By PHIL NOBLE
Last week I had lunch with three old friends. All of us are proud South Carolina natives, amateur history buffs and great fans of BBQ. We decided to meet at a new BBQ joint that we were all anxious to try.
As a member in good standing of the SC BBQ Association, I felt it was by solemn duty to educate my friends to the fact that BBQ was invented in South Carolina — as indeed it was. This led to one of the more interesting lunches I’ve had in a long time as we attempted to one up each other in our knowledge of state’s weird and wonderful history.
Although, as a reader, you can’t indulge with us in the joys of our slow-cooked feast with spicy mustard sauce, I can elucidate you as to 11 of the most interesting facts about our state’s history, as determined that day by the South Carolina BBQ Gang of Four.
First, the BBQ. We really did invent it here. Going back forever, Native Americans had been cooking deer, alligator, turkey and all sorts of local critters using the slow, pit-cooked method we call BBQ. It was only when the Spanish showed up with pigs at Santa Elena (Parris Island) in 1566 that the grand delicacy of BBQ was born. It’s all true — look it up at SCBarBeQue.com.
Second, an atomic bomb fell on South Carolina. The good news is that the atomic part of the bomb did not go off or you would certainly have heard about it before now. It was on a chilly March morning in 1958 that a B-47 jet dropped a nuclear bomb 15,000 feet into the back yard of Walter Gregg and his family of Mars Bluff, just east of Florence. The plutonium core didn’t explode, but the 6,000 pounds of conventional high explosives detonated, transforming the Gregg’s vegetable garden into a vast muddy crater and destroying their house. There’s a historic marker there.
Third, we make more tires in South Carolina than any other state — including those huge tires that are known by the technical term “Big Ass Tires.” Gov. Nikki Haley talks about this all the time — the number of tires, not the Big Ass part.
Fourth, Larry Doby from Camden was the second black man to play major league baseball after Jackie Robinson. (Nobody remembers #2.) In 1947, Doby played for the Cleveland Indians — so that would make him the first to play in the American League.
Fifth, when it was built in 1793, the Santee Canal was the largest public works construction project in the world since the Pyramids in Egypt – at least that what the exhibit says at the welcome center. The planters needed the canal to ship their products from the outlying plantations to the port of Charleston.
Continue reading here: http://thetandd.com/news/opinion/s-c-history-it-all-started-with-bbq/article_b315e856-8712-11e4-9b66-130917a66664.html
Last week I had lunch with three old friends. All of us are proud South Carolina natives, amateur history buffs and great fans of BBQ. We decided to meet at a new BBQ joint that we were all anxious to try.
As a member in good standing of the SC BBQ Association, I felt it was by solemn duty to educate my friends to the fact that BBQ was invented in South Carolina — as indeed it was. This led to one of the more interesting lunches I’ve had in a long time as we attempted to one up each other in our knowledge of state’s weird and wonderful history.
Although, as a reader, you can’t indulge with us in the joys of our slow-cooked feast with spicy mustard sauce, I can elucidate you as to 11 of the most interesting facts about our state’s history, as determined that day by the South Carolina BBQ Gang of Four.
First, the BBQ. We really did invent it here. Going back forever, Native Americans had been cooking deer, alligator, turkey and all sorts of local critters using the slow, pit-cooked method we call BBQ. It was only when the Spanish showed up with pigs at Santa Elena (Parris Island) in 1566 that the grand delicacy of BBQ was born. It’s all true — look it up at SCBarBeQue.com.
Second, an atomic bomb fell on South Carolina. The good news is that the atomic part of the bomb did not go off or you would certainly have heard about it before now. It was on a chilly March morning in 1958 that a B-47 jet dropped a nuclear bomb 15,000 feet into the back yard of Walter Gregg and his family of Mars Bluff, just east of Florence. The plutonium core didn’t explode, but the 6,000 pounds of conventional high explosives detonated, transforming the Gregg’s vegetable garden into a vast muddy crater and destroying their house. There’s a historic marker there.
Third, we make more tires in South Carolina than any other state — including those huge tires that are known by the technical term “Big Ass Tires.” Gov. Nikki Haley talks about this all the time — the number of tires, not the Big Ass part.
Fourth, Larry Doby from Camden was the second black man to play major league baseball after Jackie Robinson. (Nobody remembers #2.) In 1947, Doby played for the Cleveland Indians — so that would make him the first to play in the American League.
Fifth, when it was built in 1793, the Santee Canal was the largest public works construction project in the world since the Pyramids in Egypt – at least that what the exhibit says at the welcome center. The planters needed the canal to ship their products from the outlying plantations to the port of Charleston.
Continue reading here: http://thetandd.com/news/opinion/s-c-history-it-all-started-with-bbq/article_b315e856-8712-11e4-9b66-130917a66664.html