By Gary Lloyd

We weren’t even supposed to go that far down Stemley Bridge Road in the Pell City area.

We had planned to eat at this river-view restaurant, on a back porch where the wind tries to sweep your napkin into the Coosa. Inexplicably, the restaurant was closed.

We weren’t near much else, and a Google Maps search showed the closest place for food was called, simply, The Shack, and was a mere one-third of a mile up the road. When you have a three-year-old in the car, and it’s time to eat, you make quick decisions. The Shack, it was.

The Shack’s menu

We pulled into a gravel lot that led to a low-lying, red-roof building with what appeared to be a red train car beside it. “Welcome” was painted in white above the entry door, and the “N” in the neon “OPEN” sign was no longer receiving electricity. I was skeptical yet curious.

When we got to our back-corner booth, my skepticism vanished without ever having to taste the food. Autographed photos and memorabilia hung from the walls. Dale Earnhardt. Jeff Gordon. Billy Ray Cyrus. A poster from Jan. 1, 1953, that showed a two-dollar entry fee at the Grand Ole Opry to see Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Horton, Marty Robbins, and Hank Thompson play their music. The tablecloths were checkered in red and white.

The food was great, of course, and this column wasn’t written to focus on it. But I will say one thing: While every other dining establishment is providing match box-sized packets of ranch sauce, The Shack brings to your table a twenty-ounce squeeze bottle full of it.

Anyway, I’m a “story guy,” as you may have guessed. You can get away with bland baked beans if your establishment tugs at heartstrings. The Shack’s does. It’s printed on the menu like some book back-cover blurb, and maybe it should be.

The story of The Shack, and its “folks,” are printed over the course of a few paragraphs. A photo of Dot Hann, one of the original owners, adjoins it. The Shack opened July 1, 1983, and it’s been sitting on that gravel since. Haskell Hann, Dot’s husband, built it, and their home behind it, with railroad crossties. Imagine the best house you’ve made from Lincoln Logs as a kid, but inside there’s a plate of ribs and banana pudding. That’s The Shack.

The back cover of the menu describes how the red train caboose was added later as a storage building, how one of the Hanns’ children, Wayne, married Montez, who brought in a homemade dressing recipe. Another of their children, Sharon, along with her husband, Ricky, bought the restaurant when Haskell died two years after it opened. A son, Jeff, followed in his father’s footsteps and cooked the meat on the smokers out back. Shane, another son, is mentioned along with his wife and children.

What restaurant’s menu can give you a rib plate and a family history?

The back cover of the menuThe scene from our boothThe greatest photo to ever exist of Dale Earnhardt NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon and a whole lot of Pepsi advertisingA Grand Ole Opry poster from 1953Billy Ray Cyrus with a joke that indeed made me feel achyThe infamous bottle of ranch sauce Memory booksMemory booksMemory booksThe Shack

After we ate, and I took enough iPhone photos to satisfy my need to describe the place, I encountered a round table near the front door. There were a couple memory books. I signed and flipped through several past pages. I know they keep these memory books at Gatlinburg cabins and beach resorts, but finding one inside a forty-year-old barbecue joint was different in such a good way. I felt connected to a place I didn’t intend to visit.

Above the table was a framed column written in 1994 by then-Senior Editor George Smith from The Anniston Star, about visiting this restaurant for the first time. The column is cut from the newspaper and pressed to a square of pink-and-green floral wallpaper that is an undeniable ‘90s pattern.

“Home is a bunch of railroad ties,” he titled it.

Home. It sure felt like it.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.