Rise of refineries birthed Southeast Texas ’cue
The ride from Cajun Country in south-central Louisiana to the Texas border was undoubtedly precarious for those families looking for a better life. Starting in the 1920s, the petroleum industry in Southeast Texas became a magnet for poor farmers and sharecroppers willing to pull up roots and make the move to a relatively big city like Beaumont.
It is debatable whether the work at the refineries was any easier than working in the fields, but it garnered a steadier paycheck than the unpredictable income that farming could provide.
A review of city directories from Beaumont from the 1920s to 1950s show that many of these families settled in the Pear Orchard and Charlton Pollard neighborhoods, adjacent to the refineries that had popped up along the Neches River.
In some years, the directories listed trades for each resident, with many listed as laborer, welder or tank cleaner at refineries owned by the Magnolia Petroleum Co., Pure Oil and Gulf Oil.
On the west side of Pear Orchard, opposite the refineries, was the city abattoir, or slaughterhouse. At the time, the production of meat for consumption operated like a cooperative, with a central abattoir used by different producers and meatpackers. A central abattoir allowed for more efficient regulation and inspection to assure food safety.
Today, Pear Orchard is home to a collection of Southeast Texas-style barbecue joints that are still serving smoked meats unique to that area. Patillo’s Bar-B-Q, Gerard’s Bar-B-Q and Broussard’s Links + Ribs cook up the neighborhood’s indigenous all-beef sausages known as “juicy links” or “homemade links.”
In speaking to the current residents and pitmasters and reviewing historic maps and city directories, I am able to piece together a working theory of how the unique geography, demographics and culture of this obscure corner of the Lone Star State became the birthplace of Southeast Texas-style barbecue, known for smoked meats flavored with Cajun ingredients including paprika, garlic powder and cayenne pepper.
But before there was barbecue, there were beer parlors. In an interview with longtime pitmaster Byron Johnson, he recalled his childhood growing up in Pear Orchard in the 1950s and working in his family’s business — the Silver Dime Beer Parlor.
Pear Orchard’s blue-collar demographic gave rise to many beer-and-juke-joints throughout the neighborhood. After a long, hot day working at the refinery, customers at the Silver Dime not only wanted a cold beer but something to eat. Johnson’s grandfather, Joseph Granger, a native of Lafayette, La., was recruited to use his experience in Cajun cooking to whip up an inexpensive meal for the hungry patrons.
A visit to the nearby city abattoir, which had been taken over and is still owned by the Zummo Meat Co., offered a nearly inexhaustible source of inexpensive beef trimmings that could be combined with Cajun spices from Louisiana, ground together and stuffed into a beef casing to form sausage links.
An offset brick pit — whose design is arguably derived from trench pits used in Louisiana and the American South — was built in the back of the beer parlor and the links smoked until they literally popped and sizzled from the melted beef trimmings.
Eventually, these beer-parlor links became so popular that the cooks and pitmasters opened their own barbecue joints just to serve the in-demand dish. George Gerard, current owner and pitmaster at the still-extant Gerard’s Bar-B-Q in Pear Orchard, told me how his father, Joseph, transitioned from owning the Dragon Lounge beer parlor to opening his own barbecue joint in 1975 that George now runs.
Today, Southeast Texas-style barbecue is alive and well in Beaumont and Port Arthur, and still flavors some of the barbecue you find in Houston at places such as Southern Q, Ray’s BBQ Shack and Triple J’s Smokehouse.
It’s fascinating to imagine that if any one of these historical circumstances did not occur — the rise of the petroleum industry, migrations from Louisiana to Texas, the construction of a city abattoir in a specific neighborhood — that barbecue in Southeast Texas might have tasted differently than it does today.