Notorious P.I.G. contest gets few responses

The (somewhat) official Augusta Chronicle Pork Brain Recipe Contest I launched last week is, so far, a dud.

My musings on canned pork brains in the previous installment of Scuttlebiz has yielded no recipes. At this point, I can only assume that a) The prospect of a free Augusta Chronicle golf shirt is not enough swag on which to base a recipe contest, or b) There really are no actual “recipes” for pork brains.

Based on the hundreds ( OK, four) responses I’ve received on the matter, the only thing you do with canned pork brains is mix with them with scrambled eggs. This apparently is the way generations of Southerners started off their days before Jimmy Dean sausage came along.

“Mr. Cline, you must not be from the South, where a traditional breakfast treat is brains and eggs,” a person identified as “dashiel” posted to The Chronicle Web site.*

Chronicle political reporter Sylvia Cooper, perhaps the most outwardly “Southern” person in the newsroom, chided me for my ignorance on the subject of Southern cuisine and said I should have consulted with her first. When asked whether she had ever personally eaten pork brains, though, she declined to comment.

Former Chronicle business reporter Tony Lombardo, an Ohio native who now lives in Phoenix, wrote: “My friend raves about pig brains. Mix them with eggs.” This proves “Southern” is not so much geography as a state of mind.

The best response was a phone call from an old acquaintance, Don Inman, who recalls eating PB and scrambled eggs as a young boy growing up in the Harrisburg neighborhood during World War II.

“You couldn’t hardly get anything because everything was being sent overseas for the war,” he said. “We didn’t have prime cuts of meat. We ate whatever we could find.”

EGG FACTOID: Q: How many eggs did Georgia farmers (technically their chickens) produce last month?

A: 394 million; that’s 206 million table eggs (think omelet) and 188 million hatching eggs (think Chick-fil-A). The things you learn when you get on the USDA Georgia field office’s e-mail list.

DON INMAN FACTOID: In addition to being old enough to eat meats that most people now throw away (and lampoon in newspaper columns), Mr. Inman can recall the days when the only people who got tattoos were sailors, bikers and criminals.

He would know – he was the guy holding the needle.

The 74-year-old Korean War vet learned the trade from his father, Ted, whose lower Broad Street shop, Ted’s Tattoo, was the first tattoo studio in Georgia to be granted a business license.

He took over the shop after his father’s death in 1971 and ran it until 1993, when he turned over the title of oldest continuously operating tattoo parlor to Eddie Peace Tattoo, also on lower Broad Street.

Mr. Inman’s health is in poor shape right now, so he might not get out to this weekend’s inaugural Augusta Tattoo Expo at the Marriott Augusta Hotel & Suites, which, as expo sponsor 1st Amendment Tattoo overemphasizes on its Web site, is stumbling distance from Broad Street bars.

So, when all you young inksters are out painting the town (and quite possibly one another) red, say a toast for the old pioneers such as Mr. Inman.

TURN UP THE RADIO(ACTIVE): A recent public opinion survey of people living within 10 miles of a nuclear power plant are quite mellow about having a reactor as a neighbor.
The study, commissioned by the Nuclear Energy Institute, said 82 percent of Americans living next to nuclear plants favor nuclear energy, and 71 percent are willing to see a new reactor built near them.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, of course a study paid for by a pro-nuclear group is going to look favorable for the industry, but consider this: The telephone survey of 1,152 randomly selected adults was conducted this summer by independent organizations, Bisconti Research Inc. and Quest Global Research Group, and excluded people employed by electric companies. All of the people selected for the survey were adults living near the nation’s 64 nuclear plants, including the Alvin W. Vogtle Nuclear Generating Plant just south of Augusta, where two new reactors are in the works.

The study, if nothing else, at least explains why protesters have to be bus ed in whenever there’s an anti-nuke demonstration at a power plant.

ALVIN W. VOGTLE FACTOID: Alvin W. Vogtle Jr., the fellow for whom the plant is named , was the chairman of Southern Co., whose Georgia Power subsidiary is the plant’s majority owner.

OK, here’s the cool part: Vogtle was a pilot in World War II who was shot down and captured by the Nazis. He made five escape attempts from five German POW camps before successfully making it to Switzerland in March 1945.

Perhaps you’ve have seen the 1963 film, The Great Escape. Steve McQueen’s character in the film is loosely based on Vogtle’s story.
I say “loosely” because Vogtle didn’t jump a motorcycle over a fence while eluding Nazis. That’s all Hollywood.



(* Not to be a Mr. Smarty Pants, but the town I’m from in Arizona is at latitude 32.61 degrees North, which, technically, is farther south than Augusta’s 33.37 degrees North. That being said, liver and onions is as kinky as my culinary tastes get.)