A day at the Memphis in May barbecue contest: the Pink, the Pork, the Presley
Outdoor cooking, sometimes called "barbecuing," tends to be characterized as a masculine, even macho activity.
All that meat and heat and sweat. The skewers and knives. The smoke and fire. The beer.
Many of the team names at the 2023 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, back this week through Saturday at the redesigned Tom Lee Park, affirm the idea of pig-grilling as a sort of manly ritual, military action, sexual conquest, criminal turf battle or blood sport.
Competitors in the Ribs, Shoulder and Whole Hog categories include the "Alpha Wolf Smokers," "Aporkalypse Now," "Ribbed for Your Pleasure," "Nice Rack," "Pigs Gone Wild," "Mississippi Meat Mafia," "The Hogfather," "Pablo EscobarBQ" and "Killer Hogs," to name a few.
But keep walking, past the new playground climbing sculptures (protected from festivalgoer incursion by chain link fences), past the signs that caution "Stay Out of the Landscape (Tender Plants Growing)," and eventually you will discover a compact oasis of pink — bubblegum pink, to be precise — situated within the festival's makeshift village of sports homages (one team is called "Grill and Grind") and heavy metal idolatry (one team is named "Hammy Sagar").
One of 34 competitors in the Whole Hog division, the merry band of Nashville-based pig-basters that calls itself "I Only Smoke When I Drink" is a self-described "all-girl" team. They embrace this identity with booth décor that suggests the color scheme for a traditional girl's nursery or a Barbie Dreamhouse.
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"We wanted it to stand out," said team captain Delaniah Bringle, 54. "We decided, we're an all-girl team, let's go with pink. We call it bubblegum pink."
They decorate their hog, too, prior to eating, with leis and other bits of froufrou. "We make it pretty," said Heather Haggard, 54, Delaniah's friend since fourth grade. "The prettier the better."
However, all this ornamentation and showy femininity is, as you may have suspected, a strategy of misdirection. Like their muscle-flexing competitors, I Only Smoke When I Drink is in it to win it, and as bloodthirsty as their rivals. In fact, they serve a message along with their slabs of slow-roasted pork.
"You know that song by the Dixie Chicks, 'Earl had to die'?" Bringle asked. "We always name the pig 'Earl.'"
A Top 20 country hit in 2000 for the group now called The Chicks, the song "Goodbye, Earl" is a proto-#MeToo murder ballad about a pair of high-school friends, Wanda and Mary Anne, who poison an abusive husband.
"Well, it wasn't two weeks after she got married that Wanda started gettin' abused," the lyrics report. "She finally got the nerve to file for divorce/ She let the law take it from there/ But Earl walked right through that restraining order/ And put her in intensive care... It didn't take 'em long to decide/ That Earl had to die..."
As for Earl, "there he is, in the Hog Coffin," Bringle said, indicating a long low cooler emblazoned, in fact, with the logo "The Hog Coffin." Lifting the lid, she offered a peek at Earl, a single trotter poking up.
Bringle's husband, Carey Bringle, is the enemy, at least for this weekend. "I actually compete against my husband, who's Peg Leg," she said, referring not to a nickname or distinguishing physical characteristic but to his barbecue party affiliation, so to speak, as a member of the Peg Leg Porkers team. Carey, apparently, is in no danger, but Delaniah is proud to point out that Earl was whacked by a woman: The hog was selected and killed by Karen Overton of Wedge Oak Farm in Lebanon, Tennessee.
The Chicks may be present in spirit during this year's barbecue cooking contest, but evocations of a more Memphis-connected musical entertainer are almost ubiquitous. Yes, "SnoutKast" and "Hammy Sagar" and "Motley Que" are among the music-inspired team names, but Elvis is everywhere.
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Stroll the sidewalks that now wind through Tom Lee due to the Memphis River Parks Partnership redesign and you will encounter such teams as "Rub Me Tender," "Love Meat Tender," "Suspicious Rinds" and "Greaseland Porkers," and you will find homemade plywood cut-outs and standees of pigs in rhinestoned jumpsuits, pigs with sideburns, pigs strumming guitars. In fact, the Presley presence is more overt in Tom Lee Park this weekend than it was earlier this month during the Beale Street Music Festival, a sign that Elvis is now arguably more recognizable as an icon or commodity than as a musical influence.
John Richardson 57, head cook of the Suspicious Rinds ribs team from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said he and his friends dreamed up the Elvis-inspired name while "sitting around the smoker one night and having a few, and a few more."
Like every person this reporter talked to, he said he was grateful to be back in Tom Lee, alongside the Mississippi River, after last year's festival, which was held in the Tiger Lane area of the old Fairgrounds, due to the (still ongoing) renovation of the bluffside park. "We live on the river in Baton Rouge, so I just love to think of it as 'coming upriver,'" he said.
Ross Debow, 26, said his Memphis-based Bacon Care of Business ribs team didn't bother to compete last year, because the idea of competing on a "parking lot" instead of beside the river was too depressing. "You can't compare anything to this," he said, sweeping his hand westward, to indicate the bluff, the rolling river and the distant Arkansas shoreline.
Bringle said she enjoyed the cool river breeze. "It was so hot on the asphalt last year that several of us got overheated and had to leave," she said. But whatever the temperature this weekend, she and her teammates are prepared to endure it. Indicating a second "coffin" of an ice chest, she said: “See that cooler behind Jennifer? Inside it, it has 700 Jell-O shots."
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis in May barbecue contest: Elvis Presley, The Chicks and more?
