I love that place.

Last week, I made the 45-minute trip over the Dam (and through the woods and farms) to Batesburg-Leesville, SC to teach a class at the Midlands Tech Campus there. I made sure to book the class for a Monday so I could visit one of the very BEST barbeque restaurants in the world. This place is closed on Wednesdays (my other class meeting day), and I refuse to make the drive if I can't stuff my face full of Shealy's delicious goodness. And by stuff, I mean devouring enough calories to warrant a week on the treadmill and stairclimber. It's dangerously sumptuous.

I've been visiting Shealy's since I was a little girl and my dad coached football and basketball for Chapin High School, and I always got to ride on the bus with the team to the away games. (Looking back, this was probably more of a treat for my mom since she got rid of me for the night.) When the team went to Batesburg-Leesville, they always got dinner at Shealy's before a game... which may have contributed to the loss of many a matches because all of the players were in food comas after supper. I'm gonna bet that the home team athletes weren't making several visits to the buffet prior to putting on their uniforms. C'est la vie.

Over the years, the place has grown larger in size, but the original structure remains and the original set-up for the buffet line and seating is unaltered. It's kind of odd to enter a food establishment and be shuffled into a snaking line marked off by guard rails, but the place needs it because it gets that busy. In the middle of the line is a jacked-up-looking sink for patrons to wash their paws before digging into the buffet. On the one hand, this is a good idea, but on the other, the sink looks like it was stolen out of the dirty gas station bathroom down the street, so I'm not convinced that your hands are necessarily clean once you're done scrubbing. Once you get to the buffet, some of the best comfort food in the world calls out to you, saying, "Pick me. Eat me. Put me on your plate." And, even though you know that one bite carries 800 calories straight to your ass, you choose them all. The seating is all picnic-style, and each table is adorned with your great-grandmother's finest plastic table cloths and vases with fake flowers. It's quaint, to say the least. There are no individual tables, so if you don't like sitting with others you don't know, tough. But, man, once you start eating, there's really no room for talking or looking up, so that's alright.

My family would sometimes take Saturday drives to B-L just for Shealy's... to be honest, there's not much else there. This barbeque joint is the town's claim to fame. Just about any Republican politician has been there, including old George W, and many of their signed photographs decorate the walls in the lobby where the line forms to enter the buffet. Usually, this would be enough to scare me away, but the food is so good that I'm willing to risk scary politics to indulge myself.

My grandmother was a huge fan of Shealy's. Once when we were there over the Labor Day weekend, she brought ziploc baggies in her purse to stuff extra barbeque and hash into so she could have some for later. Shealy's is the kind of place where one isn't allowed to walk out with a leftovers box... one would have to pay extra, so my grandmother put her criminal instincts into play and made Matt shove several full baggies of food into the cargo pockets of his pants. It was kind of obvious since he looked like he was smuggling two small possums out of the restaurant. Not to mention that she hadn't sealed the baggies all the way, and hash juice was leaking through his pants. They weren't the smartest criminals, but we laughed and laughed the whole way home. Every time I go there now, I make sure to sit in the same place where my grandma last sat just so I can remember how funny she was in that moment.

It goes without saying that I have many memories of Shealy's, and I can't think of a bad one. Every visit has been so fattening and so worth it. I love that place.