Today’s post is coming to you from the road. Alabama Highway 27 to be exact. Steve’s family lives here and we are in the middle of an extended visit - the retirement road trip visit that was delayed by the pandemic.
We have seen and done so much that I could fill a month’s worth of posts or more. You don’t come here to read a travelogue, but today is the 5th Sunday of the month and that’s the week that can be just about anything I want it to be.
We have already driven nearly 4,000 miles through 10 states - Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. We missed Tennessee because the I-40 bridge was out in Memphis and we had to detour to cross the Mississippi River.
For today, though, I want to talk about a little bit of family history we stumbled upon in Oklahoma City. Stumbled upon isn’t exactly the right description; we sought out the place we went to verify the information we had already stumbled upon.
Interstate 40 runs through the Southwest along the route of Historic Route 66. There are places where you can get off the highway and find remnants of the old “Mother Road” and little towns or small businesses that have somehow survived.
Outside the gift shop where we bought souvenirs and a couple great Route 66 shirts. When you have an iconic sign you have to take a picture!
One of those small towns is Seligman, AZ, where we took a loop off the highway to see one of the original travel stops along Route 66. Of course we had to take pictures and buy souvenirs, because that’s what keeps these little places alive. We stopped at a small shop that had recently reopened after being closed by the pandemic for many months, and we made sure to drop a few bucks into their cash register.
Down the road we made a second stop; a requirement for those of us of “a certain age.” We stood on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, took pictures for other tourists and had them take ours, and admired the statues and the truck that commemorate the Eagles song that jump-started the revival of Winslow as a pop icon.
Standin' on the corner with faded denim and guitar gurus. We may be retired, but that doesn't mean we've forgotten how to rock!
We took several pictures, but I have to admit I have a soft spot for this one of me with the iconic "flat bed Ford" in Winslow.
We got back on the highway and drove through some rather spectacular thunderstorms in north Texas to our destination outside Oklahoma City where we stopped for the night.
The next day was going to be the Big Adventure for this leg of the trip (this was before we knew about the Big Detour Adventure to come).
Back in the 1930s Ray York, Steve’s grandfather, had a bar-b-que stand on Route 66 in a small town named Britton, Oklahoma. Steve’s dad was just a toddler. We have a picture of the stand with Daddy Ray standing our front, and it has hung in our house for many years.
The hand-written note on the back of this photo says it was taken in 1939. The man in front is Steve's grandfather, Ray York, who was a business owner in Britton, Oklahoma, when Steve's dad was a toddler.
Some years ago Steve got curious about the stand and started looking around online to see if he could find any record or remnant of York BBQ. He had a picture of the original building and a general idea of where it had been on Route 66 outside Oklahoma City, but that was about all he had to go on.
What he found was a closed property known as the Owl Court Motel at the location where he thought the BBQ stand used to be. Comparing pictures of Owl Court with the picture of York BBQ he began to suspect that the motel office, though remodeled and added on to, was the same building where his grandfather sold BBQ to locals and passing tourists in the late 1930s.
By the time he was searching, Oklahoma City had grown and Britton had become a suburb of the larger city. The empty lots in the picture of the BBQ stand were filled with homes and businesses, and the two-lane road out front had become a four-lane thoroughfare with traffic lights and turn lanes.
We weren’t able to visit Oklahoma, and for a few years it looked like the Owl Court, now abandoned and shuttered, might get torn down without Steve ever being able to see if it really was the old York BBQ.
But as luck would have it, someone decided to try and make something of the old place. After several changes of ownership it ended up with someone who is dedicated to the revitalization of the Britton area, and to the revival of the Owl Court. There was still a chance we could check it out, even if it seemed like a long shot that it was actually the York BBQ.
So, carrying our expectations and potential for serious disappointment, we left our motel and headed for Oklahoma City.
The stone front was added on, as well as the little dormer and the roof was raised in the back, but seeing the Owl Court in person was an instant shock of recognition. The front windows have now come full circle as serving windows for Brew Brother coffee.
We knew that the new owner had opened a coffee shop in the former motel office and that it was only open until about 1, so we made sure to get on our way with plenty of time for the drive into the city.
I was actually getting very nervous as we approached the location. I knew this had become a big deal for Steve and I was afraid he might be very disappointed if it turned out he was wrong. Somehow, finding Daddy Ray’s BBQ had become a Big Deal.
Well, we were coming down the street, checking the GPS for the distance to our destination, when I spotted the building.
My instant reaction was recognition. Even with the remodeling, an addition, a bright paint job, and 80 years, the bones of the place were clear: This was Daddy Ray’s old BBQ stand.
I have to admit I got a little choked up. We had wondered about this place for years, and only through the use of online research did we have any idea that it even might have survived all these years. Steve’s parents had visited Oklahoma City and the places where Jim had lived as a boy, but they never even looked for the BBQ stand because they assumed, as we had initially, that a little food stand would have been torn down and built over decades ago.
Finding the place was amazing, but meeting Sierra, the woman running the place, was pure joy.
Imagine you’re working at a tiny shop, the only person in the place. A large man starts looking the place over, examining where the doors and windows are, and studying the pitch of the roof. You likely would be a little wary at the very least.
She leaned out the service window and asked if she could help us, did we want some coffee?
Steve is kind of a big guy. Fortunately Sierra at Brew Brother was very friendly and offered to show us the whole place. If you're anywhere near Oklahoma City I can highly recommend their coffee!
Steve answered that I might want some. Then he told her he thought the place used to be his grandfather’s BBQ stand.
She lit up like a kid at Christmas. Turns out she was a huge fan of local history, wanted to talk about what he knew and was delighted to look at his picture. She also confirmed that the building had been in that exact spot since the 1930s.
She invited us inside and let Steve take tons of pictures. Looking at the interior, at the details of the roof construction and the dormer that was added to the front, it was clear that this was indeed the same building.
We spent a couple hours there, taking pictures, talking to Sierra, walking around the property and looking at the other buildings on the property.
Steve tried to recreate Daddy Ray's pose from the 1939 photo. As you can tell, he's a bit taller than his grandfather was.
Daddy Ray had an auto shop in addition to the BBQ, and Steve thinks one of the buildings may be a remodel of the original shop building. Since we don’t have any pictures of that shop we can’t be sure, but we have lots of pictures and information and an exact location which we can research if we want to learn more.
For now just knowing that this was the site of the original York BBQ stand is huge. That picture is back on the wall of my house and carries even more meaning after having visited the spot where it was taken.
Leaving Oklahoma City there was still a long way to go, many hours of driving, another hotel, more sights to see - including the statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama.
Mighty Vulcan and his buns of iron. He features prominently in the Southern Sisters mystery series by the late Anne George (some of my favorite books!). The statue is more than 100 years old and stands in one of the most beautiful parks ever.
The story of Vulcan and of this statue deserves its own post and will get it one of these days.
That stop is worth a post of its own.
Oh, and the coffee was good, too!