28 maconmagazine.com | August/September 2025
Central Georgia native John T. Edge has traveled the world as an award-winning
food writer, but in his new book, he brings his focus back to home.
S O U V E N I R S
F R O M T H E
House of Smoke
STORY BY JOHN T. EDGE
T
o reach the Gray Inn and Suites, where
I would spend my rst night in Jones
County in four decades, I turned o Old
Clinton Road, past the split-level where my
boyhood friend Keith Martin lived. The air smelled
of afternoon rain and mown grass. At the back of the
parking lot, an Indian man in a white T-shirt and blue
cargo shorts hoed a plot of skyscraper okra plants.
"I'm Gujarati," the motel owner said, when I asked how
he came to grow such a garden. "Welcome home," he
said, when I told him how long I'd been gone.
In 2020, my agent landed a deal for "The Light from
Distant Windows," a book about my lifelong love a air
with restaurants. The proposal traced the roots of
my a ection back to Old Clinton Bar-B-Que, across
the four-lane from my childhood home; the H&H
Restaurant in Macon, where Mama Louise Hudson
