tar heel
tastes
by Lynn
Setzer
The Slaw
Flows at R.O.'s
A family
tradition and Gastonia institution for 54 years, R.O.'s Bar-B-Que still serves
up old-fashioned favorites -
including a sliced 'cue and fizzy Cherry Lemon Sundrop.
I
n the fall of 1964, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater were slugging it out to
see who would be the next President. Meanwhile, Debbie Reynolds was amusing
audiences with her movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown. And me, well, I
discovered a passion that has endured these past 36 years: an R.O.'s sliced
barbecue sandwich and a Cherry Lemon Sundrop.
Credit
Uncle Phil. He had taken my cousin and me to the drive-in to see Debbie Reynolds
and after the movie, when Uncle Phil decided he'd like a snack, we stopped by
RO.'s for barbecue on our way home.
Presently the carhop arrived and latched the tray onto the car window.
In
the beginning, barbecue We parked in front of the white clapboard building, near
one of the oak trees. In a flash, a carhop dressed in a paper hat, white shirt,
slacks, and black bow tie bent over at the window of Uncle Phil's white Ford Galaxy, ready to take our order. We'd each have a sliced barbecue sandwich,
Uncle
'Just
you wait and see," came his reply.
The
small lot was filled with cars and teenagers, and I could hear snippets of rock
'n' roll music interlaced with laughter. It was Gastonia's own version of American
Graffiti.
Presently
the carhop arrived and unwrapping the sandwich, The smell of barbecue filled the car, and my attention quickly focused on
the task at hand. Uncle Phil passed a paper-wrapped sandwich to each of us,
along with a waxed paper cup.
At
that moment, could anything in this world have been better? Not a chance.
The sliced pork was heavenly, but more than that - way more than that - was the
slaw. It was wonderful, and I have never tasted anything quite like that slaw,
before or since.
To
wash it down, I eagerly plunged my straw into the Cherry Lemon Sundrop.
The sweet taste of the Cheerwine and the citrus tang of the Sundrop fizzed on
the roof of my mouth. One sip, and I was over the moon.
No
one really knows what made Robert Ozy Black open a barbecue restaurant back on
May 17,1946. When
asked why his father went into the restaurant business, his son Lloyd, now 78,
just laughs and says, "well, I reckon he wanted to make a little
money."
The enterprise was the quintessential
family-run restaurant. As R.O. cooked the hams, son Lloyd and daughter Ruth
worked the counter and took orders, doing whatever needed to be done. "I've
done a bit of it all," says Lloyd. "anything at all that needed to be
done. I'm not
too good to sweep." R.O.'s wife, Mary, worked in the kitchen creating the
slaw
that went on the sandwich. If, like many North Carolinians, you have a firm
conviction about which kind of barbecue is best, you can eat R.O.'s barbecue
without fear of retribution
from hard core fans on either side of the barbecue fence. The pork is neither
the vinegar-based eastern style nor the hickory-smoked western style. The unique
taste of an R.O.'s barbecue sand-
wich comes from Mary's slaw. And as any-one who has eaten an R.O.'s barbecue
will attest, Mary Black must have had a moment of divine inspiration when she
hit upon that slaw recipe. Neither the red vinegar nor the creamy white,
pickle-laced slaw, RO.'s slaw is unlike any you'll ever eat
Robert Ozy Black passed away in 1958, 12 years after opening his restaurant. Mary Black, creator of that wonderful slaw, passed away in 1982. Lloyd and Ruth Black, the son and daughter, now own RO.'s.
If
you ask Lloyd Black what has made R.O.'s successful, he will tell you it's
because the sandwiches get to the customer fast "You've got to move when a
person's hungry," he says. "You can't stand around with your hands in
your pockets and talk about the game. We've always worked hard to get good help
to
do
the job." Certainly, the carhops at R.O.'s must have wings on their feet:
You can't park the car before one is walking toward you.
Another
reason is the longevity of key employees. McDonald came to work at RO.'s in
1957. "I worked a little as a carhop, but I went inside on the counter
pretty fast You know, I even met my wife
here," he chuckles. "She went to church right down the street and on
Sundays she'd stop in and get a barbecue for lunch." Roy Coxey, one of the
ham cookers, has been at R.O.'s for 40 years.
It's the truth to call RO.'s a Gastonia tradition. When asked what is the
busiest day of the year, McDonald didn't hesitate a moment before delivering his
somewhat surprising answer. "The day before Christmas and the day after
Christmas. I
guess people coming home for Christmas want some RO.'s barbecue.
This past Christmas we made 570 gallons of slaw." That's nearly
double a standard week's production.
"And
you know," McDonald says, "we've sent this stuff everywhere. One
mother, her son was sent to the Persian Gulf. He flew out of Charleston, and she
wanted to send him a taste of home, so we wrapped up some barbecue and slaw, put
it on dry ice and sent it to him."
I
believe it Some people, like Bob Bigger, who lives nearby, are lucky. "I've
been known to go to RO.'s two or three times a week," he says. The rest of
us, however, have to devise other ways to satisfy our craving. AImed with ice
and coolers, we expatriots make a barbecue run, bringing back enough slaw and
pork to get us by.
It's
a darned good thing there's no law in our state prohibiting the transport of
barbecue across county lines. Otherwise,a lot of us would be in big trouble.
Author
ofA Season on the Appalachian
Trail and Gnlat Adventures in No1th
Carolina, Lynn Setzer lives in Raleigh.