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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Vaughn, Barbecue editor at Texas Monthly.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Candice Bellamy as the irrepressible at a White.

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Speaker 1: This is Fire and Smoke, the Texas Monthly Barbecue Podcast,

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brought to you by Yedi.

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Speaker 2: This is episode two Panhandle Pioneering.

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Speaker 1: These are the kind of stories I like to dig up.

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People who maybe were considered insignificant when they were cooking barbecue,

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but looking back, really made an impression on the people

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around them, made an impression on the on the barbecue

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styles that came after them. So let's go meet at

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a White in Borger Texas. Before there was Borger Texas,

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the dusty patch of land and the Panhandle wasn't much

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more than a raucous encampment of oil prospectors. That's when

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Eda Randall, a twenty nine year old divorcee with an

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eight year old daughter in tow, traveled four hundred in

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fifty miles from Mineola to make a new life for

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herself there. Forty five years later, she'd tell a reporter

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from the Amarillo Daily News.

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Speaker 2: When I first came in nineteen twenty six, there weren't

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any buildings, any wooden houses everywhere you looked. All you

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could see were tents, hundreds of them.

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Speaker 1: Given her bleak description of the place, she likely arrived

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around the same time that Ace Borger did Ace was

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a Missouri born land speculator. He was there to capitalize

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on the nascent Panhandle oil boom. He acquired two hundred

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and forty acres of land and began to sell plots

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for his namesake town in newspaper ads. The Border Townsite

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Company made big promises like oil riches, and smaller ones

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like actual buildings and houses. By the end of the year,

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the population of what had come to be known as

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Tent City had swelled from a few hardy souls to

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an estimated forty five thousand, all lured by dreams of

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hitting it big. It's not clear what possessed Etta to

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move to board her. In a collected history of Hutchinson County,

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her eldest daughter, Lila George, would say only times were

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hard for black folks of Border, but not as hard

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as they were at Miniola. Maybe it was poverty or

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her failed marriage that motivated the move. More likely, it

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was an escape. Minniola was a place where the second

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q Klux Klan was on the rise. Racism was so

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deeply entrenched that her Congressman, Morgan G. Sanders, campaigned against

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an anti lynching law in nineteen twenty two. Sanders was

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quoted in the Miniola Monitor saying that the law would

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quote derive from the Republican Party thousands of white men

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and more women who do not believe in social equality,

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who know that the white race is the superior race,

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and who knows that the white race will, now as

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it has always done, dominate and control wherever it goes.

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Perhaps the limitless possibility of starting from scratch appealed to Eda,

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the idea that she could leave all that behind and

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find her footing in a town that was doing the same,

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to start at a ran a laundry service as she

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had in Mineola. Later, she found a job at a

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hotel and met her second husband, S. E. White. He

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was a carpenter at the Rex Theater. It was on

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Main Street, which was bustling at the time, so much

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so that it became locally known as the White Way.

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Together they worked and raised her daughters, Lila and Levada,

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socking away money in the dirt.

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Speaker 2: Literally, my husband and I would take our daily earnings

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put them in a big tin can and bury them

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in the ground inside the tent.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen thirty four, they had saved up enough to

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open their own business, a barbecue joint on North McGee Street,

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just off Main Street. They called it white Way Barbecue,

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but everyone who remembers it now called it Etta's. Indeed

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at Kisements for Eda White's barbecue stand started to appear

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in the Borger Daily Herald in nineteen thirty eight. She

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and See ran the place with the help of Levada

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and Lila, but there doesn't seem to be any doubt

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who was in charge. Mother attended to the cooking and fire.

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Lila recalled white Way Barbecue. Finally made it into Borger's

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business directory in nineteen forty one. The listing had a

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parenthesis CE next to the name to denote it a

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quote colored business. That indignity disappeared with the nineteen forty

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six version. Eda would add Southern style fried chicken to

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her menu a few years later, but it was her

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beef that proved most memorable.

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Speaker 3: If you wounded barbecue, that's where you leave.

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Speaker 1: That's Cleo Morrison. She moved with her family to Borger

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in nineteen forty four, when she was twelve years old. Today,

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she volunteers at the Hutchinson County Historical Museum. Morrison remembers

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the old concrete pit outside behind a four table dining room.

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She said, Edda kept it spotlessly clean.

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Speaker 3: The place was my fancy and it was scrubbed. She

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had almost scrubbed the design on the floor, it was

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so clean. She served only beef and ribs, cold sauce, beans,

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and she had their own special barbecue song.

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Speaker 1: Morrison says the Pento beans were her favorite, noting.

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Speaker 3: That I was there one day when she was fixing

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to season them, and her beans were always good, but

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she dipped out just a big spoon of crisco and

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that's what she seasoned them with, and just salt, and

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they were good.

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Speaker 1: For most others. However, it was Edda's unusual style of

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beef that everyone came for. Eda cooked hundreds of pounds

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of shoulder cloud instead of the more traditional brisket, smoking

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the whole thing for hours, but then she'd cut it

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into bite sized cues covered in sauce and cook it

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a little more. This made for tender, highly seasoned chunks

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of meat reminiscent of our modern day burnt ends. It

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was a far cry from the sliced and chopped brisket

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common throughout the rest of the state. A style of

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barbecue cookery uncommon then and now, But there's one restaurant

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that continues to serve beef in the same way, Borger's

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own Sutfin's Barbecue, which opened in nineteen fifty in nearby Phillips,

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then moved to Borger in nineteen sixty four. It's doubtful

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the similarity is a coincidence. Joey Sutfin, the son of

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the founders, said he wasn't sure of the origin of

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the family's recipes. He did acknowledge, however, that Eta was

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in Borger quote for a long time. Her longevity was

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indeed remarkable. She not only survived but thrived in a

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lawless boomtown that burned to the ground twice in twelve

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telve months, a place whose first sermon was delivered, according

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to the Crosbyton Review quote from a beer keg in

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a domino parlor. No doubt she watched Borger become a

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haven for bootleggers, gamblers, and gangsters. The Fort Worth Star

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Telegram labeled it the Sodom of the Panhandle. Eda was

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there when the town's district attorney, John A. Holmes, was

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murdered in nineteen twenty nine, he was appointed by the

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governor to quote relentlessly prosecute criminals who infested oil fields.

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During Borger's boom years, she witnessed the subsequent imposition of

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martial law and the arrival of a contingent of Texas Rangers.

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On day one, they arrested a dozen people on narcotics charges.

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They found the town so in need of legitimate law

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enforcement that they set up a temporary headquarters there. Ace

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Borger himself was shot to death at the post office

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in nineteen thirty four by the county treasurer. Needless to say,

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Borger was a rough place, but Eda's strength and character

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persevered a big, jolly person. In Morrison's words, Eda served

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four generations of Panhandle residents. It was an eternity in

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the fickle world of barbecue joints, and she clearly made

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a good living doing so.

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Speaker 2: Back in the early seventies, I went out to the

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Cadillac dealer there and bored her. I was going to

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buy a car. I was milling around and looking and

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trying to get the salesman's attention. Well, he just ignored me.

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So I left and went to Amarillo to buy my Cadillac.

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When I went to the desk to pay for it,

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I counted out one hundred dollars bills and body in cash.

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The guy in Amarillo called over to the dealer in

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Borger and said, you need to pay more attention to

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your customers. This one paid cash.

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Speaker 1: It took a heart attack to make Eda close her

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restaurant in nineteen seventy two, one year after she had

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told an Amarillo Daily News reporter that she had no

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plans to retire. She died two year years later. Eda

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White had survived divorce and the premature deaths of loved ones.

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Levada had passed away at age forty, and Lilas's two

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children both drowned soon after they'd arrived in Border. She

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had turned her back on the unfortunate circumstances of the

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town she grew up in and made it through the

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early days of a lawless and dangerous oil town. The

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distinct style of barbecue that Eda pioneered has survived as well,

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and lives on to this day in the Texas Panhandle.

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Texas barbecue is built from the ground up from the

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wood to the smoke to the meat. You have to

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have the right tools to create a masterpiece on butcher paper.

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Yetti coolers have he covered, built to be indestructible, keep

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ice for days, and keep a brisket hot for hours.

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Yetti is built for Texas barbe and listening to Fire

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and Smoke Texas Monthly Barbecue podcast. I'm Daniel Vaughan, and

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I'll see you out there on the Barbecue Trail.