Of the three places that were my barbecue rotation when I was in college in Nashville, only Mary's Old Fashioned Pit Bar-B-Cue is still open.

Jimmy Coursey's was out by the racetrack/fairgrounds/rollercoaster. The place had two plain rooms, good pork and if, on occasion, you showed up in groomsman attire with a covey of bridesmaids and wedding guests, and a number of bottles of champagne that the groom's little sister had swiped from the reception and cached in your daddy's big-ass maroon Lincoln, no one really objected. Jimmy Coursey's was always third on my list of barbecue places, but it was a fond number three.

Charlie Nickens was just west of downtown, close to the river, in an industrial/warehouse district. I'm sure the neighborhood had seen better days, or at least more populous ones. Nickens proudly soldiered on. I always had pulled pork sandwiched between two cornbread pancakes with slaw and, probably, beans, but I don't remember beans. If I had desert it was lemon ice-box pie. As good as the food was the promise offered on the restaurant's large sign out front, which contained a Holiday-Inn style section for changing messages. Beneath the elaborately styled Charlie Nickens logo came the sentence in small plain letters: "We never close." For my four years in Nashville, the letters never changed.

Mary's is not far from where Nickens was, up Jefferson Street a few blocks past the farmer's market. Mary's serves all the standard barbecues: pulled pork, ribs and chicken. Here I almost always got the white-meat chicken sandwich with extra hot sauce. The counter man or woman would dunk a cooked chicken breast — bone still in — in a vat of sauce, then place it still dripping between two pieces of white bread, wrap it up in paper and seal it with a toothpick.

For a long time Mary's was strictly drive-in. You could eat standing in the parking lot or take your food elsewhere. Mary's has a dining room now, two freshly sheetrocked and tiled rooms with plastic booths, tables and chairs that somehow feel new and abandoned at the same time. Customers stream in steadily and line up to place their orders, then mostly take their food away, as before. The barbecue is still good, but last weekend I passed on the chicken sandwich and instead had a pulled pork sandwich, which Mary's now serves a la Nickens, between two cornbread pancakes. Maybe they always did and I just didn't notice. The cornbread was good but sweeter than I like.