“I hitchhiked in the 70’s. When I was young it was to the drive-in theaters. I rode the riverboat on the Mississippi River. The bus was too slow, so I would get off and hitchhike home. Last year I rode to California on a motorcycle with my buddies. We stayed on the highways and back roads. We came across a group of bicyclists and a girl was in the lead pack. I thought she was naked. My buddy thought so too. She wasn’t completely. She had on tennis shoes and a helmet. I grew up in Muscle Shoals. My granddaddy’s neighbor was Rick Hall. There is a cave on his property and we dammed up a creek and made a swimming hole out of it. We would shoot fish and rabbits. We have had Down South BBQ for 12 years. I worked construction all over the US and came off the road for about three months. I rode my Harley up here and got a sandwich then pulled off on the side of the road with my sandwich and a cold beer and watched the traffic. I went home and told my wife it was time for us to do something and I think it is barbecue. She said, ‘You have lost your mind.’  We opened the day after hurricane Katrina. I had a goal set for what I wanted to do and it took from the day we opened until the second week of February to meet it. The next week we beat the goal before I could set another. And the next week we beat it again. I wanted to see how much we could do. I didn’t know how to cook barbecue and we screwed up a lot of meat while we were practicing. I ate three whole briskets before I got it the way I wanted it. We have barbecue spies that come by and try to figure out what we are doing and how we keep the meat moist. I catch them out back with cameras. A lady from Montgomery used to send her driver to pick up 5 pounds of pork and 5 slabs of ribs and drive back to Montgomery. I could do a reality show on this place from drunks on the porch, break-ins and the crazy things that have happened. It has been fun.”