Bodine's Flying Saucers Celebrate Ireland

Each year the Memphis in May International Festival honors a different country. This year's country was Ireland. The Flying Saucers' booth and T-shirt design paid homage to Ireland's great heritage as the Flying O' Saucers' Pit, Pub & Riverdance Lounge. The celebration would not be complete without world-class barbecue. More than 250 teams participated in the 2005 MIM World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest.

View 2005 Photos

The barbecue contest, in which Bodine is a longtime participant, attracts national media coverage as well as pork lovers from all over the globe. Perhaps more importantly, the contest gives Bodine an opportunity to support the community and to bring together our employees, sales representatives, customers, vendors and friends for food and fun on the bank of the Mississippi River. On our busiest night, an estimated 600+ people passed through the Bodine booth. That's a lot of employees, friends and business associates!

In addition to the barbecue contest, the MIM Festival also includes the Beale Street Music Festival and the Sunset Symphony. Memphis in May celebrates cultures from around the world, fosters international relationships, highlights Memphis' own rich heritage and contributes to the local economy.

Best Booth
The award-winning booth drew a number of positive comments from visitors to the festival. Not only was the pub theme and two-story Blarney Castle a crowd favorite but it also placed first in the Best Booth competition. Most could hardly believe that the structure, from design to construction, was a three-week project. The Flying Saucers are blessed with a seasoned design and build team, Brad Van Frank, Clay Fowler and Mike Singleton.

Pam Walker, Laura Dailey, Angie Garcia and Melody Ramsey stocked, decorated, cleaned and otherwise helped to keep the booth looking good at the river despite heavy visitor traffic and one intense rainstorm.

T-Shirt
This year the Flying Saucers' classic-styled T-shirt finished fourth place in the Best T-shirt competition. Bob Howe designed the competition T-shirt's pub sign logo. Bob is no stranger to good design. His work can be seen on many of the Bodine and Bodine Etc. ads, as well as in our product brochures, catalogs and our industry newsletter, Vision. Bob contributed to the booth construction and to some of the booth's design elements, such as signage.

Ms. Piggie Competition
Opera Memphis wrote and performed the Ms. Piggie sketch, with help from several Bodine employees. The humorous sketch told the story of how our award-winning sauce is made -- sort of. Not ready to settle with a fourth place finish, the group is already thinking about next year's competition.

Cook Team and Committee
Bodine's cook team consisted of Mike Cagle, Gregg Mosley, newcomer Jerry McMichael, Mike Singleton and David Crippen. With these capable and creative cooks, leftovers were scarce!

The MIM committee included Al Lyons, Alex Ertz, Lamar Brock, Gregg Mosley, John Levesque, Rob Sumner, Mike Cagle, Brad Van Frank, Mike Singleton, Clay Fowler, Tom Stoll, Tom "assistant beer man" Mascari, Melissa Leach, Clayton Tipton, Angie Garcia, Melody Ramsey, Pam Walker, Laura Dailey and Jerry McMichael.

Special Thanks
Special thanks go to Bodiners Jodie Tice, Louis Davis, Vanessa Pinson, Wanda Moorman, Lindell Smith, Debra McGhee, Jeremy Malone, Sean Cash, David Crenshaw and Shane DeLima for all of their contributions.

Special thanks go also to the Flying Saucers' non-Bodiners, including Jim Sellars, who provided the fire truck and served as head beer man, Rachael Rodriquez with local radio station FM100, who kept the team on schedule and all the competition entries organized, Mark Boyd, who served as a jack-of-all-trades, Shannon Walls, who leant moral support to the late-night crew and the all-important site construction, and Opera Memphis for its help with the Ms. Piggie competition.

Click for Photos of our Week on the River.

For more information about the Memphis In May International Festival or the World Championship BBQ contest, visit www.memphisinmay.org.