigot, is better.

 

And that's just fine.

 

Because THIS Fourth of July, I will eat from a pig barbequed over glowing oak coals for 18 hours (overnight) by my brother-in-law.  No one.  No one barbeques a better pig.  Union's Michael Nichols is God's gift to the building world, true.  His construction work is never less than perfect.  But he is also a gift to the experience of culinary exquisiteness.  One that is only experienced by his family, to which, luckily, I can lay claim.

 

Think of it this way: figuratively speaking, while the rest of the world is watching Big Joe's Polka Show  this Fourth of July, I will be visiting Heaven.

 

 

Dick Anderson