Moore — which might be a pseudonym as I couldn’t find in any official records a living person in Forsyth County by that name, and Clayton Moore also happens to be the name of the actor who played the Lone Ranger on TV — wrote that he’d asked local air-quality officials at an Earth Day celebration about the air pollution pouring out of “the 100’s (possibly 1000’s) of restaurants in our area.”

Local officials tasked with monitoring and policing sources of pollution in Forsyth County told him essentially that federal and state laws prevent them from doing much of anything about smoke coming from restaurants. Even if it is tangy, sweet and tasty.

“The plume … at Mr. Richards (sic) contains hickory smoke laden with grease from burned hogs and hush puppy grease,” the email said. “The cloud of unmitigated CO and particulate matter wafts uphill and coats the windows of the apartment building and the lungs of the hapless apartment building tenants.”

The man had a beef about pork, and he wanted some answers. (Email replies asking for a contact phone number weren’t returned over several days.)

Because of that — and the fact that barbecue, particularly the Lexington variety, is delicious — I didn’t give the initial email much thought. It seemed the work of a crank.