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Monday, June 21, 2004

Testament

Living away from your parents means you miss out on their special days, and missing out on Father's Day was no fun. I did manage to talk to him for about 15 minutes yesterday while I was on call before I got paged by the ICU. Not too surprising, but my dad was having dinner with his cronies when I called him, despite it being 9pm in Atlanta. My dad loves to eat, and he's definitely the source of my inherited carnivorous appetite.

Speaking of appetites, I found a local nondescript, hole-in-the-wall barbecue restaurant located on the far side of town. It's a trek, but well worth it. Somehow the nurses in the ICU found out about my love for slow, smoked meats, and one of them alerted me to the existence of the only true barbeque joint in New Orleans. Turns out that the owner is from Peduka, Kentucky, and comes from a family of barbeque restaurant owners. In fact, he drives to Kentucky every couple months to bring back a truckload of authentic Kentucky hickory wood that he chops himself from his family's land. Impressive.

Funny thing, you walk into the place and it's as if you walked into this guy's kitchen back in the Kentucky boondocks. There's a random assortment of family members wandering around behind the counter, a few mismatched tables and chairs for those dining in, and random decorations on the wall that have nothing to do with barbecue, Kentucky, or even Louisiana. But the smell of hickory smoke is intoxicating, and unlike that one barbecue place in South Carolina I ate at that had pictures of Klan members on the wall, I felt as if I were in heaven.