Talking Southern – Brooks Brunswick Stew

     This column really isn’t about Southern language – it’s about a delectable Southern foodstuff with a long and storied history that is so delicious it launches your compiler into verbose, over-written flights of Southern language in trying to describe it.

     So let’s just say that once long ago, in a small town quite nearby, there was produced a comestible so scrumptious that describing it would have tongue-tied Demosthenes, and so wholesome it would plumb nearly heal the sick and raise the dead.  As golden and warm as summer sunshine, it captured elements provided by Mother Nature and fused them into a harmonious whole never duplicated since.  If the good Lord ever provided any item of nourishment any better, it’s almost a certainty He saved it for Himself.

    It was Brunswick stew, but not just any Brunswick stew.  For one thing, it didn’t have any English peas, potatoes, or butter beans in it, Lord forbid; and for another, it was not one of those dubious chunky/soupy concoctions that seem to pass for Brunswick stew in many quarters today.  It was a little taste of Heaven, purely and simply – every ingredient in it having been run through a grinder, even the creamed corn, for a smooth, hearty taste and texture –  and everyone blessed enough to experience it pines mightily for its return.  It was made by Mask & Gay Food Products Company in Brooks from 1946 until 1983, but truly has a history much longer than that. 

   Virginia and Georgia both claim to have originated Brunswick stew, while some think it came from Germany and others believe it originated with native Americans.  Regardless of where it came from originally, we know it was in Fayette County by the late 1800s, for a Brooks man named Charles Evans (1873-1950) perfected its recipe and created a product in demand for as long as he lived.   J. B. Mask and William Gay, both Brooks citizens and both members of the generation born around 1900, bought the Evans recipe and began producing stew on a large scale the year after World War II ended, for shipment throughout Georgia and the Southeast. 

    Local folks, who knew the owners, could buy containers of Mask & Gay unprocessed stew – without the preservatives the USDA required to be in the canned product – and your compiler’s family enjoyed it in that unprocessed form at all holiday meals till he was a young adult.  But then disaster struck – Mask & Gay, which had passed from local ownership in 1980, closed for the Christmas holidays in 1983 and never re-opened.   With it went a taste which locals had counted on for generations.

    Enter one Joseph Randolph “Hoss” Garrard (1933-2015) of Brooks.  Mr. Joe, who grew up in Wilkes County but settled in Brooks as a young man and lived his life here, taught his fellow churchmen at Brooks United Methodist to make a stew that was as close to the old Mask & Gay recipe as could be, according to no less a personage than Al Hardy (1939-2025), the last native Brooksian to own Mask & Gay, who had functioned as its plant manager for many years.  In Mr. Al’s words, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference in the stew the Methodist Men make and the stew we used to make at M&G.”

    The good news for readers whose mouths are by now watering is that you have an opportunity to taste this marvelous amalgamation – in TWO DAYS – on Saturday, October 25, 2025.  Come on down to Brooks between 10AM and 2PM that day for a Brunswick stew tasting contest in the midst of the town’s massive anniversary festival.  The Methodist Men’s stew will be a contender.   (To give you a rough idea, the cooking will probably be roughly between about 10:00 and noon, and the tasting will probably be roughly noon – 2:00.)

     And your compiler really feels compelled to say in closing that anybody who doesn’t like Brooks Brunswick stew just doesn’t know what’s good, and probably needs to go see a doctor.