For 65 years, the celebrated deep-South lowbrow delicacy has taken center stage at the Arley Annual Chitlin Supper

Feb. 13—ARLEY — Nobody ever seems to describe the actual taste of eating a chitlin. They just describe the way it makes them feel.

"I've been here for many years," says Meek High School band director Zach Cleghorn, with just the faintest hint of a shudder to signal that chitlins, or chitterlings, aren't exactly his thing. "I have only ever eaten just one. They do say if you get a good crunchy one, it's just like a pork rind. But ... "

He lets the thought sit there, contemplating the distinctive memory of his single, all-too-personal encounter with chitlins, a celebrated deep-South lowbrow delicacy. He swears the aroma of chitlins frying is something you'll never forget: "If I was in a foreign country and somebody was boiling chitlins, I would know that smell," he declares.

But, with or without an inborn appreciation for chitlins — known in kitchen terms as a pig's washed, pressure-cooked, and deep-fried intestines — he's in a better position than most to dispense a dish of hard-won chitlin facts: Since taking over as Meek band director three years ago, Cleghorn, himself an Arley, Alabama native and a 2007 Meek High School graduate, has been in charge of the school's annual chitlin supper — the locally-famous annual band fundraiser that, in 2024, will be commemorating its 65th year.

Cleghorn's not the only one who's done annual laps around chitlins without ever falling for their cardiac-clobbering appeal. Former band director Nancy Frith, now the school's librarian, admits to a similar aversion to a historically significant food that admittedly calls for an acquired taste. "My best friend though," she says — "she comes to the supper — and she's all about it."

Like all of its predecessors, one thing about this year's 65th Annual chitlin supper at Arley, is that you don't have to be a firsthand chitlin fan to get in the spirit of one of the quirkiest, most unique highlights on Alabama's yearly events calendar. Staged and staffed entirely by Meek band students, faculty and anyone else in the community who falls within their orbit of persuasion, it celebrates a piece of Alabama's home-grown past that perches delicately, in these modern times, on the precipice of becoming a venerated culinary cultural artifact rather than a regular dietary mainstay.

But the chitlin supper's throwback nod to its genuinely authentic Arley roots is precisely what brings people out each year to the school's Wayne L. Tidwell Gym, where the event always attracts locals and out-of-towners alike — alongside a recurring roster of regional celebrities and state politicians, who pay good money for a five-minute turn at the microphone to take advantage of the whole affair's offbeat, family-friendly spectacle (as well as its strategically vital spot on the pre-primary season campaign calendar.) Don't underestimate that kind of brand power: Well-known television meteorologist James Spann landed a helicopter on the football field there one year; The New York Times came down when Roy Moore challenged Bob Riley for the Alabama governor's seat — and both candidates, of course, showed up.

"This is a unique event," says Cleghorn, a trumpet musician who confesses he never expected to be back in his Smith Lake hometown mentoring high school band kids ... or coordinating an annual homage to pig intestines, for that matter.

"We're the only people around who do an event like this. It's not just chitlins; we have potato salad and cracklin' cornbread and sometimes potato salad and mac and cheese. Sometimes we have slaw. and if you don't like chitlins, we have chicken, too: 'Chicken for the chickens who won't eat the chitlins!' and we always have entertainment: singers, buck dancing, a hog calling contest. and we crown the 'chitlin King and Queen' from the faculty here: The students vote; the winners get a sash. They get pig ears; they get a pig nose. You can see that it's a lot of fun."

The 2023-2024 school year is an especially momentous one at Meek: Not only does it mark the chitlin supper's 65th anniversary; it's also the 100th anniversary of the school itself — as well as the 50th anniversary of the band. These days, the event's fundraising angle is crucial to keep the band supplied beyond its bare-bones yearly budget, though in decades past, the supper didn't get its start as a band-only moneymaker.

"I've had to research that, even myself," says Frith, a late-1980s Meek grad, when asked about the chitlin supper's earliest origins. "When I was in high school, the band didn't do it every year: It was different organizations — the football team would do it one year; the teachers would do it one year. Someone I talked to, who's since passed away, said that it started in 1959, when it was known as the Winston County chitlin Eaters' Association — just the older gentlemen of the community who first got it together. People from the Masonic lodge; from the fire station. That's why it was called a 'Winston County' event back then: It involved people from the wider community."

As small southern communities go, Arley leaves a bigger impression than its tiny footprint (or its out-of-the-way place on the map) might suggest. The town, and the school within it, are topographically favored by their close proximity to the lake, but it's all far enough off the beaten path to cater mostly to residents rather than to tourists or industry. It's the kind of community, in other words, that's grateful to measure its slow but stable municipal growth in decades ... if not longer.

"There really isn't another place like 'here,'" says Cleghorn, almost with a poetic cadence. "I've lived in a lot of different places. It does have like a Mayberry-like aspect to it. It's like nothing's changed here — but everything's different. We are smack on Smith Lake, surrounded on three sides. Doctors and lawyers from Birmingham or Huntsville come up to their lake houses and make it busier here in the summer. This was not part of the life plan for me ... but it's a great place. It really is."

As the season for chitlins ramps up at Meek, things will get too busy for Cleghorn to dwell on abstractions. There are 35 kids in the band, and it's up to them (plus whomever they can wrangle as volunteers) to carry out every step of footwork in getting everything ready for this year's Saturday, Feb. 24 shindig. Cleghorn's conscientious about making sure his students stay on top of their music and academics through it all, and he's keenly aware that quirky events like the chitlin supper, from a hard-nosed financial perspective, have to continually justify their existence in order to remain viable.

"You have to understand that the chitlin supper has been so successful because of the people who have been coming to it," he says. "But they're getting older. So how are you going to continue this when the people who have been supporting it in the past aren't here? How are we going to appeal to a younger generation with this, so that we can keep it going for the next 20 years?"

No spoilers, but he's already got some ideas. and however you slice it, dice it and then fry it up, the chitlin supper isn't likely to abandon the savory swine-based food centerpiece that, at the ripe old age of 65, has carried the event well past its Social Security-eligible milestone.

After all, how can you improve too much on an event where former Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (a Dermatologist by trade) once had to answer "yes" when a contestant had a medical emergency right in the middle of the buck dancing contest ... and someone rhetorically asked if there were a doctor in the house?

"There's nothing else quite like the chitlin supper," muses Cleghorn. "Yeah ... It's something that everyone should experience at least once."

This year's 65th Annual Chitlin Supper will take place at the Wayne L. Tidwell Gym at Meek High School in Arley (6615 County Road 41, Arley, AL 35541) from 4 p.m. until 8 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24.

Benjamin Bullard can be reached by phone at 256-734-2131 ext. 234.