Things Robert Says on Podcasts

…at was the barbecue because the barbecue was basically a giant outdoor party. Sure. Very male, very rough. And what you see is because toasting was such a natural part of barbecue, particularly at the 4th of July, after everybody ate, there'd be round after round of toasts where everybody was toasting to America, to George Washington, to the Constitution, and of course, chugging back whiskey. At first, the temperance folks tried to ban barbecues or at least shame people into not going. But then they realized, well, people like the barbecue part. Let's just get rid of the whiskey. So they started holding cold water barbecues. And they were just like any other barbecue. You'd have the same big old pits and animals cooked on it. If it was Fourth of July, there'd be the speeches and the patriotic songs, and there'd be toasts, but all they would have would be spring water. In fact, the accounts were to say they were cold water toasts. So you would still toast George Washington and the flag and the Constitution, but it…

…is always sort of a mixed thing because, yes, the enslaved workers would host their own barbecues. Sometimes we're allowed to raise their own animals or might be given a pig, would cook for Christmas and celebration barbecues. But also, you know, some of the most notable slave revolts, like Gabrielle's Rebellion and Nat Turner's Rebellion, were actually planned at barbecues. And, you know, so the enslaved workers would be using a barbecue gathering together as sort of an excuse, but they were actually plotting revolt. And in Virginia, in particular, that got really sharply curtailed after the 1830s. And very much then, barbecues became a, I mean, everyone likes going to barbecue and eating it. It's hard to not like that. Right. But you're right. It was very complicated because it was in many ways a means of control or sort of like, oh, yeah, one day a year, we'll throw a party for you. And then, you know, in…

…stories of him picking, didn't take out ribs from a favorite rib joint and eating them on the train with all his Yankee buddies and drinking beer after the games on the way back to New York or wherever they were headed. So the whole story of ribs is just one I hadn't really thought about that much. But determined that ribs sort of just blossomed in the early 20th century as this American thing. They used to be the cheapest cut of meat you could find. In fact, the stockhouses in Cincinnati back in the 19th century, they couldn't sell them. They couldn't pack them and sell the ribs. They wouldn't fit in the barrels. And they had more than they gave them away to the boarding house owners to cook. And then ones they couldn't give away, they had actually dumped into the Ohio River by the wagon load because they had so many ribs they literally…