Williams' Smokehouse got a little too smokey

I'm sort of in shock to learn that the august Williams Smokehouse was destroyed in a fire this morning. A friend called me a little while ago to report that he'd heard the bad news on Channel 13.

My heart just sank for the Williams family, who have been furnishing a grateful public with some of the city's finest smoked ribs for almost 20 years. Their little wood-paneled cottage in the tall trees of Acres Homes was an idyllic place, neat as a church meeting room and suffused with the scent of oak smoke. The thought of that special place in ashes is profoundly sad.