‘Gator Tail, Fries: $4.50’ : He Takes the Bite With Barbecue Sauce

Dense fog--an atmosphere out of Arthur Conan Doyle--only made the marshes seem bleaker and more foreboding.

The conditions were ominous, but a reporter, forsaking the easy way, sought out the riskiest of roadside lunches: the tail of the alligator.

He steered gingerly off Interstate 95, the umbilicus to McDonald’s nourishment and the orange-roofed haven of Howard Johnson’s, and pressed on, unsmiling, past the yellow-button face on the sign of the Happy Store.

Suddenly, from out of what appeared to be smoke up ahead, a hooded figure emerged. The reporter pulled over.

Now came the test. It was a roadside eatery where the most popular dish was barbecue. At the counter, the reporter pointed to a menu on the wall, swallowed hard, and ordered:

“Gator tail and fries, please.”

The waitress didn’t blink.

Alligator Anecdote

The first time she ate alligator, she said, was a long time ago, on a camping trip. A toothy intruder became supper.

“If a girl can eat it, you can,” Juanita Clark said in a soothing tone, noticing a narrowing of the reporter’s eyes. She told him that alligator meat tastes like a cross between chicken and pork, but a little more chewy than either. Some like it with barbecue sauce.

At that moment, the hooded figure came in. It was the owner, dressed in foul weather gear. “Johnny Jones,” he said, offering his hand and a joke about his name: “The woods are full of them.”

What about alligators? Were the woods and surrounding swamps full of them?

“Go down in the early morning. They get out in that warm sunshine and sun themselves. Up most every creek.”

The reporter changed the subject to the other fare at Jones’ restaurant, goat meat sandwiches and smoked turkey. It had been the smoke rising from the outdoor cooker that had marked the place.

“It’s getting about hog-killing time,” Jones said. “We’ll probably have chit’lin’s.” Jones reminisced about Newfoundland, where he had eaten moose meat.

Next on the Menu

Moose, goat, hog, alligator. What’s next for the restaurant?

“Armadillo,” said Johnny Jones, who always kept a straight face.

And he disappeared.

Juanita Clark was saying that a lot of out-of-towners pass and see the sign--”Gator tail and fries, $4.50”--and stop. “They don’t want to try it, but most of them . . . .”

She stopped in mid-sentence. Jones had returned.

The reporter faced The ‘Gator.

There was no time to think of retreat, of rescue, of vegetarianism.

With the only utensil available, a plastic fork, he lunged. A scene out of Hemingway. He bit. He swallowed.

With that bite, he thought later, a timeless lesson was learned:

When demons rise from the foggy swamps of life, confront them face-on, with rationality and courage, and, in the case of alligator tail, with a little barbecue sauce.