There are about 5,240 folks living in the town of Brewton. Although last week someone had twins. So now there are more.
This township has all the things you look for in the quintessential American hamlet. A Pic-N-Save supermarket. Barbecue joints. Muddy trucks parked outside the attorney's office. The occasional stray dog hanging by the mill.
The train tracks run parallel with Highway 31, which means that diesel locomotives roll right through the downtown like they own the place. On Douglas Avenue storefronts still line the street like they did when Woodrow Wilson called the shots. There are flowers everywhere.
But Brewton’s masterstroke, if you ask me, is not its clapboard churches, or the begonias on the main drag. Neither is this town’s glory found in its rainbow row of antique and Greek Revivial homes on Belleville, nor its citywide devotion to jayvee sports.
The magnificence of Brewton lies over on Lee Street inside a nondescript brick restaurant.
The humble eatery sits between a vacant lot and a welding shop, almost invisible
if you’re not looking for it. There is an American flag flying out front. A few potted plants.
This place is named Drexel & Honeybee’s Donations Only Restaurant, it is owned and operated by Lisa Thomas-McMillian and Freddie McMillian.
This afternoon I swung open the café’s front door and found myself immediately standing in a line of omnivores, waiting to place my order. When it was my turn I approached the buffet sneeze-guard and was confronted with the kind of food my mother cooked.
The woman behind the counter filled my plate with ribs, mac and cheese, cabbage, okra, and scalding hot hoe cakes. There was peach cobbler, and the tea was so sweet I had to pray away the type-two diabetes.
I asked how much all this home cooking was going to cost me. They said it was free.
“Donations only,” one volunteer said, pointing to an…