I was having a bite to eat in a local BBQ place the other day and noticed these photos on the wall. In a small town in central Georgia there is a town called Ft. Valley and back in the 1920’s they had a annual festival starting in about 1922 and, I believe it may have ended in about 1930/32. What caught my eye was the fact that the meat was kept in a ‘refrigerated’ car on a spur beside the grounds until it was ready to be cooked. What an unusual scene for a model railroad!
300 pigs and 200 cords of wood to cook them and it sold for 50 cents a plate. There were 6 pits approx. 600 feet long.
I’m not sure where all the people came from. Macon, Ga is about 25 miles away and it probably had a population of 50, 000 or so. As far as I know there was no military installation in Ft. Valley at the time. I’ve read where Ft. Valley got it’s name in error, when the residents sent the paper work into Atlanta, the state capital, Fox Valley (then intended name) was misread for Ft. Valley.
Where’s the potato salad? Got to have that with the pork… How much beer was drunk to wash it all down? Oh, that’s right, it was Prohibition back then…And how much of the pork did the 600 chefs and their assistants eat?
Just imagine how long it would take to get all the EPA permits today because of the smoke, grease dripping onto the ground, and other environmental concerns.
Yep, he knows…he has refused to give his hog a name, thinking that will prevent him from getting attached to the hog, but I know it won’t help. The wife will be an even bigger basket case as the hog goes across the scale and onto the livestock trailer going off to market after the livestock show.
6 weeks from today is the day of the livestock show…237 pounds as of today. I wish I was able to keep the meat after all of the high dollar grain we’ve been feeding him!
Ah but was there a tank car full of BBQ sauce near bye? For the person who asked where would you get enough people to eat that much BBQ I guess you haven’t spent much time in the Deep South.
True! People around here love their BBQ. I wonder how many gallons of sauce they did use. Hmmm…
Anyway, it would be a really unique event/happening to model, all you’d need is a spur just long enough for one car. You could park a reefer for the meat or a flat car full of wood or even an old tank car full of sauce… [:P] How you’d model the ‘pork’ on the pit I don’t know.
Never understood why people barbecue those critters when they taste so much better in a pot steaming with sauerkraut, onion, chopped bacon, new potatoes, beer and mustard sauce for about four hours.
