FRESH AIR

Ten years ago, Virginia native Stan Woodward set out to make a documentary about Brunswick Stew and its relation to barbecue. Woodward, likely drawing connection with the South Georgia town of Brunswick, worked his way from the coast up to Middle Georgia. Along the way he heard about Fresh Air Barbecue, its founder and owner Toots Caston and his incomparable Brunswick Stew. On July 30, 1996, Woodward shot over 50 minutes of Caston, Jim Brewer and others, talking about stew, the barbecue business and the life that surrounds it.

It’s the life that surrounds it that fills the video footage, photo albums, and the memories of those that carry on Caston’s tradition. Southern author William Faulkner once said, “Others have done it before me; I can, too.” Others have certainly done it before Caston, too, but they likely did not do it as well as him.

When the camera comes on, Toots’ face fills the shot. His blue and green broad-checked shirt is draped across wide, still-strong shoulders. His face draws down to the corners of his mouth; his blue eyes still sharp. He motions when he speaks; his arms long and liver spotted; hands large and rippled with veins and age. Toots’ voice is slow, thoughtful, and the fluorescent lights above shine dully in his bright white hair.

“I used to haul a man around,” said Caston, sitting at a long table in Fresh Air Barbecue, his hand rattling a red plastic cup of ice. “I was a little boy – about 10-years-old, and I could drive a car. The man’s name was Toots Waits. People nicknamed me Toots. George Wilson – that’s my name. All my children call me Toots.”



GEORGE WILSON “TOOTS” CASTON

“Yes, people started calling my grandfather ‘little Toots,’” said Caston’s grandson Michael Brewer. “But when he got older, he wasn’t little anymore.” The ‘little’ was lost and ‘Toots’ remained.

Toots was a gardener, a cook, a fisherman and a hunter. He loved hard work, Cadillacs, his Silverado pickup, and going on family trips.

“He would buy a new Caddy every single year,” said Brewer. “He said he bought it to take [his wife] Dot around in. There were only three people in the county that drove them. And when it got into the ’80s he would only keep them for two years.

“We’d go on these big family trips,” Brewer continued. “We went to Daytona and Gatlinburg. One time we took the Cadillac out west for two weeks. We stopped at all the places on Route 66; we went through the Redwood Forest. My dad [Jim Brewer] never could go because he was always back in Jackson, running the restaurant.

“Toots had a green-thumb that wouldn’t quit; he grew the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted,” said Brewer. “I could just go pick one off the vine and eat them like an apple.” They were perfect and all tart and acidy. The morning that Toots had the stroke that killed him he was planning on checking the tomatoes that he was growing in the backyard of his Jenkinsburg home. He never made it out of the house. The [Stan Woodward] interview was made one day prior.” Toots was 89.

“Everything about [Toots] was ritual – from doing it over and over again,” said another of Caston’s grandsons, Chris Brewer, who runs the Fresh Air Barbecue in Athens. “He was all about hard work and not wasting anything. At his funeral, I told people that if I could define him, it would be as a leader. But, not in the smiling politician sense of the word: [Toots] was a leader because he was always out in front; he was the one that got there the earliest and left the latest. He didn’t mind you taking a break, but when that break was over, he wanted you to get back to work.

“If there was an easy way or a hard way to do the same thing, [Toots] would rather do it the hard way,” laughed Brewer. “He felt like the easy way was just cutting corners and he never wanted to get cheated out of anything.

“One time in the ‘70s some fellow walked out of the place with his Coca-Cola bottle – without paying the deposit. Well, Toots got in his truck and followed him all the way to Indian Springs and got that Coke bottle back. That was the kind of man he was.”

“He never really slowed down,” said Michael Brewer. “He loved to go to High Falls, and on his 75th birthday, we swung by his house to pick him, Dot and the rest of the family to go to the Falls. We looked about three stories up and there Toots was in a Magnolia, pruning it. Everyone was like, he’s going to fall out of that tree and kill himself; the tombstone is going to say: ‘born and died on the same day.’ But, he always used to say, ‘If I ever stop, I won’t be able to get goin’ again.’

“He was very active; he loved to fish and hunt,” said Brewer. “He was a great shot, too. I can remember him throwing a coin up in the air and shooting it from his hip with a pistol. He was a great shot with a revolver.”

“I hunted quail when I had a good bird-dog,” Caston told Woodward. “I killed about 100 of them a year and it was enough to eat for my wife and children. Dot would cook them up and we’d have about two or three for breakfast.”



THE RESTAURANT

Anyone that’s ever been to Fresh Air Barbecue recalls different things. There’s the gravel lot in front, the long black and white sign over the top of the main structure, the woodpile to the side, the sawdust that surrounds the picnic area, and the smell of wood-smoke and pork and spice. All of these recollections make the restaurant what it is today.

“Dr. Joel Watkins was the first to have Fresh Air,” said Michael Brewer. “Toots managed the restaurant and eventually bought it from Watkins’ heirs for $1,500 in 1945. It was originally two restaurants; one, Country Kitchen, opened on the weekends and the other, Fresh Air Barbecue, opened on weekdays. Old timers often refer to it as Open Air.”

Fresh Air Barbecue was opened in 1929 by Watkins and, from day one, was managed by Caston. When Caston took over in 1945, he switched to slow cooking, allowing the smoke – not the fire – to bring the meat to doneness. Caston added his Brunswick Stew to the menu, developed a barbecue sauce and later added a dining room to allow for indoor eating; prior to that, Fresh Air was little more than a drive-in. Years later, in 1984, Fresh Air was voted “Best Barbecue in Georgia” by WSB-TV.

“The old tables folded up,” Brewer continued. “There wasn’t a dining room then and people ordered and ate outside; it was more like a drive-in at that time. The dining room was added later by Toots. The urban legend was that the dining room had a sawdust floor. The sawdust that was on the floor was what was tracked in from outside.

“Cleaning the pit was a not an enviable job,” said Brewer. “The hams lay on a chain-link fence and we had to burn it to get the grease off. And we used to burn all of the garbage in a 15-foot hole in the back of the restaurant. All that land belongs to the barbecue place.

“Toots always said that the hardest part of the barbecue place was getting enough materials during The Depression,” Brewer continued. “I remember him telling me about having to raise his own hogs because of the lack of supplies.

“There was a time when I had to get my hogs from the sale barn,” Caston told Woodward. “Eight to 10 hogs were killed a week. We used the hams; we used the shoulders. We sold the rest to the stores around here. I don’t use the shoulders anymore because the hams go farther.”

Woodward followed Jim Brewer, then Caston’s son-in-law, around the restaurant asking him about the cooking methods. Brewer stubbed his cigarette out and walked Woodward around the counter to the back. He pointed to a tangle of logs lit afire and pushing smoke slowly through the pit.

“That is a very functional fire,” said Jim Brewer. “That fire heats the stew, keeps the buns warm and smokes the meat; we are not dependent on electricity.

“Pioneers cooked on a spit; slaves cooked for landowners in the big black pots,” Brewer continued. “People have been cooking over open fire for a long, long time.”



THE JOB

“The restaurant was a full-time, seven day a week job,” said Michael Brewer. “Cooking was an all-the-time process. I used to go down to the restaurant with my dad to build the fire. We had all our wood in the back, and I can remember Toots would pick up logs bigger than I am and toss them in.

“Toots retired in the ‘60s, but he continued to go into the restaurant,” Brewer continued. “He’d roll in about 5:30 in the morning, make coffee, sweep the floor and tend to the fire. Toots hung around, sat at his table in the front, drank coffee and talked to everyone that came in. Toots’ table was the first table when you walked in; it was like [the “round table” at] the Mason Jar.”

“I’m not half the man I was a year ago,” Caston told Woodward. “I used to come in here every morning and get to work.”

Woodward asked Caston how he could keep the restaurant the same, and keep the food the same despite all of the changes around them.

“I had to keep making it good and keep it the same all the time,” said Caston. “When I come down here there were only two places in Butts County to get something to eat.”

“How long do you think Fresh Air will continue?” asked Woodward.

“I hope it stays here at least 100 years,” smiled Caston.

A second Fresh Air Barbecue, in 1989, was opened in Macon. A third Fresh Air Barbecue, in 1997, was opened in Athens and a fourth, in 1999, opened in Bogart. All are operated by members of Caston’s family.

Today, Fresh Air Barbecue in Jackson is co-managed by two more of Caston’s grandsons, George and David Barber.



THE BARBECUE

“My grandfather thought we should have a short menu – something people could memorize,” said Michael Brewer. “They used to have fried chicken and peach pies, but eventually it was whittled down to barbecue plates, sandwiches and stew. Cole slaw was the last thing added. There used to be a wide array of soft drinks, too: Orange Crush, Grape Crush, RC Cola – all of those. When the restaurant went to fountain drinks in the ‘80s, Toots pitched a fit; he didn’t want to go to fountain drinks and thought that they tasted terrible.

“There had been barbecue traditions passed down in Toots’ family,” said Brewer. “His Brunswick Stew recipe was his father’s recipe. We don’t know where he got that; it could be early 19th century.”

“I got the recipe from my father,” Caston told Woodward. “My daddy was the stew man. And he taught me. My mother used to cook it on the stove and I learned how to cook it in a wash-pot. I learned the hard way.

“The old, original recipe for Brunswick Stew was hog-head and beef neck,” Caston continued. “You kill the hog. You cut its head off; clean the head and put it in the pot. You’d add potatoes, tomatoes and corn. That would all cook together and the meat would boil off of the hog’s head. You’d have to add a little beef, because the pork is too greasy. Beef neck was used.

“But I don’t think anyone’s stew is as clean or as good as the Brunswick Stew that I make. I learned this from experience, and I took the grease out of mine. I don’t use the pork at all; I use all beef. Nowadays, people don’t want [the grease]. Country folks didn’t mind it, raised on fatback and lard.

“I used to cook 60 gallons of [stew] at a time [for the restaurant],” Caston told Woodward.

“That’s a lot of hard work,” Woodward said.

“You damn right it is,” said Caston.

“For the barbecue, every component of the ham was used,” said Michael Brewer. “The skins weren’t used [in the restaurant], so the workers took them home, fried and ate them. People asked to take the hambones home to give to their dogs. The grease was sold to a company that used it to make soap.

“What is now the mild sauce was the regular barbecue sauce that Toots used,” said Brewer. “For hot sauce, Toots just put out a bottle of Louisiana hot sauce.”

“Toots fully developed the barbecue sauce,” said Chris Brewer. “He said that he could make sauces that were better than what he made, but those other ones just weren’t practical because they had fats in them that gave them a shorter shelf life. With the sauce that Toots came up with, it has an indefinite shelf life; it’s by nature a preservative because of all the vinegar.

“The simplicity of it is what makes it,” Chris continued. “It allows the meat to come through. It’s balanced. But, for some people, it’s too strong. I’ll have people come into [the Fresh Air Barbecue Athens location] and tell me that [the sauce] is hard to take. Given time, they are the same people that can’t get enough of it.

“I remember this old tree that had fallen by the back door of the restaurant,” said Chris. “We had cut it up, and there was this stump that we used to prop up brooms and rakes on. Eventually, it rotted and dad saw Toots rolling the stump away. He had cut down another tree and replaced the rotted stump with a fresh one. Toots thought that since that stump had been there for so long, they should replace it – that it was needed. And he was like that about a lot of things – always about keeping the things the way they were. Keeping things the way they’ve always been. In a way Toots has always been here, too. And anyone that ever met him and comes into the restaurant, he’s still a part of it. He’s still there.”

Photo: Toots Caston