The little town in the Texas Panhandle I hail from is named Groom; it's named for some Civil War colonel who moved into the godforsaken middle of nowhere to found a small (and to this day struggling) farming community.  I don't know what side he was on in the war.  Groom is an hour East of Amarillo on Interstate 40.

I had to lead with that in order to get to the rest of the story - the meat market in Groom is closing.  This institution, known as the Circle-B Meat market, is now closing after 40 or 50 years of operation.  The "B" is for "Bohrer" (pronounced like "bore") the name of the man who founded the place.  The Circle-B has been an important local business.  Farmers would bring their own livestock and game to be butchered there and the market sold products to the local grocery store and to others in nearby towns. 

Most important among the meat market's products was the sausage - a special, allegedly German, pork sausage recipe not to be found anywhere else in the world.  This sausage features prominently in the culinary memory of anyone who grew up on Groom.  It was the centerpiece of every Groom Day celebration in late summer.  The meat market made and extra large batch from freshly slaughtered local pigs and the men of the local Lion's club lined up at a huge firepit to grill it over mesquite wood.  The product was then served on plain white bread with a choice of condiments including mustard, ketchup, and canned sauerkraut.  The entire town was redolent with the rich aroma of this treat and even as a 10-year veteran of a strict vegetarian lifestyle, I'm salivating just thinking about it.

Now that you know why it's important, I'll tell you the bad news - the meat market is closing and the sausage is already unavailable.  The story is that the business was passed on to a son who mis-managed the business; he alienated employees and customers alike and he has a drinking problem.  The quality of all the products suffered as a result.  Upon hearing this news I anxiously suggested to my Dad that he should find a way to ship a batch of sausage to me in Austin before it was forever unavailable.  He reported that he quality of the sausage has declined and now it's not worth the trouble.  Apparently a number of shortcuts are being used in its production - mainly the use of frozen pork rather than fresh.

I hope that some other local business - maybe a meat market in another town - will end up with the sausage recipe or maybe the recipe will be published.

I have several pounds of this product tucked into the back of my freezer - it's from a trip I made back home two December's ago.  I'm going to round up a few folks when the weather gets nice and cook up the whole batch.  Maybe I'll even have some, too, just for old time's sake.