 |
| ALABAMA |
Maxine & Van Sykes
Bob Sykes BarB-Q
1724 9th Avenue N
Bessemer, AL 35020
(205) 426-1400
www.bobsykes.com
[Van’s] daddy [Bob] had a stroke and that, you know—he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t even sit up for months and months and—but I kept—I was determined to keep the business going because I knew I wanted to keep his name going. And so I worked hard to take care of him, take care of Van, and keep the business going.” – Maxine Sykes
“Not many people appreciate the dynamic of just salt, meat, fire—that’s it. I would love to have some convoluted thing that I could tell you I’m doing out there. I’m not. I mean it’s just—it’s a time-honored thing. But you know what? It’s almost too simple. By gosh, I wish it was just, you know, rub this for two hours and turn this over but it’s just real simple and that’s the genius, you know.” – Van Sykes
Originally from Cumberland City, Tennessee, Bob Sykes grew up in the country, experiencing hog killings and learning to smoke hams. As a young man during the Depression, Bob set out for Birmingham, seeking opportunity in the big city. He worked a series of different jobs. He married. And in 1956 he and his wife Maxine decided that they’d like to work together. They sold their house and their car to buy a small neighborhood café called The Ice Spot. Their gamble paid off. Bob found he had a knack for cooking, and Maxine was a great manager. Their son, Van, was a toddler at the time, getting on-the-job-training. Before long, hamburgers gave way to barbecue and a tradition was born. Five decades later, Van carries on his late father’s legacy. Through different locations, franchises, and changing tastes, Bob Sykes BarB-Q has stood the test of time. As Van is quick to say, “Where other restaurants have branches, we have roots.” And their’s are roots that run deep in Birmingham’s barbecue tradition.
Listen
to this 2-minute audio clip
of Maxine Sykes talking about the kind of person her late husband, Bob
Sykes, was. Listen
to this 3-minute audio clip of
Van Sykes talking about his father, Bob Sykes, and his history with barbecue. [Windows Media Player required. Go here
to download the player for free.]
NOTE:
What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited
for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click
here.
Subject: Van & Maxine Sykes (son and wife, respectively,
of Bob Sykes)
Date: September 30, 2006
Location: Bob Sykes BarB-Q – Bessemer, AL
Interviewer: Amy Evans
---
Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Saturday, September
30th 2006 for the Southern Foodways Alliance. I’m in Bessemer, Alabama,
at Bob Sykes BarB-Q, and I’m with Van Sykes and his mother, Mrs.
[Maxine] Sykes. And if you would each please state your name and your
birth dates for the record.
Maxine Sykes: I’m Maxine Sykes; my birthday is April 10, 1921, and
I’m retired.
Van Sykes: And I’m Van Sykes; my birthday is May 27, 1955.
Okay. And your father [Van] and your husband [Maxine], Bob Sykes, started
this business. And I wonder maybe if, Mrs. Sykes, we could start with
you, and you could talk a little bit about how you and your husband got
into the business in the first place.
MS: Well, first we wanted to work together. Bob’s company had gone
out of business—the one that he had worked for—for about twenty
years, so anyway he and I was looking for something that we could do together
and so we had a—pretty much of a go-around trying to find it. So
we finally decided that we would just go in for ourselves and just see
what we could do. So we put a—a house up for sale, and there was
a little restaurant right down 
the
road from us—just a little small place, and he [the current owner]
was wanting to get out of it. So he said he would take our house as a
payment—first payment. And then we had a new car that was just one
year old; we sold our car, and we barely got into the business [Laughs]
by the skin of our teeth. And everything just worked real good. And Bob
still worked some on his job that had not quite played out. So I did the
dayshift and he did the nightshift, and he’d stay open ‘til
like ten o’clock at night. And so we both just really liked the
business. And Van, our son, was—he was only two then—a little
over two [years old]; so I had to pretty much work with Van on my hip,
because back then we didn’t have daycare. The only way we could—we
could farm our child out was with a neighbor or a good friend. [Laughs]
So I pretty much worked with him there, so he was in the barbecue business
of learning it when he was two years old. And so when that—I don’t
know it just—everything seemed to work our way and we—we both
liked it and we both you know—we—we just enjoyed having it
and meeting people and it was just—it was just good for us—both
of us. We really liked it.
Well and I have a few questions for you now. One, is your husband was
in the bread delivery business, is that right?
MS: Yeah, he worked to for Tip Top Bread, and they were going out of business.
They were moving to New York, so he knew he was going to be without a
job. So we had to start planning because we had just bought the—our
house, the first house we ever had. [Laughs] And so we had—we knew
we wanted to try to keep the house, but as it turned out the house come
in real good as the payment, which we gave up to the man that owned that
little old restaurant and he finally—he had told us that we could
live in the house—that he was just buying it for a—you know,
for interest to have something, you know. And then he changed his mind,
so we had to find another place.
So he ended up taking the house as payment?
MS: He ended up taking our house, which it worked out too because they
were building houses not too far from there—new houses and it ended
up we—we got in with that and the man that worked our—our
restaurant with—with—with what is it—Rockolas and jukeboxes
and machines, you know, ball machines. And so he come in one day. And
so he—he wanted to put them in there so Bob said, “Well it
will be that much, so it will help out.” So it—it turned out
he was one of the best friends we ever had. And so he started taking the
payments that he would get from the ball machines and the Rockola and
pay on the new house for us. He paid the note on the new house so we could
get into it.
And so this first business was that the Ice Spot in Birmingham?
MS: Ice Spot, uh-hmm. It was Birmingham, yeah.
But your husband was from Tennessee, originally, is that right?
MS: Originally he was from Tennessee.
Do you know how he got down to Birmingham?
MS: He had a brother that was—that had come—older brother
that had come ahead of him and was working—Hill Grocery Company—and
so he wanted to get out of the country—Tennessee; he wanted to get
out of the country and get to the city, Bob did, so he just come on to
Birmingham and started looking for a job, which wasn’t easy to get
then. Jobs were not real easy; they were scarce.
What year did he come down here?
VS: I’d say ’30—’31—’32.
MS: Somewhere along there.
---
Are you from Birmingham, originally?
MS: Yes, I was raised in West End.
How did y’all meet?
MS: We met through the [Tip Top] bread company. He was—I worked
in the grocery store for my brother-in-law and—while I was in high
school until I graduated—and Bob was the bread man. He brought the
bread every day. [Laughs] And so that’s how I met him was through
him bringing the bread every day. And we just got to talking to each other
and so it wasn’t long—I thought he would never ask me for
a date. But he finally did. [Laughs]
So can you describe a little bit the timeline of when he retired from
Tip Top, and then when y’all purchased the Ice Spot?
MS: Let’s see, he—he had some time—after we purchased
the Ice Spot, I think he had about six or eight months left that he, you
know, was supposed to work for Tip Top Bakery on the contract—whatever…That
was, let’s see, we went in business ’50—1957; it was
about ’55, I guess. No, ’56—1956, mostly.
And then can you describe a little bit what the Ice Spot was like and
what y’all served and what it was like working there—owning
it?
MS: Well we were so new at it that we didn’t know and in the first
place, we financially had to serve whatever we could afford to. [Laughs]
So it started out with hamburgers and hotdogs, and so then Bob got real
good cooking grilled—grilling hamburgers and so he finally said
he was going to have a special. So he said, “We’re going to
sell our hamburgers six for a dollar.” He said, “That will
get their attention.” And it did. And then I had shirts made up
with Bob—with “Six for a dollar!” on the back of the
shirts. And so that helped advertise, so people really liked—they
really liked that special. [Laughs] We found out that people really go
for specials, and they still do. [Laughs]
Was Bob a big cook at home before y’all got the restaurant?
MS: Yes, he always liked to cook. He was always cooking steaks or something
at home. He really liked to cook.
Now Van, I remember the story about you talking about your dad learning
to barbecue from a man in Tennessee? Can you talk about that?
VS: Yeah, sure. Daddy was from a little tiny place called Cumberland City,
Tennessee, which is right in the bend of the Cumberland River, a little
small place—farming community—and the Sykes is one of the—you
know, one of the families that spread out all out there in Stewart County.
But back then I remember, like on a cold winter day, my daddy used to
say, “Boy, this would be a good day to slaughter a hog. A good day
to kill a hog.” So I guess that sparked the, you know, me asking
and him telling me the story of how they would catch them and—and
butcher them and split them and, you know, the family would get the high
end of the pig, and they broke it down and the back legs went for the
ham. But the black families would always get the front legs because, you
know, they weren't, I guess, as valued as the rest of the pig. So back
then there was a—when they give them to the black family, there
would be black men that would come around and barbecue and they were sort
of good—known as good, you know, barbecue cooks and—and—and
had good recipes and that—and—and one such guy—there
was a guy around there, and I remember me and Daddy going back when I
was a kid to Tennessee when he started [barbecuing] and realized he was
not getting the same thing. And the guy’s name was—well, they
called him Buck. And his last name was like—I think it was Hampton.
I remember going and finding him and he was an old, old black man with
really white hair at that point. But apparently, that name had stuck with
Daddy because, you know, when he remembered going and hanging with the
black farm kids, you know, and they’d all be playing together and—and
the barbecue over there, he remembered that, and I guess he remembered
that name. And we went back up to Cumberland City and him asking and yeah
old, you know, Mr. Hampton so-and-so. And I remember finding him.
And what Daddy was doing was, for some reason he had this
notion of cutting the skin off when he barbecued it, and I guess someone
had to told him that. And I remember that was the one thing he found from
Buck was no, you leave that whole skin and you leave all that on there
and you start it skin-side down. And 
that
sort of, I guess, was the turning point, as far as daddy becoming a barbecuer,
you know. Because, you know, he already knew how to make the fire because
they cured a lot of tobacco and back then when you cured tobacco, you
know, you put it in the barn and you split it and hung it upside down,
and they built fires and smoked it and cured it. So he grew up making
these hickory fires and coals and—so that part of it which is, of
course, is a big part of it, you know. That kind of I think helped him
when he got in there and started barbecuing…And he had a gift for
cutting the meat, too. Nobody could trim that meat with a knife like him.
I mean he—of course Daddy was making sandwiches, and he would see
the shoulders and count the sandwiches and try to figure out what he needed
to pay the bills, you know. So believe me, when he trimmed one he got
everything off of it.
But the famous story is he cut that piece of meat and put it on a piece of light bread and put some of his old sauce on it and brought it in there to Mom. And the thing she’s always said is when he brought it in, he said, “Now don’t you know people would love to have a sandwich like that?” So we’ve always said the thing about Daddy is, it wasn’t, “I can make a million dollars on this or—.” It never was a money thing with him, you know. It was always, “Boy, wouldn’t they like—wouldn’t the people like that?”
And so you know that’s where Daddy learned the art
of it…And so he obviously had a gift for cooking and knowing when
something was done and not too done. And—because he used to smoke
hams. And that’s another thing he learned. They had a smokehouse
growing up and he knew how to cure hams and put them in the brine solution
and then pull them up, and he’d hang them up in the barbecue chimney.
And I remember, as a kid, it was twenty-one days, which was twenty-one—not
twenty-one-and-a-half or twenty-and-a-half but almost to the hour he’d
have it marked and he’d go up in the—the chimney and—and
cut those things off. He’d have them hanging up there by twine or
string or something. And man, he’d bring them things down, and they’d
you know—you would just—ugh…So obviously he had a gift
for cooking, you know.
Growing up in that culture that is so much about barbecue and country
living and whole hog and tobacco farming, do you think that when he got
in the restaurant business that that was always a calling he had? Or do
you think that it was something he kind of came upon accidentally as he
got older that he found out that he had a real knack for it?
I think he found it accidentally. I really do. I think it went back to
his roots because I think he had a lot of sisters he was close to growing
up because they had eleven or twelve kids or whatever. Daddy said they
weren't kids; they were farmhands is what he always said. But he grew
up around those—a lot of sisters. He had brothers, too, but Daddy
loved his sisters, so you know, I think they cooked and, you know, greens
and so forth, and he was just always around that environment. And I think
he would rather have been around the kitchen than perhaps out in the field
or somewhere. And I think it was down inside of him, and he just never
realized it. The—the thing that made it all work was the fact that
they had—their skills were complimenting because Daddy was really
good in the kitchen and the food and—and the employees loved him.
And so, you know, we’re—and Mom’s family was from a
family of entrepreneurs. There were a lot of little grocery store owners
in her family, and I mean they sold meals back in the Depression, and
they had boarders in their house. And her side of the family always had
this business kind of thing. And then there was Daddy with the ability
to make people like him and then his food was—was good and so they
just kind of blended together very well. Because, as Mother said, she
was the worker; Daddy was the entertainer. That’s a lot of truth
to that. Daddy never fired nobody. He couldn’t fire nobody—didn’t
have it in him.
Could you talk about that a little bit? Because I wonder, delivering
bread on a truck route is a lot different than interacting with the general
public on a daily basis in the restaurant business.
MS: Well Bob never met a stranger. He could talk to anybody, and he loved
talking to people—he loved people. And he—he used to think
about you—about what they would like—not just fixing any kind
of food, but he would think about a certain customer and say, “I
bet—I bet he’d really like turnip greens.” [Laughs]
And I’d say, “Yes, but we’re not having turnip greens.”
And he said—he tried to think about, you know—and I never
will forget, later—even later on in the business he would say the—the
women they always liked his food and, of course, they liked him. So he
had special women that would come just about every day from the business
up in Central Park, and they’d come in and they’d always hug
his neck. They—you know, and which tickled me. They would, you know—they
loved him and they did—they loved him. And they’d come and
hug his neck and he said—well one time this—this lady came
in and she was pregnant, and I never will forget Bob saying—he was
behind the counter and he said, you know, said, you know you just think
about this. He said, “There this lady is coming into eat with us,
and she’s expecting a child,” and said, “she’s
depending on us to take care of her and give her the right food for that
baby, too.” And that’s the way he thought. And he’s
just real proud that she would come in and take—take a chance on
our food, being pregnant. And so he always thought about people and what
they’d like.
VS: Mom, I remember when she told Daddy, you know, “I’m walking
my legs off.” Coffee was a dime. “And they’ll drink
ever how many cups, and then they get up and leave me a nickel and this—I’m
through with this. I’m not doing it.” And so he allowed her
then to charge for the—for the third cup. And I remember the day
the whole gang was at the coffee table, and Mom went over for the third
cup and she said, “That will be a dime.” And you would have
thought those men had just—it was the end of the world, “What
do you mean?” And she said, “Well it—if you’re
not eating and you’re just drinking coffee, you get two cups, and
then you have to pay again, and then you get another cup.” And it
just started—this almost-revolt with those guys, where they just
were so upset that you know—. But there again, if Daddy had been
in charge, there wouldn’t have been no money; he’d just give—he’d
give everything away. He just—he just wanted everybody to like him.
But Mom, you know, had the practical and the business sense of you know,
this—this—this is just not working out. Plus, she was really
working hard, and he was too and—because restaurant work was hard.
I mean sometimes I just think about how hard they worked. They’d
do everything I did and then mop the floor at the end of the day, you
know. And fortunately, I don’t have to do that, and I just think
about how hard that must have been. And then you—if—at the
end of the month, you found out you didn’t make any money. But I
remember the great revolt of the—of the coffee refill and, you know,
what—it 
just
was—it was actually the turning point. It’s really where the
barbecue could have died. I mean the barbecue could have been gone right
then, because if they hadn't have made it in business, you know, the way
he barbecued and the way he cooked would have just [BOOM]—it would
have been gone right there with it. But it’s just—in spite
of all the ups and downs and the coffee refills and everything that somehow,
some way that barbecue just seemed to go on and survive to—to pass
their education of running a business.
There was old guy named Charlie Jackson who had retired
as a Birmingham firefighter…But he came in and Daddy wanted to sell
it bad and his idea—and this is something for people to learn right
here about Alabama. He was going to bring Brunswick stew to Alabama. Alabamans
have never had Brunswick stew. This is going to be the biggest—and
that was his whole—and Daddy was like, “Yeah, I think you
got something,” you know. “I think you’re onto something.”
So they sold it to Charlie. And he wanted it, and he got it.
And this is the Ice Spot? Just to clarify.
VS: This was—actually, this was when we had been in the Ice Spot
a year or so and then we had moved up the road and had sort of renamed
this place Bob’s—Bob’s Drive-In—Bob Sykes Drive-Inn,
wasn’t it? Or Bob’s Hickory Barbecue. So the Ice Spot was
a little tiny place that lasted about a year, and then we went up the
road…So anyway, they kept the stew; we kept the barbecue. But [Charlie
Jackson] tried to make it work, and you know what? It didn’t. But
at that point we were long-gone, and for the first time since the War
or whatever, they found themselves unemployed.
MS: We separated our jobs. He went to work for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
VS: Well there was—there was a little lapse in between
there. What happened was Daddy went—I remember he went up—back
to Tennessee and visited for a week or two, and Mom finally took a job
with a company called ARA and—and she filled vending machines with
sandwiches in hospitals…He came in one day and told Mom, he said,
“I have found what we’re going to do. I have absolutely seen
it.” And she said, “What are you talking about?” He
said, “I have found a place where they walk up to the counter and
order, come back and pick it up, and then clean their table off when they
leave.” And—and because Mama hated the way people would walk
you back and forth for butter, you know, and everything and then not even
tip you, he said, “You won't even have to wait tables.” And
she said, “What in the world could it be?” He said, “Well
it’s a funny little man on the sign that’s called Kentucky
Fried Chicken, and I’m going to go get a job up there.” And
he did. He went up there and got a job and—and they liked him. You
can imagine, you know, because he was a good cook and you know made just—everybody
liked him. So he worked there for about a year or so, right, and became
a store manager, and they were allowed to keep the chicken—extra
chicken. And that’s what we survived on was frozen—we had
a freezer full of Kentucky Fried Chicken because they let the manager
just take home whatever was extra. So—but what he was doing was
going to school and he learned everything how they checked up, how they
did bank deposits, how they calculated their prices, how the—you
hired people. He just—so after about a year he just decided—he
told them, “Well,” you know, “that’s it. I’m
ready to go.”
So even the Ice Spot was for all intents and purposes not a big success
for your family—not a big moneymaker—he still was persistent
and wanted to be in the restaurant business?
VS: Yes.
MS: Uh-hmm.
You were probably about to tell me this, but after his tenure at Kentucky
Fried Chicken, when did barbecue become the thing?
VS: Well, then we went through and—chronologically, I’m hoping
I have this in the right order, but after he left KFC, then we went through
the partner phase, where we didn’t have no money, and so we took
on partners, and that’s when they did a little stint with the root
beer Company. It was Frost Top Root Beer. There was a local franchise
here and—a nice man named Mr. English that I—I just remember
very well, a very nice man, and he helped Mom and Dad. [To his 
mother,
Maxine] And I think we ran one for him, didn’t we? We didn’t
really own it, but we ran one and managed it for him and then had an opportunity
to go in with another family and own one in Five Points West, which was,
you know, sort of the hotspot [in Birmingham].
MS: This was where we run—let’s see, we managed Frost Top
Root Beer until we finally had a chance to buy into it and they—we
finally had a chance to buy it out. So then we went to Five Points West
and this man that owned this restaurant he had been in it like thirty
years or something. And anyway, he was right on the corner of Five Points
West—one of the best locations you could get—and he had a
number of people wanted to buy his place but for some reason he wanted
Bob to have it. He had met Bob and knew his background and knew how well,
you know, he could cook his food, and so he wanted Bob to have it. So
he sold it to us and, of course, it was in a shopping center. It was in
Five Points West Shopping Center, so we, of course, had to go along with
the real estate and manager of the shopping center. And so we had started
closing on Sunday and I had—Bob and I agreed, you know, that we
thought we should close on Sunday. So because I always went to church,
and I missed going to church and I said so—I said, “How can
I go to church and have employees that have to work for us and don’t
get to go to church?” So I said, “We should close so they
can go to church, too.” So that’s when we started to close
on Sunday.
Was that Bob’s Hickory Pit?
MS: Yes, that—then we had a pit at Five Points West and a—remodeled
the building where it looked brand new, put in a new barbecue pit, and
it just looked fantastic. It was right on the main—Third Avenue,
where everybody could see the pit, and we had our name on the outside
of the chimney and it was just the—something that might not happen
in another 100 years but that—I just call that one of our good blessings.
So when the man who wanted to sell that business sold it to your husband,
was it was already a barbecue restaurant then?
MS: No, it was an ice cream place. He had been in the ice cream walk-up—walk-up
ice cream for about twenty—twenty or twenty-five years. He had been
right on that corner.
And so your husband just had the idea to start with barbecue and barbecue
only and installed that pit there at that Five Points location?
MS: That’s when we really, really—just barbecue only. I mean,
of course, you know, you have your side items but the barbecue was the
main—. And that’s when he started working on his sauce. He
wasn’t satisfied with the barbecue sauce that we were using, so
that’s when he really started analyzing, traveling—we traveled
all over Tennessee and tasted every barbecue sauce, I think, in Tennessee
[Laughs]. And he would get samples and bring them back to our business
and set them up in a jar and—and line them up on the counter and
get the customers to taste each one and—and they would make down
which one they liked the best. And the one that, you know, got the most
marks, of course, won out. [Laughs]
And he would try to recreate that sauce himself?
MS: He did, yeah. That’s the sauce we’re using today.
So I’m wondering, Van, maybe if you could fill in kind of how
he really wanted to commit himself to barbecue and also, if there was
no barbecue in Alabama that he liked or that folks liked, and how Tennessee
influenced what he did here in Alabama.
VS: Well I think the thing was—the thing that he took out of the
KFC [Kentucky Fried Chicken] experience was the word they used to use
over and over was specialized. We specialize in barbecue;
we had that on our menu. They had it on signs—we specialize
in barbecue. And so that’s what he was looking around—and
there was everything else, but there wasn’t anybody doing just barbecue
and concentrating on that. And if you look at the menu, it was set up
just like KFC. I mean they had a box, a bucket, and a barrel; and so we
had a feed five, a ten, and a twenty-five. Because Daddy used to say—well
when they’d come in and say they wanted a barrel, the first thing
they’d say was, “How many does it feed?” So he just
called it a five, a ten, and a twenty-five. And then the special, that
was Mom’s idea. And it was kind of like the snack-box, you know.
It was the chicken, a side item, and of course she put the drink with
it, which made it really enticing. So they got into that single-mindedness,
really, by realizing that Kentucky Fried Chicken was selling nothing but
chicken. And they wasn’t doing hamburgers and chicken; they wasn’t
doing—I mean that was their specialty. If you wanted chicken, that’s
where you went. But they were willing to take the chance that if you didn’t,
you’d just go get it somewhere else. Where everybody else in the
food business at that point was trying to be everything to everybody—breakfast,
vegetables, you know, steam tables and then car—. I mean every—everybody—but
the idea that I thought was revolutionary was he—he was willing
to take a chance and say, “Okay, if you don’t want barbecue,
then fine.” But he diversified enough—he learned to put in
the—the hamburger, which he was famous—kind of had a following
in that specific area for hamburgers, as well as barbecue. So he had that
on there. But he had goofy things on the menu, like we had shrimp and
fried shrimp. And Daddy had this—these fish fillet things. But really,
that was smart because what they were doing was they were catching the
veto vote, the one that says, “I don’t want barbecue. What
else they got?” So you know, he learned—they put enough variety
on there to keep it where—.
His barbecue was different because he—he cooked it
a little faster than other people. A lot of people back then, you know,
it was, “Yeah, I’ve cooked this for twelve hours,” or
whatever. Now—now the pig was a lot fatter then. We weren't terrified
of lard [Laughs] and fatback then like we—the Americans—are
now. So 
they—he
had more to cook out. But where he was a little different, to me, was
his fire was a little hotter. He cooked them just a little bit quicker.
And I’m not so sure if he didn’t fall into that by just, “I
need to get—we need some food—we need to get it done.”
But I think that was one of the things that—that he did with his
that was so different and—and I think it was actually something
born from up there was the direct fire, as opposed to off to the side.
The depth of his fire-box, which I remember the old men that built them
pits, Daddy thought three feet was too much, so it was about two-and-a-half
feet from the bottom of the fire up to it and then his—Daddy’s
whole thing was the ashes. You know, he—which—which really
adds to the flavor, you know. But he wanted a bed of ashes in there, so
by the time he had that two-and-a-half feet and that bed of ashes he had—he
had a fire under that meat and—and we always used a lot of wood.
So I think that’s what made his different and—and who knows,
some of it might have been cutting the skin off. I still say to this day,
you know, now I—I cook a picnic because I can't cook a whole shoulder,
they’re just—they’re just too big for hand-turning.
So but I still say the skin is what makes ours different than the general
one out here; I still think people are cooking the wrong end of the front
leg, but they’re welcome to keep doing it. But—but back then,
I really think that was the difference. I think it was the—the skin
on, the—the salting, you know. We weren't afraid of salt back then
either, you know, like we are now; everybody is terrified of salt. But
Daddy would—he didn’t just salt that meat. Mom will tell you
this, he’d just take his hands, and it was just like he was massaging
the stuff, but that’s the way he did them hams, you know. He was
working that salt as it opened the meat naturally, which is what it does;
it’s a tenderizer—as it was doing that, he’d just kind
of work it in with his hands. And this barbecue just had a flavor that
other people’s didn’t have. Plus, you know, let’s face
it, a lot of people, they had meatloaf and barbecue and—and they
had, you know—. Yeah, that was another thing he said, which is true
to this day—he wanted the pit on the front.
But you know, since he was taking a chance on doing just
barbecue, he was selling it quickly, and it was coming off the pit and
getting cut and served, and I think a lot of these other places, it was
sitting in a steam table. I mean because a lot of the magic of barbecue
is what the heck you do after you get it off, you know. I mean, if you’re
not selling it right away, man, you’ve got a problem because you’ve
either got to chill it, freeze it—you’re out of something.
I think one thing that made his so good at that point was that he was
running a lot of volume with it and—and had calculated out, if they’re
coming in for lunch at 1eleven, then I need to have this on and—and
he didn’t do a lot of reheating. And when he did, he made a different
fire because we did end up having carry-over, and you can't just throw
it away. But what he did is he had this—I don’t know how he
made this fire that would warm that meat back up without just burning
it because that’s your dilemma. You’ve cooked it—the
daylights out of it, and now it’s cold, and you’ve got to
reheat it. How are you going to not dry it out? Well he just—he
just had ways that not even I have. I don’t—I mean I—I
supervise 
cooking
and I know how to cook, and I can move them out of the way and do it if
I want to or need to, but I don’t have the—you know, he just
had the perfect way to reheat and do everything. But that’s the
answer; that’s what made his barbecue different.
And—and the sauce was just really unique. And—and
it was his own concoction. Now what I remember is he’d make a twenty-quart
pot, and he’d taste it, and it wouldn’t be no good, and he’d
throw the whole thing out because he said, “Listen, if I start pinching
that and adding that and adding that and then I hit on something, how
in the world am I going to know what I made?” So country boy logic
told him well, you got to start over every time and write it all down,
and if it don’t work, you have to throw all that out and wash the
pot out real good and do it again. [Laughs] So that’s what I remember
about him and that sauce is it—it wouldn’t be right—he’d
throw twenty quarts away, you know.
MS: In the meantime he—he was thinking about the drive-thru—driving
around to pick up your food. At that time, there was not one, and he would
keep saying these women that like to come and pick up barbecue early,
it would—they would really appreciate it if they didn’t have
to get out of the car. And he said there’s—we had a man that
was in communication, and had speakers and he brought an old speaker up
there and he said, “Bob, let’s put this speaker on the side
of the—on the side of the building here where the—,”
it’s a door and said, “when they drive up, let them talk through
this speaker. And then tell them to come up to the window, and they won't
have to get out of their car, and so together this man is helping Bob
to get the speakers together—that’s the way the drive-thru
barbecue started. There was not another one, not even McDonalds; we was
before them.
Was this at the Five Points location?
VS: That was at the Five Points location, which became a prototype for
our next education, which was franchising, but that was a prototype. People
loved it, what they had created. We specialized—it was a short menu,
you didn’t have to wait for a waitress, you walked up and ordered
at the counter and—and it was just, you know, a new spin that people
had just—. So naturally, people thought well boy this would be—you
know, and at that point I’m sure McDonalds was franchising and so
forth so—.
How long did it take for—when you had that first foray into the
drive-thru thing—for it to become its next incarnation and be more
established as a drive-thru?
VA: It would be down here [to Bessemer].
MS: The next place that was built—and that’s one thing that
he—Bob really watched to be sure the drive-thru was on the right
side, and we built next door to Kentucky Fried Chicken. [Laughs]
VS: Well that, if you’ll notice in their history, he always put
himself next to a chicken place because he said, “Their national
marketing and recognition is pulling them close enough that if I go spray
that fire—put that barbecue smoke out there, we’re going to
get some of them.” And they used to pull up at KFC, and he’d
run and wet the fire and, you know, put—and you were just like the
pied piper; they’d just come in over there. So they had a history
of always being around a chicken place, which was really—I mean
it was kind a cluster thing now, like you see a McDonald’s; there’s
a Burger King and a Taco Bell. So Daddy was just clustering and didn’t
realize really, I don’t think, how really smart that was to do that...But
when we came to Bessemer in 1967, that was a ten-year lease and we left
in ’77 [and opened the current location down the street]. We—they
built the drive—I wouldn’t even call it a drive-thru; I’d
call it a drive-up almost. And I remember on Friday and Saturday night
they would line up down the building, out and down the highway, and Kentucky
Fried Chicken would call and complain that we were blocking their driveway.
And the police were like, “Well what can we do, you know? I mean
there are people that are wanting to go in there and eat.”
---
So is that part of the franchising—the difficulty with the franchising?
Is it there was no quality control, and he couldn’t really have
a hand in the product?
MS: That’s—that’s exactly right because you—you
don’t have control, and they will not follow anything that’s
slow. It—they wanted to do it fast and barbecue you 
don’t
do it fast, but we couldn’t seem to get that across to the franchisees.
So we just never could—felt like, you know, that it could go anywhere,
really.
VS: The name was well-known in the town, and everybody liked the product
and they liked them and—but the struggles that you know—the
thing that—that Mama always put in it was, I’m telling the
business side of it, and she learned that from those little grocery stores
and—and we’d never made any money ‘til Daddy was out
of it. I mean we have to just face the fact that he just didn’t
care about the, you know—the necessary evil, which was the money.
And we never made anything ‘til he—he quit making decisions
and making—
MS: Had the stroke.
VS: Yeah, I mean and it’s—there again, boom, it could have
all just fallen to the wayside but, you know, it’s—it—it
didn’t because her family history of being entrepreneurs and—and
you know, when Daddy came back from the war, she had saved enough money
to buy a little grocery store…I’m telling you. That was the
seed right there was in the four—four-and-a-half years of war, she
made excellent money and got a taste of it and saved the money…And
I’ll tell you right now, that’s where it started. And there
again it was just the blending of her having that experience, him having
his experience, and—and her, you know, wanting to make money. The
barbecue wouldn’t be here without the success of running a business
around it. So and there again, see, that ties back into the franchising
thing. People get in there and they see what you got and they think, “Boy,
I’d like to have that.” But they don’t realize everything
that went with it and made it work. So then they say, “Well let’s
try this and try that.” And pretty soon, boom!
And then I suppose this is a great time to mention that
it wouldn’t be here without a lady named Dot Brown. And so Dot Brown
[Sighs] you know, I just get emotional thinking about that.
Yeah. I understand she developed a lot of your sides and the famous
lemon pie and—?
VS: She developed a lot of me, too. [Laughs] Because she’s just—I
don’t know; she was wonderful.
MS: I could have never made it without her.
Did she come to y’all, or did y’all seek her out?
MS: She came to us when we hadn't been in business but just a—about
a couple of years; she just come in looking for a job.
And this was in the early [nineteen] sixties, is that right?
MS: Uh-hmm, yeah, early ‘60s, and she was with us forty-three years.
And she was just like my partner, during my hard time that I was having,
you know, without my family help; and she was just like my family. I could,
you know, trust her, leave her with the business and all that; so we all
just, you know—she’s just a loveable person and a smart one.
VS: Yeah, that’s for sure. She—she was the—she had carte
blanch to spank me. Yeah and—and she did. And if I acted up, I’m
telling you, she’d put—it rained down hard. And she was just
like a mother, I’m telling you. But the most talented person I’ve
ever seen with food. Because the day came when I had to catalog some of
this stuff and Lord, you know, trying to get a recipe out of her—little
of this, a little of that, and a hunk of that and, you know. “Well
Dot, we need the—.” So I thought, “Well, we’ll
just put it all on a scale and weigh it; I don’t even care if it’s
a liquid, we’ll just weigh it.” So, you know, I realized then
that it’s just not writing it down and throwing it in a pot; there
was just something—it was just magic, you know. But she run the
thing—I remember she’d run that mixer with this hand and crack
and separate eggs with the other hand just non-stop. And then I’d
just, you know—now I look back and realize that was just talent.
God.
When did she stop working at the restaurant? Did she retire for a while?
VS: Probably in the late ‘80s or ‘90s—somewhere in there.
We knew the day was coming and, you know, yeah, it was a bad time.
MS: I couldn’t believe it was happening. But, you know, she said,
“Well just—this is going to be my last day, now.” Boy
it was hard to take; I just couldn’t believe she really, really
was going, but she knew it was time. She couldn’t, you know—her
legs had got to hurting her so bad, she knew it was time she had to quit.
---
VS: All that food out there, I’m telling you, from the counter to
that back door, I’m just telling you, it ain’t—it’s
not any different; it’s the same, you know. It’s the—the
eggs, the milk, the sugar, the—but from the front forward, you know,
I’ve been able to bring it into modern times and—and do things
that people have to have. If you can't take their order and feed them
lunch in ten minutes, you’re out. You’re out. I mean there
will be no barbecue; it wouldn’t work. You’ve got to fit their
lifestyle and, you know, the drive-thru, the phone—all that fits
their lifestyle and being able to print the orders on the computer and
send them to the back and then have them understand what they want because,
you know, you can make a barbecue about 500 ways—inside, outside,
chopped, sliced, mixed, whatever—and—and you know, we’ve
kind of gotten—gotten them spoiled, you know, where it’s mix-sliced,
but just a little more outside, you know, and—and people that come
from other parts don’t know it—. It’s like a Southern
lingo; it’s like ordering coffee at Starbucks. I mean somebody that
is not a common person would [say], “What in the world did they
just order?”
But all of that see has survived all of this other and—and you know, Southerners love it, and I think they always will. And to me, that’s the greatest thing about what we’ve been able to do is we haven’t changed the old cooking, but we’ve made it fit everybody’s lifestyle now. You know the—the problem I face now is, I look at fast food because that’s what they were, but the way I cook, I can't survive on fast-food prices. So that’s the dilemma that I work with even today is how to get more money for the food. See, barbecue has always been traditionally a cheap food like chicken legs or something, you know. It was—well actually, when I grew up and when they started, you know, chicken was the cheap stuff, you know. It was cheap, cheap, cheap. And pork and beef and—. Well now, you know, the chicken is more than the pork, you know, and the demand is higher, but you know it’s still—I still sell a whole lot more pork than chicken. And I know a lot of places on the other end of town that barbecue that sell a lot more chicken than pork. But you know, I—what I want to serve is just what I’ve got, you know. It’s—nothing has changed. Skin on, you know. [The pig] It’s a lot leaner animal [today], unfortunately; it doesn’t taste like it used to. And I have people say—but for the most part they’re like, “It’s just like your mother’s and daddy’s.” But you know what, it’s just not the same, and I have to tell them it’s—it’s our old friend, the pig. It’s not me. I mean I know what I’m doing, but the animal is different, you know…It just real barbecue.
It’s a trans-generational thing in Southerners about
food and—and, you know, now-days let me tell you what everybody
does now. Well let me tell you where they’re falling off. Nobody
appreciates—not very many—the dynamic of just salt, meat,
fire—that’s it. I would love to have some convoluted thing
that I could tell you I’m doing out there. I’m not. I mean
it’s just—it’s a time-honored thing. But you know what?
It’s almost too simple. By gosh, I wish it was just—you know,
rub this for two hours and turn this over but it’s—it’s
just real simple and that’s the genius, you know.
---
What year did your father pass?
VS: Nineteen ninety-two. He was seventy-seven [years old].
Well now 2007 is going to be your 50th anniversary, so what—what
do you think your father would say about the business today?
VS: He would be just astounded, I think, to see how it’s held on
and continued to grow. I mean I’m doing as much or more than I’ve
ever done and, of course, I’ve had to get creative with some things,
but I think that would be the single best thing what—is that I actually
made it where I could make a living off of it and—and do pretty
well with it and then bring, you know, the grandson in and let him make
a living and—and I think that—that would be the biggest surprise
to him is that it’s grown because I know it used to back—of
course, he died in [nineteen] ’92. I’d show him sales figures,
and he would just shake his head. He just couldn’t believe, you
know, what I was able to—the volume I was able to squeeze out of
just one place, you know, with no alcohol and no breakfast and closed
on Sunday, which was all the things that we wanted to do. We didn’t
want alcohol and we didn’t want it—we wanted to go to church…So
I’ve been able to do those—not do those things and still,
you know, have a really big business, you know, from just local people.
I—I think the next 50 [years] will be interesting, I’m sure.
But I’m trying to make it go on. My mother always told me: work
yourself out of a job. So now my nephew runs things. I’ve got a
General Manager that’s been here fifteen years and—and, of
course, the kitchen today back there, there is probably ninety years of
experienced combined in the kitchen today, so you know I’m trying—that’s
what I’m trying to do is work myself out of a job. I’m facetiously—I
mean I will always be here, but that’s how you keep it going, see.
You know, if I were so afraid to leave and not trust, then it wouldn’t
go on. And now, through the historical thing, I’ve learned with
people that appreciate barbecue like people at Southern Foodways [Alliance],
now I realize it really must go on. And it’s time for me to look
at that perspective of how does it go on. And don’t y’all
ever put a gas line on that pit because I’ll come back and haunt
you. [Laughs]
---
To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
Introduction | Interactive Map | Oral Histories | About & Contact | More Trails...
