BBQ

I got to thinking about BBQ this morning—yes, I probably would eat it for breakfast.  I’ve always said that if you slapped some barbecue sauce on it, I’d take a bite of it!  (Might be a bit slower to do so these days).  I’ve tried just about all meats with the sauce—beef, chicken, pork.  We would grill a big chunk of bologna with bbq sauce when I was a kid.  YUM!  

JoeAnn Ballard and her own four children

I’m recalling decades ago when I was president of the Nazarene Association of Social Workers I was on various committees with the general church and found myself in Kansas City fairly often.  Back then Republic/Northwest had a hub in Memphis so my first leg stopped there first.  On one flight JoeAnn Ballard, who was attending the same meeting in Kansas City, got on the plane with a huge aluminum tray of Memphis bbq intended for our gathering.  JoeAnn proceeded to put it in the overhead compartment.  She had no trouble doing so in that she was a taller woman.  The smell of the bbq wafted throughout the plane the whole trip to KC. 

‘Mama JoeAnn’ and her husband ‘daddy Monroe’ fostered 75 kids between 1968 and 2008 in Memphis, plus raising their own four.  JoeAnn had been abandoned as an infant and placed in foster care with her siblings at the age of six months.  It was a very loving, positive experience for her that she then created for so many others.

“We were going to help them by any means necessary,” Ballard said. “We did whatever we needed to do. After teaching all day, my husband would take an 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift doing odd jobs. In the summer, we painted houses, cut down trees, mowed lawns and collected cans for money.”

“My parents were very resourceful,” echoed Ballard’s biological daughter, Ephie Johnson, 52. “My mom would go to the back of the grocery and dollar stores and ask if she could have the discarded things. She wore the same three dresses to church every Sunday for years, and my daddy would shop at thrift stores. They never did anything for their benefit. It was always about benefiting other people.”

Washington Post, Sept 2020

Some of Mama JoeAnn and ‘Daddy Monroe's seventy-five foster kids

In 1978 JoeAnn established Neighborhood Christian Centers (NCC)  which has grown over the past 43 years from one center to nine across Memphis. The organization supports people and families in crisis throughout the city, providing emergency food, housing, job training, legal and financial counseling, tutoring and other critical services to those in need.

JoeAnn would tell you, “There’s desperate need out there, what people need most is love.”

And that is what I felt from my uncle Leroy, dad’s brother.  He taught me by his example that love pursues.  We go after the object of affections…whether that is an object like a car, a place or a person.  My uncle loved bbq as well and every time he heard I was headed to Tulsa he’d call to say he’d found yet another bbq place to try out.  Most the time it was just he and I.  At times my cousin Scott would join us.  

Jeannie and I have tried all sorts of bbq restaurants—or joints—around.  KC Masterpiece had a fantastic place right in Kansas City years ago where I first tried burnt ends.  No one has ever matched those burnt ends!  It’s ironic that the cuts of meat—like brisket—that used to be the least desirable are now the bbq delicacies.  

So as the saying goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  You’re even further ahead with me if you’ve got bbq slathered on top!