“But you serve sauce,” said Lainey. “Now, I know your father doesn’t allow sauce,” she said impishly. “But you and your uncle …”
Oh, now she was getting into it, hinting at Jake’s famous family feud. I saw his shoulders tense and his brow furrow, and Lainey must have noticed, for she deftly changed the subject. “We’ll get back into the sauce later,” she said suggestively. Jake loosened, and they chuckled together. I sighed. Lainey hooked her left arm around the seat and angled her microphone toward me, in the back. “What was it like the first time you visited Lockhart, Alice?” she asked.
“It was something,” I said, unsure of how to describe the utter dislocation I’d felt upon arriving in Texas. For one thing, it was hard for me to understand how seriously people took barbecue. In Colorado, we sometimes had sloppy joes (hamburger mixed with a packet of seasoning and served on a white-bread bun), and we grilled hot dogs on occasion, and of course venison or whatever my dad shot. I’m sure the nearby ski town, Telluride, had serious barbecue—they had sushi flown in daily, for God’s sake—but in Ouray we used a Weber grill, some charcoal with lighter fluid, a match, and maybe a bottle of Heinz 57. How different, I’d wondered when I first visited Jake’s family, could “real barbecue” be?
Our first stop in Lockhart had been Jake’s family’s restaurant. Harrison’s BBQ was housed in a brick building located right on the town square. We parked the U-Haul with all our belongings in front of the Caldwell County Courthouse, a looming limestone structure with a four-way clock reaching toward the blue Texas sky, a clock that reminded me of the one in Grand Central Station. Jake climbed out and stretched—we’d stayed in New Orleans the night before, and had been driving for eight hours. He pointed to Raymond’s Barbershop, where he’d had his first haircut. Jake waved to the elderly barber waiting for a customer. We passed the Ruiz Dance Studio. “Never seen that before,” said Jake, peering into the jam-packed room, where a Zumba class was under way, pouring waves of salsa beats into Main Street.
You entered Harrison’s BBQ through a dark doorway, walking down a hall stained black from decades of barbecue smoke. If you peered into a display case on your right (as I had), you’d see pictures of Jake’s family over the generations. The smell of rich smoke grew stronger as you approached the pits, brick behemoths with steel tops and wood fires burning hot, feeding smoke to the meat. Piles of oak lay next to crates of Big Red. (Across the street was an entire lot filled with stacked wood.)
You placed your order, then took the hot meat wrapped in butcher paper into a bright, large room filled with long tables and folding chairs. The place was packed with locals and “barbecue tourists” from 10:00 a.m. until closing, as it had been for decades.
“Alice?” prompted Lainey.
“Oh, Lockhart!” I screeched. “It’s really beautiful there, and I was so happy to meet Jake’s family, they’re just so great, you know?”
My words appeared in my mind in an elegant font: They’re just so great, you know? I grimaced. Lainey looked at me, unblinking. Surely she knew the story of Jake’s family, which was a long and bitter one.
Harrison’s had been established as a grocery store along the Chisholm Trail in 1900 by Jake’s great-great-grandfather Harrison Conroe. It stayed in the family, eventually transforming into a BBQ restaurant. (The grocery still existed but sold mainly Harrison’s caps and T-shirts … and beer to go with the BBQ.)
Over the years, various relatives sold their shares, or weren’t interested in the day-to-day smoking and serving. By the late 1960s, the restaurant was run by Jake’s grandfather. When he died, he left Harrison’s to his wife, with plans that she (in due time) would leave the business to their two sons—Jake’s father, Collin, and his brother, Martin.
But then Jake’s mother, Winifred, entered the picture, and all hell broke loose.
When he was in his late twenties, Jake’s uncle, Martin, met an actual beauty queen (Miss Baytown, 1968) while on a beach vacation. Smitten, he asked her to marry him and brought her home to meet the family. But when the beautiful brunette met Jake’s father at her own engagement party, she fell in love with him and they eloped to San Antonio that very night. Collin was back at work on Monday with a wedding ring and a stunned smile, and the story goes that when he walked in the door, Martin took a hot brisket right off the rack and threw it at Collin, knocking him flat.
Martin never forgave Jake’s father for stealing Winifred. Martin and Collin’s mother, Nanette, declared that Winifred was “bad news from Baytown,” and sold Harrison’s BBQ to the bank, giving half the money to Martin, who bought a giant building on the outskirts of town and opened a competing BBQ restaurant, the Lone Wolf. There was a front-page news story on the day Martin dragged a tub of hot, historic coals from Harrison’s BBQ down Main Street to fill the state-of-the-art pits at the Lone Wolf. Martin took out advertisements and bought billboards, hired the pit master away from Collin, and built a BBQ empire that eclipsed Harrison’s completely.
Then Martin’s son, Jeremy, had opened Lone Wolf franchises in Las Vegas, JFK Airport, and Dubai, and we had opened Conroe’s Austin. As the barbecue editor of Texas Meats and Sides had noted, “Were it not for family hatred, there would only be one Harrison’s BBQ, on Lockhart’s town square.”
“So you have a close relationship with Jake’s family?” said Lainey innocently. “And Jake’s uncle, Martin … you hang out with him?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I said.
“So you all spend time together?” said Lainey. “Like, when was the last time you were all in the same place?” Lainey was good. Her face impassive, she watched me and waited. I could see Jake’s hands tightening on the wheel.