I’ve been thinking a lot about when we lived in Texas the first time, this last week. Don’t know why. I actually think pretty often about Charlie Perkins Barbecue in Cleburne, Texas. Oh, how I miss it.
It was 1980 when we moved to Granbury, Texas, famous (?) for being close to Glen Rose of fossil fame. My husband is an engineer and he job-shopped for awhile. It was great money, we got to see a lot of the country that we probably would not have otherwise, but we moved about every 6 months or sooner .
Matt, our first little one, had been born in January that year and my brother-in-law got married on August 10. We attended the wedding and moved from Tennessee to Texas August 11. We were more durable back then.
We lived with some friends for a little while, until the duplex we rented was ready. It was brand new! Nice. I made curtains for Matt’s room from jungle-themed sheets and checked the back yard every few hours every day. The building site had been a huge field before the duplexes were built, had a great view of Comanche Peak, and snakes, scorpions and tarantulas were everywhere. Fortunately I only found one mouse in the house, no snakes or other creepies. There were also oodles of toads that came out at night. It was a bad year for heat stroke and rattlesnake bites, too. The weather was extra hot, well over 100°F every day, usually over 110°F, and dry. Snakes would shelter in the shade of cars. When people tried to enter the vehicle the snakes would strike. You learned to check under the car every time you got approached one.
Now, I’m a country girl. I grew up on farms and knew all about animals, but these were unfamiliar ones. Spiders that you could see crossing the road at night, large scorpions in the light fixtures, and snakes under cars. I always checked everything before I let Matt on the the floor. I checked his bedding. I checked our bedding. Everything. Especially after I saw a huge hawk swoop down behind the duplex and carry off a snake bigger than itself.
It wasn’t ALL scary, though. Huge dragonflies came flew all around. I’ve always loved them. I guess the nearby river kept them happy. The scissor-tailed flycatchers were gorgeous. I could watch them for hours. We saw cattle egrets everywhere. They are native to Africa, but a flock was blown across the Atlantic at some time by a storm. They made it to Tennessee a few years back, but they have been in Texas a long time. In south Texas they call them rice birds because they follow the harvesting machinery and eat the insects they stir up.
Our friends made the move much easier by finding us the duplex before we got there and introducing us to the best restaurants in the area. The first was Charlie Perkins Barbecue in Cleburne. It was about 28 miles from Granbury, which is practically next door in Texas.
I wish I had taken pictures of this place. Charlie Perkins must have been interesting. I never got to meet him. His restaurant was huge–warehouse-size. He probably employed 30 people. You could find any kind of barbecue you could imagine there. One catch, though–you had to check the Texas A & M football schedule before you went. His son played and he attended every game that he could. And he would close the restaurant. You should be watching the game, not eating barbecue. Oh, my gosh, that food! They really needed the sawdust floor. You couldn’t keep from dropping or slopping a bit while you gobbled it up. I have never had any to match it.
One thing I found fascinating were the huge longhorns in the adjacent field. Their shoulders came to the top of my 6′ husband’s head. I swear, their horns were wider than our car was long. I had been around cattle all my life, but I have never seen any before or since that were this large. I can’t remember if they were steers or not. Probably. They tend to get bigger.
The next restaurant was Japanese. My first. Yumm! But the local ones are just as good. Then, there was The Cattlemen’s Steakhouse. (Insert Homer Simpson sounds here when he dreams of donuts.) Oh, boy! This was not the fancy Cattlemen’s Club in Dallas. This was the original one in Fort Worth. It’s a little more down-to-earth, older and man, what steak! I swear, it melted in my mouth. I have never had better. Not even in Houston or Beaumont.
We moved away from Granbury in October that year, but that area made a big impression on me.
Like I said earlier, I’ve been wondering what happened to Charlie Perkins Barbecue. I found a young cousin while doing genealogy who lives in Cleburne. He’s never heard of it. Of course, this was 40 years ago. But I searched for the restaurant and finally found out what happened.
This is a Bum Steer Award from the January 1983 Texas Monthly:
“BUT THANKS TO THE AUTHENTIC SMOKE FLAVOR, THEY BOUGHT FIVE ORDERS TO GO
Citing a city ordinance that prohibits firemen from answering calls outside the city, a truckload of Cleburne fire fighters sat and watched Charlie Perkins’ barbecue restaurant —bordering the city limits three blocks from downtown — burn to the ground while Perkins fought the blaze with a garden hose.”
