Page 14 - DEC2021 Digial Issue: Barbecue News Magazine

Finally ... a Barbecue Story with 70+ Years of Research
Last Friday, the Salter Sisters (Sylvia, Carlene, Glenda and Dianne) met at Fresh Air Bar-B-Que in Jackson, GA for a birthday celebra- tion for Glenda (78, in October) and Dianne (77, in November) for the umpteenth
(Georgia Slang) time over the years.
None of us can quite remember exactly how long we have been eating here.
This barbecue
article is a little
late getting to
you, our readers,
but there just
never seemed to
be enough time
to get it researched and completed. Let me begin at the beginning ... our family of six kids and parents all grew up in Thomaston, Ga. and my mother, Nellie Ruth Dickerson Salter, grew up about 40 miles away in Jackson, Ga. (actual address is Flovilla, GA). We made many trips there to visit several aunts, fill gallons of jugs with sulfur water from Indian Springs for Mammaw Salter, and clean off family gravesites.
Several Saturday or Sunday afternoons we would load up and head over to Jackson (because no one knew where Flovilla was) to visit, sometime carrying a picnic lunch to spread at Indian Springs State Park on one of the tables. However, there were other times when finances allowed us to splurge and visit Fresh Air Bar-B-Que • Brunswick Stew. They had become famous all the way down
By Carlene (Salter) Phelps
Hwy. 36 to Thomaston! I’m not sure how old I was the first time we had one of these Fresh Air sandwiches, but there are pictures of us at Indian Springs (see photo) and I was about 8 or 9 years
old. Ugh ... that would be about 70 years ago. (Dang, what pri- vate information I have to share in order to write for this publica- tion!)
Since we had so many reasons to visit the area, we went often, and that meant hav- ing to hold our noses at the
springs so we could pass the jugs back and forth to Daddy for him to fill. Mammaw Salter, who remained quite healthy into her 80’s, thought the healing water (we called it yucky sulfur water) from Indian Springs had a lot of good minerals the body needed. You could smell the sulfur water when getting near the spring! People came from miles away to get the water and we usually had to stand in line because everyone had quite a few jugs to fill. The land was purchased from the Cherokee Indians in trade for a large section of land nearby and became a public park.
Our recent trip brought back memories of our families’ favorite BBQ joint and just the way we all remember it over the years. There are usually only three or four people working in the kitchen and wide-open, located just behind the counter where you order
BarbecueNews.com - 14
DECEMBER 2021
Salter Kids at Indian Springs: Pictured L-R: Bobbie, Glenda, Sylvia, Ronald (Bill), Dianne and Carlene. I was probably 8 or 9 years old at the time. Thus ... 70 years of research!