Heavenly origins for barbecue club

Like many heated discussions, it started at church.

Anthony Earnest, a deacon at Oakhurst Baptist in Decatur, cooked some barbecue for a fund-raiser. Bob Herndon, another deacon, judged it the best he had ever had and said so on the church’s list-serve. Other members fired off e-mails touting Texas brisket or Carolina pulled pork, and just like that, the barbecue wars were hogging an online forum that usually communicated prayer requests.

Oakhurst told everyone to take it out in the yard, declaring barbecue off-limits on the list-serve, so some members started getting together to eat and discourse about the finer points of ribs and shoulders.

Or as Herndon puts it: “A covenant group was created that would test where Jesus would eat barbecue.”

And that was the genesis of the Atlanta BBQ Club, perhaps the first fan club around here for a tradition that never seemed to need a fan club because it’s as much a part of Georgia as peaches and pine trees.

The club, which claims 75 dues-paying members and an e-mail list of 320, holds a monthly “meating” at a different barbecue place around town. Herndon, the president, is already thinking big; he’s signed a deal with the Braves to stage a cook-off Sept. 12 at Turner Field and envisions the day when Atlanta might hold a full-boar barbecue festival like Memphis in May, an annual Porkstock on the banks of the Mississippi.

“People don’t think of Atlanta as a great barbecue city,” he says, “but there’s a lot of great barbecue around here. We just need to promote it.”

If Herndon sounds like he’s campaigning, perhaps that’s because of his day job: political consultant and vice chairman of the DeKalb Democratic Party. He can’t resist a little joke that mingles his preoccupations.

What did George Bush get on his SATs?

Barbecue sauce.

As soon as the crack leaves his mouth, he sort of apologizes. “I don’t tell jokes like that at the club. We have a lot of Republicans.”

Herndon comes from Massachusetts, the land of chowder, and didn’t discover barbecue until he came south as an Emory student in the 1980s. Earnest, the Oakhurst deacon whose cooking inspired Herndon’s praise, comes from a very different background. A Chicago native with ancestral roots in Mississippi, he grew up cooking ‘cue with his father and rekindled the flame after his life almost flared out of control.

“I smoked crack and drank too much,” he admits.

Earnest sought help at the small recovery center Oakhurst sponsors next to the church. He volunteered there for years and now works at Emory as a housekeeper. Herndon gave him a ride to the club’s most recent meeting, at the Big Shanty Smokehouse in Kennesaw.

It was a typical gathering: two to three dozen people —- men and women, black and white —- a few Oakhurst members, a couple of barbecue professionals, a smattering of newcomers.

William “Bubba” Latimer drove down from Jasper, where he runs a barbecue place called Bub-ba-Q. “Bob found something he loves and wants to share it with the world,” he says. “It’s a noble cause.”

Bruce Edwards, a hospice chaplain in Decatur, arrived in a burgundy shirt that identified him as a certified judge in the Kansas City Barbeque Society contest circuit.

“Judging takes a lot of talent and hard work,” he says, not quite maintaining a straight face.

Spencer Humphrey, a first-timer from Mableton, found the club online and came with his wife, Allison. “I got laid off from my consulting job,” he says. “I love to cook out, and I was interested in seeing if I could turn this into a career.” That explained the pad he was filling with notes about the best smokers and other tips.

Soon the food started coming and the conversation lulled. Then it picked up again as members debated the merits of the ribs and chopped pork and a curious appetizer called barbecue shooters —- pork, coleslaw and sauce in a plastic cup: a barbecue sandwich without the bread.

As the others talked, Earnest, the man whose fund-raiser ribs started all this, regarded his plate of barbecued sausage with a smile. He tried a bite.

His opinion?

“I’ve been homeless,” he says, softly. “It all tastes good to me.”

Q FOR YOU?

> For more on the Atlanta BBQ Club: www.atlbbqclub.com. The next meeting is 1:30 p.m. March 8 at Sam & Dave’s BBQ-2, 660 Whitlock Ave., Marietta.

> Bob Herndon will lead a four-part Evening at Emory course on barbecue starting Feb. 23. Information: 404-727-6000, cll.emory.edu/classes.cfm?cla=-124035604&pt=3