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PHOTO BY WILLIAM BROWNING
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A weekend function at Morning Star Baptist Church led Johnny Edwards to leave the trucking business and open his own barbecue joint, The Rib Shack.
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Former trucker takes to cooking BY WILLIAM BROWNING
When Johnny Edwards agreed to cook for a weekend function at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in the late 1990s, he was a worn-out truck driver. When a member of the congregation approached him afterward and said, “I don’t know what it is you do, but you need to be barbecuing,” he became a cook. “I got out of trucking and got into cooking,” he said. Not long after that, Edwards and his wife, Shirley, were brainstorming for a motto for The Rib Shack, the barbecue business they opened in 2002. “I said, ‘Well, let’s just tell ’em what the deal is,’” Shirley said. “We don’t give yesterday’s meat. You’re going to get it that day straight from the grill.” And so The Rib Shack’s motto became, quite naturally, “Fresh off the grill.”
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A vegetarian’s nightmare, The Rib Shack stands on the corner of Main and Palace streets. There is no place to sit, not much of a parking lot and no shade. Lazy smoke always seems to be curling up out of one of the six grills inside. Customers relay orders directly to the cook via the spoken word, not the written. It is not a place for self-important types. Edwards has no problem identifying what days The Rib Shack is open. “Wednesday through Saturday.” It’s the hours of operation that he struggles to formulate. The answer goes like this: He 12 / Leflore Illustrated Spring and Summer 2009
arrives at 7 a.m. Meat’s on the grill by 8 a.m. Customers occasionally arrive at 9:30 a.m. to reserve an order. When pressed for a closing time, Edwards finally admitted, “We stay open ’til it’s gone.” v v v Barbecue ribs are blue-collar food. They inspire loyalty (to cooking process), secrecy (to the ingredients of rubs and sauces) and dedication (preparation takes hours). Edwards, an intense 54-year-old with thick forearms and a flat stomach, can handle all three. He mans his grills alone. He’s ex-military and won’t betray his sauces’ ingredients, but keeps the secret with a smile. “All your ingredients, you got to keep them to yourself.” However, he does have an opinion about what’s most important in the preparation of grilled meat, especially ribs. “You’ve got to get the fire right. That’s the main thing. You’ve got to know how to control the heat.” For his heat, Edwards uses a mixture of charcoal and wood. “I’m one of the last old cowboys left not using electricity,” he said. “There’s very few of us left.” The other ingredient to success, he said, is a smiling approach to customers. “If I show up with a frown on my face, folks are going to take it off,” he said. “You can’t serve people with a frown, anyway; you’ve got to serve ’em with a smile.”
v v v Though raggedness permeates the place, it’s hard to miss the signs of success hanging around The Rib Shack. For the first time in a decade, Edwards bought a new truck last year. Of his three children, one has graduated from college, one will in May and another is a junior at Jackson State University. Edwards, who to the naked eye makes his living flipping meat over a fire, has footed the bill for all that education. Shirley, who in the past has only handled “the money and taxes,” has recently expanded her role at The Rib Shack. “She’s going to start helping me see the lunch crowd through,” Johnny said. The place averages 50 customers a day, not counting a catering job here and there. About 100 pounds of ribs are sold each week. Football season is the most hectic, with spring a close second. But isn’t the summer when everyone wants ribs and grilled meat? “You’d think that, wouldn’t you?” Edwards responded. “In the summer, everyone fires up their own grills; think they don’t need me.” Come fall, though, when cool winds hit the air and people yearn for something pulled straight from a grill, Johnny Edwards will still be doing what that now deceased churchgoer told him he should be doing a decade ago: barbecuing. LI