Four years ago Ronnie Colvin and Charles Clemmons opened a business in a portable building that had been inserted into the bay of a defunct carwash near the intersection of 14th Avenue and 20th Street North.
The two men called their enterprise “Memphis Town Barbecue,” so named for the Northside neighborhood where they are located.
Soon Clemmons lost interest and Colvin, who has been in a kitchen cooking since childhood, went it alone.
Friday just before noon Colvin was cutting up peeled potatoes with a meat cleaver. On the other side of the building’s 12 foot x 30 foot interior, Gary Doughty was putting barbecue sauce into serving-size containers.
When asked where he grew up, Colvin, 60, pointed his cleaver to the Northside housing project several blocks away and across the street. “I was born in the back of that house there, he says, pointing to a low-slung brick building.
Colvin was one of Emma Colvin’s eight sons and four daughters, who loved to cook.
“I used to watch my mama and do everything she did,” he said.
Pretty soon young Ronnie’s talents in the kitchen became more broadly known, and he was cooking for house parties in the neighborhood.
“I got better and better,” he said. “I felt like it (cooking) was my calling.”
Over the years Colvin worked a series of jobs: making toilet seats at Sanderson Plumbing, furniture at Johnson Tombigbee and doing janitorial work at Columbus Air Force Base.
He never abandoned his first love, though.
“I cook because I love cooking. I never get tired of cooking.”
Then in his mid-50s Colvin made the leap. He attributes his good fortune to God.
“He gave me everything on a silver platter,” says Colvin. “I told Him I wanted a restaurant and He gave me this. I didn’t have a quarter.”
Colvin celebrates this beneficence with a banner across the entranceway of the business: “Look What God Did!!”
What is the secret of good barbecue?
“Time,” said Colvin. “Good food takes time. You have to wait on it. I won’t give you food until it’s ready.”
As we talked around noon on Friday Colvin, as if to prove his point, turned away several frustrated would-be patrons. He’s open from 1pm to 7pm Friday through Saturday.
“Everything you get here is fresh,” he says. “The secret to good food is freshness.”
Colvin’s best sellers are the rib tips and chicken wings.
“My specialty is my potato salad,” he says. “They love my potato salad.”
Colvin makes his own coleslaw.
“Everything I do is simple,” he said. “Like the old folks say, ‘make it plain.’”
That credo extends to his cooking technique.
“I don’t use wood,” Colvin said. Instead he uses Kingsford charcoal and smokes rather than grills his meat.
Smoked meat is pink, he says. Meat cooked over a fire is white.
People come from all over to patronize this barbecue joint in a car wash, Colvin says.
“I have a man from Starkville who calls and gets 17 orders of rib tips. An old white guy. Says he gives them to his kids and grandkids.”
Saturday afternoon Lynnette Ogden drove over from Millport, Alabama, to get a rib-tip plate and a Polish sausage sandwich. Ogden says she’s been coming here for years.
“I’ve been out of town,” she said. “I had to get some of Ronnie’s food.”
Colvin walks outside to check on the progress of two smokers filled with meat and to add Polish sausage. The smokers have their own bay.
While the car wash is not operable, Anthony “Jobo” Harkins runs a detailing and tinting business at the other end of the property.
Colvin opens the door of one of his smokers and is shrouded in smoke as he places the sausage in the only space left.
In half an hour he will take the meat inside and unlock the front door and begin dispensing barbecue to a steady stream of hungry, appreciative patrons.
“I don’t cook for the dollar,” Colvin said. “I love doing this. All my life that’s what I’ve done.”
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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2022-12-04 05:06:50Z
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