Is South Carolina a BBQ State?

At my job occasionally we'll get word of barbecue plates for sale as a fund raiser. Throughout my time there I have eaten many BBQ plates, usually on the boss, to help raise money for this or that. I am usually disappointed in what arrives as "Barbecue". So a couple of weeks ago when I bought a BBQ plate and it was so-so I decided it was the last time I'd buy a BBQ plate. Well, this week there was a sign-up sheet being passed around for the Elgin Volunteer Fire Department BBQ sale. I passed it on without even looking at it. Later that day a couple of the people I work with were talking about the Elgin BBQ and one woman said she was so excited that she didn't know if she could wait to get her plate tomorrow. As the day went on it seemed everyone with in this happy sort of state that only looking forward to a great meal can do. Maybe I would give another BBQ plate a try.
So I called my supervisor:
Me: "Has the sign up sheet for the BBQ been sent?"
Her: "Yeah, you didn't get the sheet?
Me: "Yeah I got the sheet but I wasn't going to order a plate until I heard everyone talking about how good Elgin barbecue was."
Her: "You've never heard of Elgin barbecue?"

I have had some good barbecue in my life...When I was younger I would eat pork from a whole pig at my uncles river house when he and the other men in my family would stay up all night stirring the coals and watching the pig until it was just right and the skin was crisp and the fat had melted away into the flesh to make it flavorful and juicy. This was served with my favorite sauce - vinegar based, also known as Carolina style or NC style (tangy and hot).
In college one of my good friends worked at a barbecue restaurant so many nights we would get free barbecue and it was always good. That restaurant offered three kinds of sauce, mustard, vinegar, and tomato based, on the side of course. With all these fond barbecue memories I had to wonder would I be able to find barbecue that was as good as in those days? Had I been hardened by too many plates that were sold as "barbecue" but just tasted like flavorless, sweet, over-sauced, chopped pork?
When the barbecue plates arrived I admit I had caught on to the excitement of the girl next to me and was looking forward to lunch. Even though I felt my tastes may be a little different from the folks at work I had a beam of hope in my heart that maybe I was going to find good barbecue again...









The plate came with chopped bbq, hash over rice (which I really liked), baked beans, slaw, and a little cup of mustard based sauce.
And it was good...not really good, not great, not world-renowned-how-could-I-have-not-heard of-it good, but the best I had had so far at work....Anyways it got me thinking NC is a bbq state, so is Alabama, then there is the usual suspects - Texas and Missouri (St. Louis that is) but is SC a bbq state??? So I turned to the only cool website I can pull up at work, Wikipedia. According to them SC is indeed a BBQ state.... Here is an excerpt from their BBQ Page:
I would be considered in the Rock Hill area of the state but the sauce my family usually eats is the Lowcountry vinegar and pepper sauce if anyone was wondering....

"South Carolina
South Carolina is the only state to have four types of Barbecue sauces: mustard, vinegar, heavy tomato, and light tomato. The meat used in South Carolina is consistent throughout the state, slow-cooked pulled pork. In the Pee Dee and Lowcountry coastal region, a vinegar and pepper sauce is prevalent, though the region is home to Sticky Fingers a rib house who uses all four sauces. In the Midlands area around Columbia, a mustard-based sauce sometimes referred to as "Carolina Gold" is the predominant style. Such establishments as Maurice Bessinger's "Piggy Park" and Dukes BBQ (3 locations in Orangeburg, SC) use gold sauce made from mustard, apple juice, pear juice, and other ingredients. In upcountry around Rock Hill one finds the light tomato and the rest of the upcountry streching down past Aiken is home to the heavy tomato sauce. In addition to pork, other popular BBQ dishs include hash and ribs."

Maybe SC is a barbecue state even though I have never really seen much evidence of it myself, at least not yet, but a hungry girl is always willing to look.