By ED GRISAMORE —
egrisamore@macon.comThe first public display of fireworks in the U.S. came July 4, 1931, in Cleveland, Ohio.
We had fireworks of our own in Macon that same day, when 32-year-old Mangham Edward Griffin trotted out some of his homemade barbecue sauce.
He served it to his wife, daughters and other members of the family during a Fourth of July gathering at their home on Richmond Street, between Broadway and Houston Avenue.
Everyone licked their lips, slapped their knees and begged for more. Bless his heart, that sauce was good enough to drink right out of the jar.
Of course, nobody mentioned anything about taking it, bottling it and making a million dollars. After all, it was the middle of the Great Depression. Food riots had been breaking out across the country. There were soup lines in the big cities.
He had cut his teeth on a barbecue sauce recipe handed down from his father, who used to carry it to the Masonic Lodge.
Griffin’s challenge was to bring together a marriage of family taste buds. The Georgia Griffins, it seems, were big fans of a tomato-based sauce. But the South Carolina Griffins were loyal to a vinegar and mustard base.
It wasn’t exactly the Hatfields and McCoys, but Griffin worked the blends until he got everybody stirring out of the same pot.
Later, he made a tangy batch in his kitchen and stuck a dozen jars on the shelves of his brother’s grocery store in Warner Robins. They disappeared quicker than you could say “pass the napkins.”
By 1935, he didn’t just have a sauce, he had a product. He could have called it Mr. Griffin’s, since he was the chief cook and bottle washer.
But he figured a woman’s name would be more appealing. “Look at the label,” he said. “If it says ‘Mrs.,’ you will go ahead and read it.”
And eat it, too.
He named it Mrs. Griffin’s BBQ Sauce in honor of his wife, Etta Busbee Griffin. She died in 1959 at the age of 57, so she didn’t live to fully see it become one of Macon’s oldest food businesses, a staple of Southern kitchens and among the oldest commercially produced barbecue sauces in the country.
W.E. Griffin died on Thanksgiving Day in 1986. Somewhere out there, a loyal customer was probably spreading Mrs. Griffin’s on a turkey.
Mrs. Griffin’s stayed in the family until Jim Wilcox bought the business in 1998. Wilcox lost count of the number of times somebody told him they “were raised on that stuff.”
He sold the company to Roland Neel in 2010. Neel knows plenty about Macon icons. His family owned Joseph N. Neel department store downtown. It closed in 1993 after 107 years in operation. He worked for his father, Joe Neel, for more than a dozen years, doing everything from sweeping the floors to selling suits and ties.
He has now gone from sweeping floors to pushing a mop sauce. And that’s what Mrs. Griffin’s really is -- an old-fashioned mop sauce. It may say BBQ on the bottle, but it is not limited to a traditional barbecue fare.
Neel calls it a “Southern thing,” to use mop sauce like ketchup to dip and douse after cooking. That’s why the label claims it “tastes great on everything.” Wilcox and Neel have heard tales of using the sauce on everything from biscuits to burritos.
It is made much the same way it always has, an “evolving blend.” At the company’s headquarters on Roff Avenue, the ingredients are mixed -- not cooked -- in 60-gallon vats, a four-day, 12-step process. It comes in three flavors: original, hickory smoked and hot. (And the hot has nothing to do with the offices being located behind the fire station on Pio Nono Avenue.)
Mrs. Griffin’s doesn’t always get top billing at the grocery store, since big companies such as Kraft and Heinz often pay for eye-level shelf space, making customers have to either bend over or stand on their tip-toes to fetch the “Mrs.”
Some folks have had Mrs. Griffin’s and didn’t know it, since it is also marketed and sold under different names all the way to Alaska as part of Neel’s “Private Label” business.
Others have taken the sauce and refined it to their own tastes, perhaps adding a little more vinegar, pepper or sugar.
“In the South, everybody seems to have their own barbecue recipe, just like their grandmother’s favorite cake,” Neel said. “I don’t feel like I own Mrs. Griffin’s. The people who own it are the ones who buy it. I’m just a steward.”
Reach Gris at 744-4725 or
egrisamore@macon.com.
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