That Is Mr. Colonel Poole

Here I am squeezing a little more mileage out of short trip.

On the way back we stopped in Ellijay at Colonel Poole’s BBQ to eat. We have eaten there a couple times before. In fact, here is Colonel’s Pool’s postcard that I blogged one time: Col Poole's BBQ postcard

The barbecue was OK. The Brunswick stew I had remained with me in the form of little burps the rest of the day.

We chose Colonel Poold’s because he has an outside eating area. With outside tables our dog Willow could dine with us.


As you would expect pigs and more pigs of one form or another are all over Col. Poole’s establishment.





When we walked in to the order window two blue-uniformed firemen were ordering. We placed our order with a innocent looking teenage girl. Colonel Poole was right there beside her on the phone, being very serious. Not a smile…. Which is just the opposite of all the Col Poole’s pictures on his official souvenirs he had for sale. He had some CDs for sale with him smiling at the piano and also some cassettes. You better hurry and buy some of those cassettes, they will be collectors items someday. I looked at the songs, some were patriotic and some had a religious theme…. One thing for sure, Colonel Poole was a man of many talents and a merchandiser to boot!

Looking at him talk seriously on the phone he reminded me of Harry Dean Stanton or aka Roma Grant of HBO’s BIG LOVE.

The first time we ate at Poole’s we noticed at that time in history he was a hot well-known person for politicians to nose up to. Then, there was a picture of the colonel and Jimmy Carter, he and Zell Miller, and a couple of presidential and Georgia governor candidates here and there.

Now, the only political picture I saw being displayed was he and Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue.

When a middle age woman called out our number we went and got our food. We told the lady that the hotdog on the tray was for our dog. We were going to eat outside on their tables. She told us she wished we had come about ten minutes earlier. A bunch of hotdogs was dropped on the floor and the dog would have all the hotdogs she wanted. That was very neighborly, I thought.

In the back of the bbq joint is a hill full of make believe tombstones. Once I thought the tombstones looking woodcuts were pigs names that supposedly gave their lives for your barbecue gourmet enjoyment…. But this time I got a closer look at some of the markers and the ones I saw were not the names of pigs, but of people who enjoyed their meal, had more money than they knew what to do with, so had someone, probably one of Col Poole’s employees put up the marker with their name on it…. Their claim to fame, being on the famous PIG HILL OF FAME.

We parked near the back – mainly to get some pictures of the pig markers and before taking off we poured out some of our water into a little collapsible rayon dog water container and suddenly a Latino man materialized and told us he could bring out a container of water if that was OK with us. I think he was probably one of Poole’s cooks. I thanked him and said she only drank half of what we gave her… I thought that was very humane of the fellow.

Colonel Poole has a good staff.