"Harold's Barbecue To Close Next Week"

Thanks to Facebook-still free and always will be. Or so the story goes. Where I saw this!
 

A sad bit of news as Harold's, an icon of Atlanta barbecue, is closing May 3rd. Famous for it's brunswick stew and cracklin' cornbread. the store is closing due to the economy. 

Most news stories on the tube and radio these days mentions how people are suffering. Some poor Wall Street guy said it was tough trying to manage on $350,000 a year.And Harold's was a victim ....."people are carpooling and not eating out as much. It's the economy." 

 When I was 9 years old, me and Bogus Bob, my childhood chum, bought cigars at Harolds. I'm going out on a limb here, but there must have been no age restrictions to purchase tobacco back in the hazy days of my youth. We soon graduated to buying packs of filter Viceroys. At 25 cents a pop, I'm guessing we robbed our piggy banks to pay for our adolescent pursuits. Plus, Bob's Dad, Sweet Lucy, was getting wise to his non-filter Chesterfield Kings disappearing.

 I also remember working for A Delivery Service during one summer on leave from Truck University. Harold's was just down the road, and we would usually go there for supper. They made a great flame-broiled burger with fries and cole slaw. Or maybe it was chips. Time fades away as Neil Young once penned. 

 I haven't eaten at Harold's in a long time-years-but the last time I was there, I remembered the same faces that had worked there when me and Bob,as dumb little adolescents. were buying cigarettes  I don't think we were calling them fags then, as we later used that term in high school-Rowdy High-and college. I forget when we discontinued using the terminology-perhaps our politically-correct consciousness kicked in.

 Harold's was a hole-in-the-wall Mom and Pop restaurant. No flash and pizazz. Just wooden tables and chairs and red-checkered tablecloths. It is a part of Americana that is dying. Just as with drive in movies and land line telephones. I would like to go one last time and savor the ambiance, the dying ambiance. Of a world gone away. 

So make room for Smokey Bones and the like, where the brisket surely comes in a bag and is heated up by the staff. It's lousy, and I haven't taken the time to voice my displeasure with it to the proper channels via email. 

But say it ain't so Joe. Harold's closing. I'll miss the owners and staff that have gotten older just like me and Bogus Bob. I'll miss the proprietor with his dirty meat-stained apron, and the dangling toothpick which was his trademark look. I'll just miss the place period.

It's a sad day in Mudville. But I want one more stab at the stew and hamburger. The slaw was pretty darn good if I recall. Farewell and Adieu.