J.B. and the Perfect Polish Sausage

Posted byjimmcgarrahPosted inLiterary

If you happen to be in Athens, Georgia on most any given weekend you may subject yourself to the most amazing of culinary delights without ever entering a restaurant, an important consideration in the time of a pandemic. But you must be willing to wander as well through various neighborhood intersections till you discover the telltale scent of grilled onions and the sight of a light gray plume of smoke rising into the clouds. Following these signals will most likely lead to a convenience store or empty parking lot on the chosen corner and allow you to discover the home of J.B. Sausages.

It’s a simple place this home, a small trailer hitched and parked behind a battered pickup truck. A narrow smokestack rises from the black tin roof and connects under that roof to a fifty-five-gallon drum sawn if half, hinged, and converted into a makeshift cooking grill. Furnishings are sparse in the kingdom, a shelf for various condiments, including and especially two or three types of mustard, and a wooden bench opposite the grill where J.B. himself sits to stoke the coals beneath the sizzling oninons, sautéed peppers, and plump, juicy, roasting meat. 

The jolly man waits for customers rain or shine. They will come and willingly wait in line as if communion is offered and they respond to the invocation “Lord, I am not worthy, only feed me that sausage for six bucks and I shall be healed.” Okay, that’s pretty hyperbolic. The experience isn’t quite that intense and all you will be saved from temporarily is the empty feeling in your stomach. 

Real Polish sausage is born from a mysterious mixture of eighty per cent pork, twenty percent beef, salt, pepper, sugar, garlic, and marjoram. The meat gets cured first, mixed with the spices, stuffed into a sausage casing, and then hot smoked. Everyone has a secret way of conjuring the unique taste of different brands. I don’t know what J.B. does to his, but I’m convinced there is some supernatural force at work. When the first bite hits your taste buds it is possible to get a gastronomical rush that could be described by a hungry person as a light hit from a line of cocaine. Ultimately though, the overall experience cannot be explained by sausage or condiments alone.

There are other empty feelings besides a visceral appetite that may be satiated by stopping by for a visit. Make sure you have the time. While cooking a polish sausage on a red-hot grill isn’t a long-term task, J.B. provides other services. For his fee of six dollars, you may get a conversation if you’re lonely, a bit of therapy if you’re in need, some comfort for recent anguish, a lesson in culinary art, or a bit of job counseling if you want to change careers. What each customer is sure to enjoy is the level of personal interaction often missing at a fast-food drive-thru or a busy diner. If patience is not your virtue, go somewhere else. J.B. doesn’t care. He isn’t feeding you so he’ll get rich, at least not economically. 

Post Script: October 29/ 2021

I have learned that J.B. is no longer in business. This sad development comes from the stunted and restrictive view of law an rules that. We need rules in order to live in societies, granted. But, we also need some common sense in the application of rules. For whatever reason, and there could be many self-serving ones involved, Our philosophical vender has been run out of town. J.B., by virtue of obscure ordinance, can no longer sell his polish sausages in Athens, Georgia. Evidently, his tiny operation was taking customers away from the local purveyors of poison fast-food fat and their multimillion dollar income was threatened by an old black man who mainly wanted company.

Published by jimmcgarrah

Every single person on this planet is unique in many ways and yet, most people consider themselves normal (i.e. conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected). This dichotomy is how good writing works. It contains uniqueness in the characters or narrator and a normal progression of ideas in themes. Thus, a story will be appealing if it has unique specificity in a normalized world of some kind and that creates a universal connection between writer and reader. This symbiotic connection as an oxymoron, normal uniqueness, has always fascinated me, not only on the page but more importantly, in life. Over the past twenty years I have written a dozen books. None have made me famous or rich, but I am proud of the work. It has been published by respectable literary and university presses. My editors have been talented and conscientious and brought the best of what I do to the page. But publishing is not all of my writing life. I have long wanted a private space where I could more fully express this exploration between individuality and society normalcy without regard to the business of writing, the correction of images, the political implication of phrases, and while considering there might be an audience to some of what is written, not worrying about whether it would sell. Therefore, I give you my very first and likely last, public blog. It will explore whatever I feel like exploring at a given time in whatever form I choose—maybe a poem, maybe an essay, maybe a story, or possibly a simple “fuck you” to the world. Read at your own peril and comment whenever you want. I encourage dialogue as a learning tool for writer and reader alike. I do not expect agreement with all my ideas. That would eliminate the entire uniqueness side of my inquiry. This is a free space for us all.

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