
Jessica Snider, SMT Writer
Doug Cox has been smoking meat for many different events throughout the community for quite sometime. It all started while watching his dad, Doug Cox Sr., doing the same thing. “My biggest inspiration for this was my dad. I followed him around and watched him cook,” remembered Cox, “He didn’t do it for a living. It was just backyard cooking.”
Also many of his earlier jobs keeping Doug busy were raising money for little league traveling baseball teams. Cox’s meat-smoking helped pay expenses for the team to travel to tournaments and also raised enough for new uniforms.
Cox has also started traveling around to various cooking competitions. He travels around to different locations for the competitions and one of those places being Talladega. “We’ve won some of the competitions. Sometimes we win money, but we also have some trophies.” In the competitions there are usually five categories to be entered in. Most people usually cook brisket, chicken, and or ribs.
Although Doug Cox cooks for a lot of people, he has really started to turn more towards charities. “That’s the main thing I like to do now,” says Cox. Last week, Cox was in charge of cooking the meat for the Drew Albritton fundraiser. “We shoot for things that will in someway help people.”
This has become something that Doug Cox more or less donates his time for. He has six large cookers that he uses and they are all used with charcoal and hickory.
Doug Cox has some help in doing all this. Two other guys that are a big part of this are: Dallas Buchanan and James Kaufman.Jennifer Miller is shown picking up a smoked turkey from Doug Cox that she will be using for her family Thanksgiving. Ms. Miller is also in charge of the Senior Citizen Turkey Dinner held last night, which Doug cooked for.
He has been smoking the meat for the Senior Citizen Turkey Dinner sponsored by Dexter High School Student Council for over fifteen years now. Last night at the dinner there were over three hundred people in attendance.
Many people have been in and out of Doug Cox’s driveway this week and it will continue tomorrow as people pick up their orders for Thanksgiving.
Not only just during holidays, though. Doug cooks for people all year long. Doug often sponsors events throughout the year such as fishing tournaments, Relay for Life, and also 18 Fore Life.
Doug Cox is an example of something that often goes unnoticed. Cox donates a lot of his free time in order to help people in the community. Remember if you ever need some meat smoked to give Doug a call!