By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
NOV. 24, 2020 | For about 50 years, residents of Lawrenceville have traveled south a few miles on U.S. Highway 29 to eat at what was sometimes called “the Lawrenceville Country Club.” Of course, there was no bona fide country club, with golf and tennis, in the area.
This facility was a small restaurant in what was once a Sinclair service station. Among its operators were Hoke Houston, and later on the Crowe family. Stanley Gunter bought it from the Crowes. When the highway was four-laned, Gunter moved it slightly north and opened what has been Hometown Barbeque.
Kelly
In 2004, Gunter sold Hometown Barbeque to Martha Kelly, 72, and George Richbourg, 70, good friends and partners, who both feel now is the time to retire. Hometown Barbeque’s last day of operation was Saturday (November 21).
What eventually became the Kelly-Rickbourg operation started in 1999 out of a concession trailer in the parking lot of The Prescription Shop in Lawrenceville. Richbourg, Martha’s late husband and another person served barbecue and other sandwiches on Fridays and Saturdays. Martha recalls: “They did that for five years, enjoyed it, and found it was fun and a good way to meet people.”
Richbourg
During that time, George’s daytime job was as a finance executive for Kubota Tractor while Martha was teaching fourth and fifth grade at Benefield Elementary School. Martha had met George through his involvement with the school and its PTA after George moved to the area in the early 80s. Meanwhile, Martha’s husband, a chef, and the other partner got out of the business. Eventually Martha and George both left their regular jobs, became partners full time on Labor Day weekend in 2004, and bought the former Gunter’s operation. They have been serving at the location ever since. They began perfecting their barbecue and offerings, working nights and weekends to get their restaurant off the ground.
And now both are retiring. Martha told us: “I’m just going to take it easy, and not feel tied down. I’ll clean out my house, do some traveling perhaps, and enjoy life.” Richbourg, too, is ready to settle into full time retirement. Martha is a native of North Carolina, and a graduate of the University of Florida.
Our best to these two hard workers in their retirement.
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Hometown Barbeque for years was the regular meeting site for a group of Lawrenceville “good old boys,” who gathered there for lunch each Thursday and Saturday at noon to enjoy one another’s company. Martha called them the Lunch Bunch, and it included many politicians, attorneys, bankers, a few elected officials—all men—- just to chew the fat. Wayne Mason points out that at the end most of the group sat at a Republican table, and three or four Democrats usually sat at another table.
Bill Atkinson, a regular at the Thursday and Saturday lunches, recalls that there was another person who had first bought the eatery Houston operated. Bill says: “That was Charles Moore, but after two weeks, he sold to the Crowes, saying that running a restaurant was too much work.”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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