Did you notice last spring how the national media-the New York Times, Newsweek, NPR, all of them-almost simultaneously began talking about “the Bubba vote”? I seriously doubt that many of these folks have actually met Bubba, much less discussed politics with him, but at the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Contest they sure could have. 

Just before I went to Memphis, I’d spent a couple of days in Washington, reading college professors’ grant applications at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Imagine, if you can, leaving earnest consideration of such subjects as how-texts-reflect-and-resist the-emergence-of-information-as-the form-capital-takes-in-the-signifying-environment to go hang out with the Porkaholic Beefbusters, ZZ Chop, and Pap-Paw’s Pig Pokers as they cooked pig, drank beer, and raised hell. I don’t like to brag, but a lesser man would have suffered cultural whiplash. 

Yeah, Bubba was there in force. And Tyrone was, too. (I don’t think that piece of shorthand’s going to catch on with NPR, do you?) Southern barbecue has always been a fine, biracial, working-class enterprise, and it still is. In Memphis, private teams were mostly all-black or all-white, but there were plenty of each, and the spectators and some corporate and government teams were unselfconsciously salt-and-pepper. We all sweltered together cheerfully in the 90-degree heat. 

But I wasn’t there as a mere tourist. No, sir. I had been invited to judge the barbecue. So that evening, while the competitors were applying mysterious dry-rubs to their meat and getting the coals just right for a long night of cook ing, I walked up Beale Street to the Orpheum, a splendidly restored old down town movie theater, for an orientation meeting and reception. 

It struck me once again that there’s something synthetic now, and a little sad, about Memphis’ most famous street. Urban renewal has turned it into a sort of Potemkin village, three or four blocks of downtown storefronts surrounded by acres of parking lots. Sever al clubs, including a new one owned by the great B. B. King, offer genuinely good blues, but the neighborhood’s tradition has been demolished almost as thoroughly as its architecture. 

But that may be just as well, from the Convention Bureau’s point of view. The old Beale Street would have been hard to market to most out-of-towners, be cause its whole point was that it was a black street, the heart of black Memphis under Jim Crow. When Elvis came to Schwab’s department store to buy his first sharp threads, he was making more than a fashion statement. That time has passed, though, and if urban renew al hadn’t killed the old Beale, the end of segregation probably would have, just the way it killed black business districts in other Southern towns. Schwab’s is still in business, which is something, but its window is full of tourist souvenirs. 

In the absence of a living tradition, Beale Street’s entrepreneurs now try to emulate New Orleans. Since my last visit the blues clubs and obscene T-shirt vendors had been joined by oyster bars, beignet stands, and converted Slurpee machines spewing frozen daiquiris into paper “go-cups.” There aren’t enough drag queens yet, but my sister says they’re working on it. Memphis probably needs to import some Louisiana Catholics, too: Beale Street’s borderline desperate “are-we-having-fun-yet?” atmosphere feels mighty Protestant to me. 

Anyway, I’d been feeling pretty smug about getting picked as a judge, but when I got to the theater l found that the honor was spread pretty thin: a couple of hundred other judges were already there. As the scats filled up, I checked out my colleagues. Some of the black folks were dressed to the nines, but shorts, T-shirts, and gimme caps seemed to be the uniform of the day for white boys. I was almost the only one in a coat and tie, the overdressed Eastern dude again. 

As I waited, I listened to some of my judicial brethren-guys from Kentucky and Alabama and a North Carolinian from the great barbecue town of Lexington—discuss other contests they had judged. One told me that he had completed a judge-training course offered by something called the Sanctioned Barbecue Contest Network, which sponsors some thirty major contests a year. Lord knows how many bootleg, minor-league contests there are, but the schedules in a fat newspaper called National Barbecue News suggest that there are enough to keep you busy most weekends if you’re inclined that way. (Later, talking to some of the contestants, I discovered that some folks are. We Americans can make a way of life out of some of the damnedest things, can’t we?)

Listening to these guys, I began to wonder if I was out of my depth, but I was reassured when the orientation began. Obviously I wasn’t the only novice. Our instructor began with the basics (“If you don’t cat pork, please let us know”) and moved on to matters of deportment (“Stay sober until after the judging”) and ethics (“If your ex-wife’s boyfriend is on a team, you should disqualify yourself”). He told us that prizes had already been given for the best “area,” for hog calling, for showmanship, and for something called the “Miss Piggy in Italy” contest. (One team’s Miss Piggy, I read in the paper, was provided with an hon or guard of Bacchae from the International Barbecue Bikini Team.)

There were also prizes in a category for “other meats,” which includes everything from exotica like gator, snake, rabbit, and ostrich to chicken and beef (sorry about that, Texans). We were given to understand, however, that we were the elite: judges of barbecue, which starts with B, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for pork. 

We were introduced to the rating scheme, told what to look for in the meat and sauce, and warned not to be impressed by how much money teams spent on their areas, cookers, or uni forms. Our instructor explained why there were so many of us. There were nearly two hundred teams, he said, some with entries in more than one of the three divisions (ribs, shoulder, or whole hog). Each entry was to be judged by six of us, and each judge was to judge only three to six entries, because you don’t want your barbecue judged by someone whose tastebuds have already been seared by the competition. 

Fair enough. I was as ready as I was going to be. 

The next morning I found the head quarters tent, checked in, and put on my special apron and judge’s badge. I was to be a rib judge, and “on-site,” as opposed to “blind.” Each on-site judge was assigned a keeper: mine was a pleas ant lady from Memphis who had done this several times before. Her job was to get me to the right places at the right times, and incidentally to rate my performance as a judge (sobriety counts, I gathered). 

Waiting nervously for the tasting to begin, I talked with another judge, a man from Boston down for his seventh Memphis contest. He had taken up barbecuing to impress a girlfriend whose previous beau had been a Southerner, he said, and he assured me that he now produces the best barbecue in Massachusetts and upstate New York, which (he added modestly) ain’t saying much. 

At last the signal came to begin the judging. As the blind judges went into their tent, where the platters were arriving, the rest of us were led off to begin our tasting. All the fun and games, Miss Piggy and all the rest, were irrelevant now. We were down where the pork meets the palate. 

Well, I’ll cut this short: the worst I had was good, but the best-cooked by a team called the Rowdy Southern Swine, from Kossuth, Mississippi-was out of this world. The smell of the smoked pork made my mouth water. When I picked up a rib and examined it, as instructed, I saw a crisp brown crust over moist tender meat, pink from smoking, the color even from end to end. The meat came easily off the hone, but kept its integrity (none of the mushiness that comes from parboiling). This meat had been cooked with dry, cool smoke, and lots of patience. A dry rub scaled in the juices, but most of the fat had long since melted and dripped away. The rib tasted as good as it smelled: sweet and smokey; crunchy, chewy, and melt-in-your-mouth, all at the same time. 

And the sauces . . . Well, after 23 years in Chapel Hill I’ve become fond of simple vinegar and red pepper. East Carolina Minimalism. It respects the meat. But, oh my goodness, there’s a lot to be said for Overmountain Baroque, too-except you can’t say it without sounding like an ad in Southern Living: 

A symphony of Southern flavors: tart Sea Island tomatoes, mellow onions from Vidalia, sweet-and sour molasses from Louisiana cane fields, and the Latin kick of peppers from South Texas. A sauce the color of Tennessee clay, with the fiery heat of an Alabama afternoon and the long slow sweetness of a Kentucky evening. 

Or, worse, like a wine critic: 

A sauce of great character and finesse. Bright claret color, with a complex peppery nose. Lusty full-bodied taste: tomato catsup and chili the principal notes, with a definite garlic background and hints of-could it be grape jelly? Balance sustained throughout. An assertive finish and a pronounced afterburn. 

(I just made all that up, actually, except for the grape jelly, which I’ll bet any thing was the secret ingredient in one sauce I tasted. And why not? Apple sauce isn’t the only fruit that goes well with pork.) 

Anyway, I was pleased to find that I could discriminate intelligently among several first-rate plates of ribs. After I’d filled out my rating forms, I went back to two of the teams for second helpings and for the beer that I’d turned down earlier, with an eye on my keeper. I also had a pleasant chat with the Kossuth D. A.: small-town Southern lawyers generally know their barbecue.

I had a date for supper with my sister that evening (just a salad, thank you), so I missed the announcement of the winners, but the next morning’s Commercial Appeal reported that the championship in the ribs division and overall Grand Championship had gone to a team from-well, from Illinois, of all places. It was no accident, either: the same guys had won two years earlier. They graciously pointed out that they come from Murphysboro, only 35 miles north of the Mason-Dixon line, and you have to admire them for going back to basics (no high-tech cooker, just concrete blocks with a grate and a piece of sheet metal to hold the smoke in). Rut, still, from Illinois! 

It just goes to show what Yankees can do when they put their minds to it. But I’ll bet the Rowdy Southern Swine had more fun.