This guy came in: "Who's cooking your barbecue?" I said, "I am." He said, "No you're
not."
I said, "Who do you see? There's nobody here but me, so." "This is a man's job,"
that's what he said. "It's the man's job.
Can't no woman do this, because women don't cook barbecue." I said, "Well I do." He really
didn't believe me but he got over it, came again and is still seeing the
same person.
I told him each time he comes in, you're gonna only see me.
I've been at it now for myself for 17 years.
Just me and this barbecue place, this is just what I do.
Six days a week, all day long. If i take a vacation or something,
the doors are locked, because there's nobody to run it but me.
I serve BBQ sandwiches,
I serve rib sandwiches, and I sell barbecue baloney.
I do smoked sausage, potato salad, baked beans, and coleslaw.
You don't open up cans around here at Helen's, you do it all from scratch.
You take out your processor and cut your cabbage up, make your own slaw. I go
through two of these processors a year. I guess I make so much slaw I
mess the motor up. When I first met my husband he said, "I don't
want my wife working.
That's what I'm for: to take care of my wife."
So after my kids started school, I just thought I'd look for a part time job, and
my part time job was down here, so I came down here and went in business with, his
name was Hewitt Foster. He's dead right now. But he wanted me to be around
to make the barbecue sauce. And then he said, "Helen, you know what?" After two or
three months he told me, "You know what?" I said, "No sir."
He said, "I think I'm too old for this thing, do you want it?"
I go like, trying to see what I'm getting myself into, you know.
And I say, "Well yeah. I'll take it."
And believe it or not, he told me the only thing I had to do was pay the taxes
and it's yours!
He didn't want me to buy him out or nothing, he pretty much gave it to me cuz
the taxes weren't that much. And I've been here ever since.
As my husband told me last night, "You a hardworking person and I'm not gonna
take that away from you because I couldn't do it."
My husband works five days a week but I got to give it to him, he's been a
good help to me, by me being here, getting up every morning before he goes
to work, and coming down here and starting this fire. He's been doing that for 17
years.
Every morning he comes down here and gets my fire going and all the
wood will be done burning by the time I get here to put the meat on. All I gotta do is put
the meat on and fire it up.
Good barbecue is just old style barbecue, pit barbecue.
You don't have to cook with the gas or the grill or the charcoal.
This is what I like to cook with right here. Oak and hickery. You ain't got
that gas taste and you ain't got that charcoal taste, so that's really what
makes the barbecue. At least that what my customers tell me anyway, because they
like to taste that smoke flavor. So I have two pits outside.
I have a pit out there where I burn down my coals with my wood, then I got the
pit that I have the meat on, and I take the shovel and take the coals and put
them under the meat, and that's really the hard job right there.
That room out back, there's a lot of smoke out there, and there's a lot of
heat out there, because there's nothing out there but fire and smoke, and it's hot out
there.
Of course and don't get me wrong, because sometimes it has me crying.
There'll be so much smoke out there, there are tears just rolling out of my eyes.
Soon as I get through firing up this and put some wood on this fire pit.
me and you both are gonna be crying. When you're working in this smoke out there, that this
is what it do to my eyes every day,
just make it run water. I love it, for one thing. I guess that if I didn't love
it, I wouldn't be out here in all this. Plus
I got a lot of good customers that comes in here, and ain't got no business if you
don't please them.
My customers are really strange but they're sweet.
iI's just like the other day my daughter was down here, and I told her to wait on
the customers, and he stood there. And she said, "May I help you?"
My customers ain't say one word. And then when I walked around the corner, he said, "Oh
Helen! I need a large barbecue sandwich."
That's just the way they are. I think I've been here for so long and I'm
the only somebody they ever deal with, so it's just hard for them to get
used to somebody else.
I'll leave my shoulders whole so as when my customers come in and ask for a
sandwich,
I just pull the meat off the shoulder, and put it on the chopping board. If they
want it chopped I chop it, and then if they wanted it pulled I'll pull it.
I'll leave it whole like that because if I pull it off and put it on the heat, the
heat would just dry it out, so I learned to just leave it whole and just pull it
from the shoulder itself.
Well I do the hot and the mild, what most people call sweet sauce. So I do the
hot and then I do the sweet.
Now I got a lot of people that comes in and say, "Helen, if anything was to
happen to you, will you write out the recipe to your sauce?"
"Just put it to the side so we can have it, you know," cause right now I don't even
have it written out, it's just in my head.
Well a lot of people tell me I don't put enough meat, and some people tell me
I use too much meat, but you know, I hear them talking about other places that they go
to,
and they say, "Well you know, I could go to Memphis, if I go to Memphis,
down there I gotta pay six dollars and some for sandwich, one sandwich — a large!
And they got no meat on it and I'm paying six dollars for it." So they come up here,
they get one large sandwich and they're probably paying like $3.85 to the most
four dollars for one, that one of my sandwiches, and it's pretty good size.
I don't care who walks in this place, when they walk back out, she smells just like
Helen's, and they can say, "Oh I know where you've been.
You've been Helen's Bar-B-Q."
It's not that big, it's just a small barbecue place. Very small.
That's the way I like it. I'm Helen Turner, here at Helen's Bar-B-Q.
I am the pit master.