Memories of the Killing Floor – The Magic of East Texas BBQ
“Being born and raised in East Texas and pretty much having a substance lifestyle, BBQ is near and dear to my heart.
I have a philosophy with BBQ that there’s no such thing as a recipe, you can’t write it down and often times you can not reproduce it the same two times in a row, and I’m a believer you have to just go with your instinct and gut feeling on it.
I think magic and spiritual work and counseling is the same thing – you know there’s no template by which you can just rubber stamp answers.” – Warren Robert ‘Hank’ Vine, BBQ and Brujeria (The Message, 2016) (1)
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Jack Montgomery, author of American Shamans – Journeys with Traditional Healers (Busca Inc., 2008), gave a wonderful presentation at the recent Strange Realities online conference hosted by the Conspirinormal podcast, which focused on some of the traditional spiritual workers that he has met and learned from over the years. While listening I was reminded again just how deeply rooted these practices are in local community and family life. The flavor of practices passed down organically among folks who share life so intimately day to day is quite different from the kind of thing we find in the more mediated material marketed today.
A few years ago my good friend Hank Vine offered up some poignant wisdom regarding this difference as he reminisced about what he saw as the connection between spiritual work and good, down-home BBQ. I was so taken with his comparison that we took the recording as the basis for a track from The Message called BBQ and Brujeria. After hearing Jack’s presentation at the conference I was glad when Hank opened up a bit of the background on where his insights came from. It might surprise you to find that local BBQ and traditional spiritual work have quite a lot in common.
Steeped in sauce made from drippings slow cooked since 1943 and the flavor of meat fresh off the killing floor, here’s what Hank has to say about that savory East Texas BBQ he remembers from days gone by:
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“The slaughterhouse I worked at 20 years ago had a BBQ joint on the side of the building – the old man who ran it had been keeping and reusing the drippings/gravy since 1943. The gravy went on basically everything, and the ham he would boil in the gravy for two days before serving. It really sucks to want something that literally does not exist and cannot be reproduced.
He kept all the fat drippings from the brisket and the sausage. Prior to the 80’s he still was using the trim and funky bits off the kill floor – lots of boiled out neck bones and hocks. I always thought that was where the “flavor” came from. Ray took his recipes to the grave. I offered him $500.00 dollars for his recipe and the gravy base, but he just smiled and said nope – even told his daughter no.
Ray had a special touch. He originally was a co-owner of the Hopkins County Food Locker up until the Cheatems bought it out and ran it into hell. The footlocker was a slaughterhouse/packer – did kills and cutting for cattle, hogs, goats and sheep for the public and while I was there, deer and wild hogs as well.
The add on building on the right hand side, that was Ray’s.
The driveway alongside Ray’s led to the pens and killfloor. That was my world. Donnie and I would set live traps in Town Branch, the creek behind the building, and trap raccoons – kill em on the floor, chill ’em in a tub overnight, then soak for 3-5 days in the brine solution we used for ham and bacon. They were delicious.
Ray used the same oven all those years – a brick box, 4×10 approximately. He wrapped up his brisket so it was a lot more radiant cooking than smoking. He would cook everything in the gravy and the fire never went out.
To my knowledge no one ever died from a locker sandwich.
Growing up we had , Ray’s/The Locker, Julius Pitt’s and a Quickie Market for BBQ options. None of them were actually smoked meat, they were all done with scraps and cooked in a way to increase the weight with liquid, grease, fat, or gravy. Quickie’s BBQ was just all the scraps from the market and stuff that was going bad, thrown in a big pot with a few seasonings and Woody’s Cooking Sauce. I acquired a taste for it because my grandmother ate it all the time.
Pratt’s was down the street from my parents seed store/bike shop. I still remember hearing them moving hogs when they would come in on the railcars. Sally Pratt had a hog farm outside of town, so he raised and slaughtered his own stock.
The majority of the cattle came from a different ranch that was a few miles from my parents home. When they would wash down the hide house where all the beef hides were salted , bright crimson salt water would run across Magnolia Street and empty into Town Branch, flowing downstream to where the locker plant was located.
There is a spur off the main line that is about 35 feet outside the picture, on Ray’s side of the building where they used to bring in animals to slaughter by train, but not when I was working there. When I was there it was just individuals who brought in there own stock to be processed.
We only killed maybe 6-10 cattle a day. Pratt’s killed 100-150 per day. We’d do 3 or 4 at a time in a killbox with a 10 lb. sledgehammer. My friend Donnie slipped and fell into the box one time and got stomped nearly to death, he was in his 40’s when I worked there. He has been skinning cattle and hogs since he was 16. I still stop at the locker to see him whenever I go through town.
When I was little my mother would get a ham from Pratt’s for Christmas, the most amazing whole ham ever. Even back then they were expensive, like $35.00 dollars in the early 80’s.
All of these thoughts were sparked by absent mindedly burning the buns I was toasting for a sandwich. I almost always ate at Ray’s for lunch when I was on the killfloor, and for whatever reason I developed a taste for the sandwiches on a burned bun.
It just was not right if the bun was only toasted.”
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(1) https://the-message.bandcamp.com/album/barbecue-and-brujeria-east-texas
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For a preview of Jack Montgomery’s talk, along with a preview of the companion presentation from Tony Kail, author of A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo – Rootworkers, Conjurers and Spirituals (Arcadia Publishing, 2017), check out this special episode of Conspirinormal, which I was fortunate enough to be a part of:
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For more from Hank Vine see:
Something as Old as the Ground She is Rooted In – Hank Vine on Life and Saint Death in Mexico City:
https://davidmetcalfe.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/something-as-old-as-the-ground-she-is-rooted-in-hank-vine-on-life-and-saint-death-in-mexico-city/
Weeds, Herbs and Hot Fat – Ed Craft (1913 – 1996) – Folk Doctoring in Sulphur Springs, Texas:
https://davidmetcalfe.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/weeds-herbs-and-hog-fat-ed-craft-1913-1996-folk-doctoring-in-sulphur-springs-texas/
Weeds, Herbs, and Hog Fat: Ed Craft (1913–1996), ‘folk doctoring’ in Sulphur Springs, Texas
Warren Robert ‘Hank’ Vine of Sulphur Springs, Texas provides this beautiful memory of his uncle, Edward Craft — an isolated and marginalized figure in the local history of Sulphur Springs who was at one time known to family members as an effective herbalist and healer:
“I was often told growing up that I would be like my uncle Ed. He passed away in my early teens, I knew him fairly well, but not exceedingly well. By the time I was old enough to actually get out and about and go visit him and stuff like that, and I was pretty much the only one that did visit him ever.
He was pretty senile. Couldn’t really carry on the most lucid conversations. In hindsight I wish I would have spent more time with him and taken more notes, because he was reputed, or my grandmother always described him as being a folk doctor, one the family would go to when they had illnesses. I wish somebody was alive I could actually get the correct details on this from.
Although it may be in some of my mother’s notes — they’re such exhaustive notes I don’t know if I could find it. It would take a year to find it. He had some incident when he was a child, like he was 6 or 7, where he fell gravely gravely ill, after it he was partially deaf, I want to say blind in one eye. I could be lying to you on that. I want to say blind in one eye. I know later in life as an old man he was nearly completely blind, but, after the near death experience for lack of a better word apparently he had a degree of insight, an understanding of herbs and poultices and what not.
I don’t think mama put down a whole lot of information in regard to his ‘quote unquote’ healing practices. No one referred to him as a witch or a wizard or anything of that nature. Ed used what my grandma would call, ‘niggra medicine’ or ‘widow healing’. I never gave it a lot of thought growing up.
I can always remember my grandmother talking about her brother Ed, her little brother Ed, or Eddie as she would call him a lot of times, could heal anything. Animals were sick, he could take care of them, you know when one of the family got sick, Ed would figure out something, he’d go to the woods, he come back with some weeds, herbs, mix it with some hog fat, make it alright type thing.
I can remember those stories, those are all stories that are passed down and how accurate, i don’t know. The genuine article is never labeled as hoodoo or magic or anything like that. It’s a subtle and unspoken undercurrent to the fabric of peoples lives, often times I don’t think those who carry on the traditions even think of them as a magical, it’s simply what grandma and grandpa did.
He hated having his picture made, never came to Christmas, never anything, was a complete recluse, and other than my mother and I very few of the family went to visit. I think everything he had probably got dozed when the house he had was bulldozed. I don’t think anything got taken out of the house.
I would say later in life he was, how would you say, ostracized by the family, I think in hindsight. My grandmother would speak of him, about when he was a child, but I cannot recall – at least in my memory – my grandmother going to visit him. I do not recall him ever being at a family function, Christmas, birthdays, Thanksgiving anything of that nature.
As I can remember, when I got up old enough to kind of get around, sneak around and drive, I wasn’t old enough to drive, but I was still driving. I would take you know thanksgiving dinner, christmas dinner over to him. Generally my mother and I were the only ones to go and visit him.”
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By the way folks – turns out Hank’s family was right – he did turn out a bit like his uncle! For more on Hank Vine and his relationship the Santa Muerte (Saint Death) devotional tradition check out:
Photography of Faith – Santa Muerte in Sulphur Springs, Texas
Something as Old as the Ground She is Rooted In – Hank Vine on Life and Saint Death in Mexico City
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More of Hank’s memories of East Texas life can be found at:
Memories of the Killing Floor – The Magic of East Texas BBQ
Originally published on Medium.
Something as old as the ground she is rooted in – Hank Vine on life and Saint Death in Mexico City
My good friend from Sulphur Springs, Texas — Hank Vine is in Ecatepec — sub-metro Mexico DF — he writes:
Penche camiones —
The hybridization of taxi and micro-bus. There are countless ways to face unexpected danger at any given moment here, one in particular is the transit trucks, they are a hail as needed service.
Meaning there is a constant flow of people coming and going, on and off, businessmen, grandmothers, goth punk kids, and a steady flow of folks selling candy or ice cream or whatever.
It is a hard sell, they shove it in your hands as they pass. Then if you don’t want chiclets at that moment you hand it back and usually do not make eye contact.
Some folks are just trying to hustle to put food one the table, but there is without question a segment of these “vendors” who are genuinely dangerous folks.
Its the static. The kid high as fuck on glue begging a few pesos with an apparently funny story about a failed bathroom visit.
The dude with a bag of bitesize chocolates — 5 for 10 pesos. You have to be a quick judge of a person when they step on the penche camion as much as be prepared for an impact from the rear as we attempt to rejoin traffic.
As I write – Looking at a wreck
Taxi bus collision.
We all say a prayer for the person on the stretcher, and run the next three red lights.
Cathedral Chimes
All this is in real time
Waiting at this light, really sketchy looking cat gets on. He is pushing chiclets. Tattoo of flaca on his right forearm.
Two kids. One maybe 16, the other 10. Hustling mentos candies. Hard sale. Desperate. That is the penche camion.
Being in an epicenter of femicide, I see the sense of “awareness of surroundings” on the faces of women, young and old. It is not fear, or even resignment to an unacceptable and unavoidable fact of life ( that life in general, and here female life in particular, ain’t worth much) — it is determination and pure fucking grit etched in the faces of women I pass on the street.
There is a collective spirit that pulses in the backstreets and under yellow tarps as the aromas of street food, fruit, raw meat, bizarre offbrand cigs and weed and a thousand other unidentifiable scents all mingle into a sweet stench that is the scent of that unexplainable something.
The DF is as deadly as it is beautiful, with that, as untold numbers before me have already stated — the average working class person faces a daily life not unlike the worst parts of Dallas or Chicago or Minneapolis, the difference is in how folks deal with the situation.
Here, folks are smart/cynical enough that no one trusts the cops or expects any help from them, so the only leaves divine protection which makes for a very crowded playing field.
We took a trip to Tepito to get a crown for the statue in Dallas. While watching all the antics of the self appointed traffic cop for the corner, a camione that had the correct placards for where we needed to go pulls up.
We hop on like any other time, it is crowded as hell, so I stay standing.. The driver turns and comments on my Santa Muerte garb. I smile and say thanks, he is not the first driver to have SM garb and statues.
But this took a different turn. He offered me the most honored yet dangerous seat on the bus — by the front door, basically on the dash. I was humbled and shocked.
I introduced myself, took a good long look at this cat, he was no angel, but he is the flesh and blood example of that spirit that persists here.
It is something that I think is present in any environment where the common people are desperate as fuck, SM is in the States, but aside from a handful of folks who are really in touch with her gritty real world, blood on her robes aspects, they are just shadow boxing.
The driver, I will call him “chilango” went about his route like any other driver, we chatted as best we could. I helped a half dozen elderly folks on and off at stops, a few people mistakenly gave me the bus fare when all I was doing was offering a supporting hand as we went lurching back into traffic.
After about ten minutes we are at a light and stopped, he hands me a small multicolored bracelet, I gaze on it admiringly, when I go to hand it back, he motioned no, and I understood it was a gift.
In return I managed to detatch the first SM medallion I had purchased. There is so much left unsaid, without smelling it, tasting it, seeing it in the eyes of a stray dog, it is difficult if not impossible to convey.
I do believe that same spirit is in the States, but it is feral, and still very wild, it is going to take the right folks with the strongest hearts and the weakest egos going into the streets, walking the homeless camps, really fucking doing something, not reading what bullshit I am posting on Facebook and taking my words for any value.
My words are shit, everyones words are shit. If there are true diehard devotees in the North of the border English speakers, they will go to their knees and they will go to the streets.
Here la Santisima is in the streets, not in a store — yet business is one extremely important, if not dominant, aspect of what I understand as Santa Muerte.
Mexico City is a very crowded marketplace for saints looking to make a sale. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an image of San Judas. Flaca, she’s a lot harder to find in terms of stores and whatnot. But I pass as many people sporting SM items as I do San Judas.
I honestly am not sure how or why Santa Muerte manifested in the time and place she did, but I am certain that the entrepreneurial spirit is somehow connected. Tepito has been a market area since precolumbian times, SM is something as old as the ground she is rooted in here.
There is something to be read — if only I could translate it.
Hank Vine
Ecatepec de Morelos, Los Estados Unidos Mexicanos
May 11th, 2018
EXPLORING THE OUTER EDGES OF SOCIETY AND MIND 
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