My brother Jim sent me the video link from The Oxford American, which is more or less Garden and Gun for smart people. It is a supplement to an earlier John T. Edge piece, Folk Witness, about the question of community and “exchanges unadulterated by artifice” that “confirm that humans are at the helm… complicated souls capable of responding to circumstance and necessity with brilliance.” (I told you it was for smart people.)
Do watch the video. It’s about D & D Barbecue, in the Sylvan Hills section of Southwest Atlanta. I’ve never eaten there — had never heard of it until Jim sent me the link — but it’s like a lot of places at which I have eaten as a boy and during my decades working on voting rights cases. It made me think of Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway, South Carolina. D & D is very urban, “in the ‘hood,” as their owner says, and Scott’s is in about as rural location as you can find; but both are unadulterated by artifice, like Amazing Grace and Loretta Lynn, and humans are at the helm. There is a warmth there, and a sense of community, especially at Scott’s, which seems to be the heart of a community in a way you rarely find in urban areas. But D&D seems like a good place, a place you should visit.
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