Barbecue and inspiration just come easy for the Dennis Family

STORY AND PHOTOS BY DAVID D. SINGLETON

Most anyone with a thesaurus and a keyboard can write about barbecue, and there aren’t too many writers that haven’t. Major newspapers, upscale magazines and network television executives have all, at one time or another, sent a savvy wordsmith, with a suitably edgy photographer in tow, down to eastern NC to sample our proudly regional take on roast pork, send in 700 words, upload a few shadowy photos and get on the next plane back. So what’s left to be said? I mean the big city writers and producers have surely covered it all; and they pretty much have, except perhaps to say that all that publicity has turned barbecue, specifically whole-hog pork barbecue, that flavorful and endlessly curious mélange of disparate roasted pig parts, chopped and chopped again until their origins lose all vestige of their former identity and reformed homogenously and yet gloriously to serve a higher purpose; a gestalt of porcine pulchritude, not to mention a real gullet tickler, has lifted this humble staple of funerals and family reunions to a regional icon here in the East.

It’s one thing to write about barbecue, and it’s something else entirely to wrangle 200-pound hogs over smoldering oak and pecan, day after day, and create a cultural benchmark from a staple commodity. I’ve personally dabbled in the fine art of the pigpickin’, but I don’t have the back to make a living out of the trade. It’s hard work, where you get up early out of duty. If for no other reason than it’d be a shame to keep your customers waiting.

Living as we do in the buckle of the pig belt, there are several notable pitmasters to hone in on as the subject of these particular 700 words and, if I can keep this gig long enough, I’ll get around to each. But the road on this day takes me down Hwy. 17 and then west on the once-desolate state highway 102 in to the quintessential crossroads known as Ayden- to enjoy a nap-inducing sized portion of pork, paired up with a ultra-low specific gravity corn pone and locally grown but world-class collards, cooked to a mulled mess and chopped so fine that it practically enters the fourth dimension. Add it all up, and it means I’m headed to Bum’s Restaurant.

It’s been over 20 years since I first met Latham “Bum” Dennis, and the introduction was as memorable as the fare. Walking in the venerable eatery and, pausing to check out the long line of well-worn steam tables, I ordered a barbecue plate with slaw and, not wanting to make a mistake, went for a generic description and in so doing, made a guffaw that got me mocked by the man himself. I asked for ‘greens.’

“Son, if they’re green and you’re in my place, they’re collards!” He wasn’t trying to be smart, but he was emphatic.

I looked back incredulously at local newspaper publisher, Justice-of-the-Peace and general man about town Mitchell Oakley, whom I was having lunch with. Ineffectively holding back a chuckle, Mitchell quietly told me that these were his collards, meaning they come from his farm. For Bum Dennis, it was personal affront to the very vegetable that is celebrated annually here in Ayden. There’s actually a collard festival in this town, and my tourist self walks right in the front door and calls them ‘greens.’

All of a sudden I felt like Pee Wee Herman at the Alamo. It felt like the whole bustling lunch crowd was howling and slapping their thighs; everyone shout-whispering to each other “he didn’t know what collards were.”

The room settled down as I did with Mitchell and the plate. For me, barbecue has never been about superlatives. I assume all barbeque is good until my taste buds tell me otherwise. While there is much one can speculate with respect to barbecue’s consistency, flavor, smoke, spiciness and moisture, I leave the competitive rankings to the other guys. All I can tell is that the barbecue, and the collards on this day, hit all the right notes.

I’ve been back to Bum’s a few times since, but it had been a while. That’s why when I recently learned of Bum’s recent passing, it seemed only logical to make another pilgrimage to the town, legend holds, that was named after a den of thieves.

It’s hard to tell where Ayden ends and the Dennis’ barbecue lineage begins. Going back to the early 19th Century, when Skilton Dennis first pulled in to town with a horse and wagon toting that first pig, some six generations have been in the business in some form or another.

The latest is Bum’s son, Larry who has managed the pit and the operation for the last few years as the Patriarch’s health began to fail. I order my plate and look around and there’s Larry, trading salutations with practically every customer that walks through the door. It’s an overused expression, but this is a man who’s never met a stranger.

Larry graciously shows me around, including the cinderblock cookhouse out back where two pits are still smoldering. “I’m done cooking for today,” he says. After all, it was almost noon.

We share some notes on the history of the place, but eventually put the note pad down. Sometimes a conversation is so easy that even with a stranger, documentation seems awkward. What I gathered was his dad opened up Bum’s in 1963 and moved into it’s current location on Main St a couple of years later. In addition to the lineage that includes Bum, Skilton and Otter Dennis, there’s some relation (a cousin perhaps) that owns the Skylight Inn, Ayden’s more auspicious barbecue house, located about a mile down the road. I bet if you stand halfway between the two, you could smell the smoke coming from both. I reeked to hog heaven after a few minutes in the smoke house.

We talk barbecue (Bum’s only uses ‘top hogs’ that grow to full weight) hush puppies (when to pull them at the exact moment the dough turns to fluff) and of course about the aforementioned collard greens (I’ll never make that mistake again); occasionally interrupted with well-wishes for an exiting customer, he turns his natural curiosity to me.

“So you just ride around and eat and write stories?” Larry asked about my assignment. I replied that about summed it up and he’s quick with his rejoinder.

“You need a motorcycle. You see all those guys riding around on Harleys? That’s what they do. Ride around and eat…. And they get home by dark. Just like your column says.”

I felt inspired. After making a quick stop at a local car show, I plied my way over the back roads of Southern Pitt County, losing count of all of the far-flung subdivisions popping up out of the old tobacco fields and contributing to Greenville’s relentless suburban sprawl. Maybe Larry’s right, I think to myself. Perhaps I should get me a motorcycle. Maybe make some new friends to go ride around and eat. That sounds great. Maybe they could tip me off to a destination that hasn’t been covered by ‘Our State’, a real hole in the wall that no one’s ever heard of. Maybe like a place that, I don’t know, serves Clams Casino and plays reggae music; or maybe to try and find the best gas-station-hot-dog in Jones County. How hard could that be? Just like his Dad some sixty years ago, Larry Dennis seems to be on to something.