The Loading Dock, Bullocks, Durham, NC

Off this morning to North Carolina on what I am trying to build into our family mentality as the annual pilgrimage home. After negotiating such decisions as parking at Newark: offsite (ride in little red bus to terminal -- cool [to vehicle loving kids]!) or onsite (ride in Monorail -- even cooler!), we'll fly and get there.

This afternoon I've got to go pick up barbeque for the gathering at Mom's house on Monday. Because barbeque is a traditional, old line industry, the restaurant -- Bullock's in Durham -- is closed Sunday and also Monday. The last time when I went to pick up Q, a couple of year's ago because last year I didn't have to because we snagged the leftover Q from my high school reunion, I got to the restaurant at around 4:30 and the parking lot was packed with people eating dinner. I'm telling you, this is a very Southern place. It's partly Early Bird special mentality, partly people still on an agrarian schedule, however they in fact pass their days.

I go in and go up to the register and tell the lady (naturally) that I'm here to pick up the order for the "Kraus" family (lets' say). She tells me to go outside and go round to the loading dock.

So I do. And this is where it gets really Southern, downright atavistic. I go into the kitchen and say "hello" and out comes a black guy waiter wear, white shirt with bow tie and black pants, also jerry curls. I tell him I'm here to pick up our order and he asks my name and how much of what and goes back out. Then he comes back and announces in a deep southern accent that our order is being handled by "the honorable Jerry Bullock himself, the third proprietor of this fine establishment." The honorable Jerry appears, confirms my order and starts getting it together, and I head back out on the loading dock and back mom's car up to it, as per his instructions. By now a few people are either carrying my order out or are hanging out on the dock, smoking Kools. Jerry, the bossman, is the sole white person seen in the kitchen. Everyone else is deep south black, deep accent, unhurried, irony of untold depth.

It was like something out of an un-PC movie from the 40s, I hadn't seen this society for years, save for snippets in Ira Sach's Memphis-set movie The Delta, and wouldn't, until I visited Princeton's own Nassau Club. But that's a different story.