“Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it's a start.” Anthony Bourdain

Upon entering the University of Alabama at age 18, I was a Jewish Southern barbecue virgin. Growing up in a strict kosher home of observant Orthodox Jewish parents, I had never had the opportunity to taste pork, this forbidden, non-kosher meat. The ribs my father cooked on our brick BBQ pit were kosher beef. His cooking process rendered those ribs Dust Bowl-dry and tough like an old shoe.

My introduction to this sinful, delicious food happened on Homecoming Weekend 1969. Most of the Jewish fraternity boys I had met hadn’t grown up Orthodox. They didn’t come from families who observed the laws of Kashruth and had become, at young ages, barbeque joint connoisseurs.

On that memorable weekend, I had a date with a Jewish fraternity boy who had gotten me throwing-up drunk the night before the big game. Prior to that night, I had never had much to drink and was unaware that you could get drunk on Cold Duck. Because I spent my last two years of high school in a girls-only boarding school, I was ignorant about drinking, dating, kissing, and anything else that could be described as a normal teenage girl’s experience. My first “real” date happened after I began college and shortly before the weekend in question. However, it didn’t take me long to catch up to the other girls in the dating world. I didn’t know this, but I was good at dating and boys were attracted to me.

After spending the night puking my guts out and promising G-d that I would never drink again if I could just make it to morning, I stumbled out of bed around 8 a.m. with a hangover. I had never experienced a hangover. My head hurt, my mouth tasted like a garbage can, and my eyes were red inside and out. I wasn’t sure that I would be able to go to the game. But when my date, a skinny, blue-eyed sophomore, arrived at my dorm with a lovely corsage, I could not say no. He had been introduced to me as Izadore, but everyone called him Izzy.

Back then, people dressed for the football games, especially the fraternity and sorority girls and boys. Girls wore tailored suits and boys were required to put on coats and ties, all to sit in a scalding hot stadium. It was so hot the metal bleachers stuck to the back of my thighs. It must have been 91 degrees when the game started. I knew I was in trouble when I started sweating profusely and my dizziness returned. I had never lived through a hangover, and I was defiant that I would never do what caused it again.

As soon as the game began, I became green with nausea. My chivalrous date, Izzy, posed a new idea for the day. We would leave the stadium, change our clothes, pick up barbeque, and go to the lake to cool off. After leaving the sweltering field, I immediately began to feel better. Even though I had promised G-d as I was retching that I would never drink again if I could just live to see the sun rise, I knew it was a hollow promise. I was no longer at that repressive girls’ school where we were taught to write bread and butter notes and pour tea from a silver service. I was determined to catch up on the fun part of life to make up for the two years of lost time.

After stopping at my dorm for me to change, we were on our way. I felt today marked the start of the type of adventure I had been dreaming about. With the windows rolled down, the Beatles blasting on the radio, and the breeze blowing through my long, curly hair, I knew that I had the right look for an afternoon at the lake. I was wearing my new cutoffs and my favorite hot pink T-shirt that was tight in all the right places. To see me, you would have never known that this was my first college fun day at the number-one party school in the nation.

Izzy began to tell me about our destination. He described this BBQ restaurant as the best place in the South for ribs. We turned on to a narrow back street called Watermelon Road in a low-income neighborhood of Tuscaloosa. As we drove down the road, I saw rundown shotgun houses on both sides with half-dead cars parked in the yards. The farther we drove, the more apprehensive I felt, and I began to wonder where Izzy was taking me.

When we drove up to the restaurant, which was more like a shack, and I breathed in the unfamiliar mouth-watering smells emanating from the pit, I began to regain my appetite. A handmade, rough sign made of old wood reading Archibald’s hung over the screen door. As I got out of the car, the shack’s screen door slammed, and a young man ran out of Archibald’s with a large take-out bag. Moving slowly with my head still pulsing from the previous evening, shielding my eyes from the glaring son, I walked to the entry.

Then I saw the flies buzzing around the black iron grate in the pit. The pit was directly behind the bar, with maybe 15 slabs of ribs and a hunk of pork cooking. Everything shimmered with a thin layer of grease, which hung in the air and settled on the surface of the bar, under which five tattered stools had been shoved. My immediate inclination was to run away. I had never eaten in a restaurant that was not pristine and devoid of flies. I was not sure that you could even call this place a restaurant. A smiling older Black man was standing next to the pit with a bucket of sauce and a small mop he used to slather the ribs. I had a long internal talk with myself about the shack’s sanitation (or lack of it), the non-kosher meat, and how disappointed my parents would be if they could see me now. I hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t sure that I could even make myself eat that strange, delicious-smelling meat.

But at 18, I was determined not to allow anything to interfere with my college experience. I was almost an adult and beginning to navigate my own life. At that moment it hit me: It was up to me what I ate, who I dated, and what I did with a boy. It was nobody’s business but mine.

When it was time for me to order, I paused. There was no menu! Archibald’s only served two things: ribs and sauce, with white bread to sop it up, and a barbequed pork sandwich, which came chopped or sliced, with inside or outside meat, or a combination of the two. This language was foreign to me but I quickly summoned a big confident smile and ordered ribs and a Coke.

We took our greasy bags and hopped into the car for the short trip to Lake Tuscaloosa. Izzy knew where the gang would be waiting, and we arrived ready to put our feet in the water and chow down on our ribs. I sat on a rock at the edge of the lake and opened the bag. The smoky barbeque smell made me swoon like a teenage girl getting her first kiss.

I had no utensils, so Izzy had to give me a little instruction about eating ribs. He said, “Don’t look at the fat, just slide the bone through your mouth, being sure you get some sauce.” I followed his directions, hesitating because I had never eaten without a fork and knife. My etiquette teacher at boarding school would have fainted if she could see me with my hands and face covered in the sauce. But that first bite was like jumping into a pool of cool water on a hot day.

It was a transitional moment for me. Two bites later, I knew I could never go back to eating my dad’s dry ribs. For that matter, I knew I could never go back to anything else that was a part of my life when I lived under his roof. I have never forgotten that newly discovered feeling of freedom, sliding my teeth down a pork bone with my feet in the water next to a boy I had just met. My life truly began on that Saturday.

Now, when I go to Tuscaloosa, 50 years later, I visit Archibald’s. The place hasn't changed and the ribs are as delicious as ever and its reputation still ranks high with cash-poor college students. In 2023, I was amused to see it was rated the 2^nd best BBQ joint in the South by Southern Living Magazine, a testament to its down-home cooking and timeless atmosphere. For me, it was not just a Southern BBQ joint, it is where I discarded my parents’ values and opened a door to a life full of unexpected experiences.

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