Town serves up barbecue and black history
DOUGLASS — On Texas 21 in this small community about halfway between Alto and Nacogdoches is a barbecue mecca unlike any other. Walk into Uncle Doug’s and you can order not only ribs, brisket and sausage, but also dark chocolate made on-site; homegrown fruit, vegetables and preserves in the grocery-store portion of the establishment; specialty coffee (president and CEO Victor Morrison calls it a “a poor man’s Starbucks”); and, outside, miniature windmills and other rural themed yard art, plus a farmers market on weekends featuring fresh organic produce, local honey and jams and jellies. You can hold luncheon meetings in the Wolf Jaw Room (named after Morrison’s uncle) or wedding receptions out back near the pond. Maybe in a few years you’ll be able to stay in a cabin on the 10-acre property.
I can’t attest to the barbecue, since Uncle Doug’s, in business since January, is open only on weekends, but the online reviews and personal testimonials are enthusiastic. Nacogdoches photographer Richard Orton, who introduced me to Morrison and his cousins, was effusive. He’s become
a regular.
“The first time I ate there, I had the ribs and the brisket,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘These are the best ribs I’ve ever had.’ The sides, everything on the menu is truly outstanding.”
As much as I would have enjoyed a good brisket plate (with a signature slaw made from broccoli), what truly interested me was the remarkable family that built — and is still building — Uncle Doug’s and the family’s significant place in East Texas history.
Morrison and his cousins, pit master Anthony “Dondo” Upshaw and chocolatier Beatrice Upshaw, along with a dozen employees, all are members of the large extended Upshaw family, most of whom still live in or around Nacogdoches County. They grew up in a little settlement near Douglass called County Line, one of the several hundred independent communities that
freed slaves established, primarily in East Texas, during the years after Emancipation. Three Upshaw brothers — Guss, Jim and Felix — moved to a wilderness area along the Angelina River bottoms in about 1870, and their homesteads became County Line (or Upshaw). The Upshaws were farmers, mostly. Jim Upshaw also was a master blacksmith who ran a combined steam gin, sawmill and grist mill. Guss built wagon wheels from scratch; it was said he could fabricate and replace any part needed to repair a wagon or plow.
“Perhaps they were squatters with someone’s permission, perhaps they squatted in a wilderness area claimed by no one, but in any case their community existed for years before residents began to brave the white courthouse to get formal titles to their lands,” folklorist Thad Sitton has written in the foreword to Orton’s book, “The Upshaws of County Line: An American Family.”
To get from Douglass to County Line, you drive
about 5 miles down a county road bordered and umbrellaed by tall pines and post oak. Through the years, the little community deep in the woods has provided insularity and relative safety for its residents, thereby nurturing pride, strength and self esteem.
“There was one way in and one way out,” Dondo told me earlier this week. “It was just perfectly fine for white folks to leave us alone.”
Dondo, 56, lost his mother when he was 5; his extended County Line family raised him — or in Dondo’s words, “Everybody had their hands on me.”
He and his numerous cousins grew up together, rode their bikes along country roads together, attended school together when they weren’t helping out on in the fields. The rural Baptist church was the community focal point. As Dondo grew up and ventured out of his isolated community to college and beyond, he realized his upbringing had equipped him to deal with what he calls the “craziness and foolishness” he occasionally encountered in the wider world. He knew how to handle himself, thanks to County Line. His cousin Victor put it this way: “Our folks were respectful, but they weren’t fearful.”
When Uncle Doug’s opened, Dondo learned that his County Line upbringing was good for something else, as well. After working for years in the Metroplex as a mechanic, he realized that when he was tending to “Puff Mama,” Uncle Doug’s 6,600pound smoker, he was calling on culinary skills he had learned almost accidentally decades earlier when he watched his uncles barbecue for family gatherings. His dad, Marion Upshaw, a retired public school teacher in Nacogdoches, had always urged him to get an education; he had gotten one even earlier than either he or the elder Upshaw had realized.
Cousin Beatrice, grayhaired and distinguishedlooking at 61, learned not to be afraid to try anything. “She likes to be self-sufficient,” Dondo said, laughing. (The cousins laugh often when they’re around each other.)
The former occupational therapist laughs about a previous exercise in selfsufficiency. “I fell in love with apple fritters,” she said. “I drove all over East Texas looking for good apple fritters.”
She learned how to make them, but hers never tasted as good as the donutshop variety. It took her a while to realize that donut shops make apple fritters out of yesterday’s leftover donut dough, which she didn’t have. She moved on to chocolate — from scratch.
She ordered cacao beans from West Africa and elsewhere, laboriously shelled the hard, little beans by hand and experimented with recipes for dark chocolate. It took her months — and purchasing the right equipment — but now Uncle Doug’s customers can watch through a large picture window as the master chocolate maker transforms beans into sumptuous dark chocolate.
Victor, 58, worked for years in pharmaceutical sales and later in AI. He had no idea what he was going to do with the abandoned eyesore of a building when he, a brother and cousin Dondo purchased it in 2011. “I’d drive by with my eyes averted,” he said.
He knew he wanted to help grow the local economy, and, even more important, he wanted a business that would reflect the values and traditions of the freedmen’s settlement where they had grown up. He and his relatives played around with numerous ideas until they hit upon barbecue — and more. They named the business in honor of their grandfather, N.E. Upshaw.
“N.E. was a giant of a man who commanded a number of nicknames. Uncle Doug is one we could use publicly,” Victor has written on the Uncle Doug’s website. “Not sure how he got this particular nickname given his name wasn’t Doug and he wasn’t everyone’s uncle, but being located in beautiful downtown Douglass and him having lived in the area all of his 99 years, we liked the fit.”
“There’s such a culture of family here,” Beatrice said as we sat at a table in the empty dining room. “I certainly would not be here making chocolate or anything else without those family ties.”
Business is good, so far. Folks are driving out from Nacogdoches, Lufkin and beyond. Guss, Felix and Jim — the original brothers — would be smiling. Their courage and their hard work more a century and a half ago are still paying dividends.