From the levee to Raymond Turner’s novelty shop on Fifth Street, there’s a strong smell of barbecue in the air.

It’s courtesy of Dennis “Bubba” Girten, pit boss.

“Every day I fire up the three cookers. Mutton, ribs, chicken, pork chops — I keep this place smoking. Shoot, during the Christmas holiday, I’ll bet I fixed more than 2,000 hams. We’ve had people come here from as far as Atlanta to bring some of our products home.”

The 45-year-old man works for the Uniontown Food Mart.

“We’re talking nine, 10 hours a day,” he said. “I shovel in the hickory, ash or sassafras or whatever the wood is. I go through 15 to 20 logs for each pit.”

Girten said the deli sells many to-go orders to the men who drive the grain trucks and to those who are preparing the Alliance Mine.

“I’m proud to do something that puts Uniontown on the map,” Girten says. “Sometimes I fix 300 pounds of meat in a single day. Shoot, that’s more like a big city restaurant than a little town.”

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