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Mutton — The Movie

May 29, 2009 in Films, Public Introspection | 3 comments

A few days ago, my brother sent me a link to Mutton:The Movie, a 20 minute documentary about bar-be-que’d mutton and Owensboro.

Mutton — The Movie
While the documentary is cheesy in parts, it taught me new things and filled me with a bit of nostalgia.  I was born in Owensboro and remember Old Hickory, Moonlight, and the International Bar-be-Que festival.  Even though we moved from Kentucky when I was 6, my grandparents lived there for seven or eight more years.  We’d go visit in summers and occasionally at Christmas and we’d always eat mutton, typically from Old Hickory (even though Moonlight is the famous one in town).  Grandma, Pappy, Andre and I would stop by for dinner on a Saturday, or maybe we’d get some and take it back home.  Any visits to Owensboro required at least one mutton stop.  The last time I was there (in the summer of 2003), Andre and I hit Moonlight when it opened, got a sandwich, then packed a few pounds in a cooler to take back with us.

The folks in the movie are right; mutton has a unique flavor that’s hard to explain.  Many people don’t like it.  I think there’s certainly a gamey taste in the meat.  Some friends that tried it when I was in high school said it reminded them of beef jerky in flavor, if not texture.  I usually eat it chopped and wet, but the film gave me an appetite for some sliced mutton, with beans and a pickle.  Crap, now I’m hungry.

I learned a few things from the film, too.  I didn’t realize the whole bar-be-que festival had it’s origins in church picnic fundraisers.  Owensboro publishes a schedule of church picnics, so you can have the stuff every weekend, if you want!  Nor did I realize so much of the area was Catholic — a lot of the major pit crews are from Catholic churches.  We never really went to church when we lived there, so I missed out on that whole aspect of Western Kentucky life.

Finally, the film made me think of my grandparents, especially my grandfather, whom we called Pappy.  Hearing those old men speak — the way they said particular words (“fanger”), with this accent that’s a wonderful mix of southern and midwestern — reminded me of how Pappy talked.  You can hear it a little in my grandmother’s voice even now.  Although she was born and raised in South Carolina, she lived many years in Owensboro, working for General Electric and putting up with all of us.

Looks like we may need to take a trip to the International Bar-be-que festival next year.

Happy Birthday Andre

March 27, 2009 in Observations | 1 comment

I just want to wish my brother a happy 29th birthday today.

One of my favorite memories of my brother was when I was in graduate school and living in Charlottesville.  We had some family business to take care of in Owensboro, Kentucky, where we were both born.  Andre drove his brand new Jetta up to Virginia, spent the night, then we left early the next morning for Kentucky.  Driving hard all day, we made it to Owensboro at about 5:00 that Sunday afternoon.  I had made reservations at the Executive Inn which, in my memory, was the nicest hotel in town and, (I thought) a steal at $70 a night.  While the hotel still occupied its place on the banks of the Ohio, its grandeur was somewhat diminished.  The hotel wasn’t a dump, per se, just . . . vacant.  Andre and I wandered around the sprawling complex, discovering a hidden indoor pool, blue and glowing and empty.  It was like something out of a Stephen King story — two brothers at this vancant hotel, stalked by a crazed killer.  The red neon lights seeping through our balcony window only added to that atmosphere. The only thing we were stalked by, though, was boredom.  Even though it was 2004, Owensboro still rolled up its streets on Sunday night; there wasn’t even a movie that started after 5:00.

The next morning we fled the Executive Inn and did our business at the bank before heading over to Moonlight Bar-B-Que.  We waited in the parking lot for the place to open, then had a mutton sandwich for brunch.  FIlling our cooler with a few pounds of bar-b-que’d mutton and burgoo, we turned the Jetta back to Virginia and drove home.  A whirlwind trip, to be sure, but very fun.

I am proud of my brother and wish him a happy birthday.

(Sad epilogue: I just found out the Executive Inn closed last year).