Martell “Motown” Williams had a sleepless night in 2016, shortly after the grand opening of his barbecue trailer in Shreveport. He tossed and turned into the early morning hours, bothered by the realization that he’d made a mistake. His customers had been asking for Down Home Sausage, a local brand that he ate at home and cooked at family gatherings but didn’t serve to customers. They inevitably seemed disappointed in the fancier-sounding brand that he’d chosen to serve in place of the local brand.  

“When I first opened, I went with another sausage brand to be different, because I felt like I’d been eating Down Home Sausage all of my life,” Williams said, regret audible in his voice. “I switched back to Down Home for the same reason.” 

Growing up in Mooretown, one of Shreveport’s oldest historically Black neighborhoods, Williams enjoyed a daily after-school snack of “a skillet-fried link of Down Home” on a slice of white bread with a squirt of mustard. How could he not serve the sausage that he’d grown up eating?  

Since he came to that realization in 2016, Down Home Sausage has never left the menu of Louisiana Smoke House, Williams’ candy-apple-red barbecue trailer parked at 5108 Jewella Avenue in Shreveport. The sausage turns up as flavorful discs in gumbo, as chargrilled links weighing down smoked meat platters, and piled atop football-sized baked potatoes stuffed with barbecue. Williams still believes that the best way to eat Down Home Sausage is right off of the grill, sandwiched between slices of white bread to soak up the sputtering pork fat and spices.  
“Only people from around here would understand just how good that is,” he said.        

Down Home Meats, Inc., was established in Stonewall, Louisiana, in 1982 by Harold K. Chamberlain, a retired businessman from nearby Keithville. Chamberlain had previously managed a company that distributed magazines and other periodicals to retailers. He had no background in sausage-making, but he was a keen entrepreneur and marketer. With the help of a partner who has since split from the company, Chamberlain developed an all-pork, hickory-smoked sausage that soon found its way onto the shelves of retailers including Cotten’s Grocery, Kroger, and Walmart.   

Harold K. Chamberlain’s daughter, Kathy Romine, worked as a self-described “demo lady” for Down Home Meats, Inc., during the early days of her father’s business venture. She said her father had been encouraged to open a business—any business at all—by her mother, Peggy.      

“He’d retired from his first career at forty. My mother said: ‘You ain’t gonna sit around here at forty,’” Romine said. “‘You’ve got to do something.’”  

The business was an immediate success. By 1999—the year that Harold K. Chamberlain received the North Louisiana Small Business Award—Down Home Meats, Inc., had surpassed $2.5 million in gross annual revenue. A new, modern smokehouse was constructed in 2006, increasing production capacity to meet demand. Down Home Meats, Inc., currently packages about one hundred thousand pounds of sausage per week.  

In most towns within 250 miles of Stonewall—including Shreveport, Natchitoches, and Alexandria—Down Home Sausage is equally likely to be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. “Down Home kolaches” (pigs in a blanket made with regular or jalapeño links and sweet yeast dough) are a staple offering of doughnut shops and convenience stores—a working person’s breakfast on the go. Some of North Louisiana’s best-known Creole restaurants, including Lasyone’s in Natchitoches and Orlandeaux’s Cross Lake Café in Shreveport, crown their red bean platters with whole grilled links. Any sausage on a stick eaten at a fair or festival in northern Louisiana is likely to have been made in Stonewall.  

Harold K. Chamberlain passed away in 2009. His son, Carney Chamberlain, now runs the business, and his granddaughter, Hope Hudson, manages the smokehouse. Hudson said that the company’s rapid growth hasn’t changed their traditional approach to sausage-making. Only four cuts of pork—shoulder, rib trimmings, loin, and ham—go into Down Home Sausage, which is hickory smoked at 164℉ to 170℉ for several hours before being chilled, trimmed, and packaged.  

“We still pretty much do everything by hand, only now we have the linker,” Hudson said, gesturing towards a room-sized machine that rapidly turned out uniform-looking links. A half-dozen figures in hoodies and butcher’s whites methodically tended to the machine. Others pushed rolling racks, each strung with hundreds of pounds of sausage, to and from the massive smokehouse. Several pairs of workers applied glossy labels to finished, 1.5-pound packages bound for distribution centers in four states.  

Romine has watched as the business has grown beyond anything that her parents could have imagined. She enjoys talking with visitors who drop in at the smokehouse.
“It feels good to hear people say ‘This is the only sausage that I’ll use,’” she said. “I can remember when Mom and Dad were new to the business. I know they’d be proud of how much it means to people.” 

Chris Jay is a freelance writer from Shreveport, Louisiana. His writing often focuses on the food, people, and culture of northwest Louisiana. Read more of his writing at stuffedandbusted.com.