I must say, however, that I resent the line about the strange mayonnaise-based sauce found in Alabama.

Don’t get me started.

Too late.

I love barbecue, lived in Alabama until I was almost 40, and have at least a dozen favorite barbecue restaurants in the state. But I’ve never even tasted “white sauce”. I know of only a couple of barbecue restaurants where they use it. One place (Big Bob Gibson’s Bar-B-Q)is known for it; the other (The Golden Rule) added it just a few years ago and has it available for purchase online, but the last couple of times I ate there, they didn’t even have it on the table. From what I gather, white sauce is really popular only in the extreme northern sections of the state. I also think it might be part of some communist plot to take over barbecue in the South.

(If you suffer from morbid curiosity, however, you can find the recipe on the Food TV web site. Just type “Big Bob Gibson” into the site’s search engine. Virtually all user reviews are positive. It may be good, it’s just not barbecue sauce.)

The point of the song is well taken: There are probably too many “styles” of barbecue to count. Within a two-hour drive of virtually anywhere down South, one can find hot barbecue, sweet barbecue, “mustardy” barbecue, chopped barbecue, sliced barbecue, pulled barbecue, pork barbecue, beef barbecue…the list goes on. And for my money, that’s perhaps the greatest thing about barbecue: endless variety.

Sorry. I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant. But I’m a Southerner…you insult my barbecue, and you insult me.