Speaker 1: I'm Daniel Vaughan, barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, and this
is Fire and Smoke, the Texas Monthly Barbecue podcast, brought
to you by Yetti.
Speaker 2: Now I call it Arkansas gravy. I don't know what
the true name him. But it's mostly water and it's
got a little bit of sugar in it, a little
bit of salt in it, just a little bit of wood.
Stuff like that, and maybe one canon to made of sauce.
Speaker 1: And that's the voice of Rolling Lindsey, the founder of
the Bodaceous Barbecue chain, describing a mop sauce he once
used to season his barbecue. I included the clip from
our twenty fifteen interview mainly so we could all hear
him say Arkansas gravy one more time and enjoy how
he'd shortened wish to shear sauce to just whoop. Rolling
passed away in September, just shy of his eightieth birthday.
He leaves in East Texas barbecue legacy that spans across
twenty different Bodaceous Barbecue locations. Well, I guess they're not
all in East Texas. There's a Bodacious all the way
out in San Angelo. But The original that he opened
in nineteen sixty eight still stands on Maverley Avenue in Longview.
The full name back then was Little Rowland's Bodacious Barbecue,
but most folks now call it the Maberley Store or
simply the original.
Speaker 3: To me, it's home. I love the other stores, and
I love this store, but I.
Speaker 4: Don't feel at home, and I'm like I do at
Moberley because I've done most of my work in there,
and it's the one that's paved the way for all
these stores and all these people.
Speaker 3: It literally is the flagship.
Speaker 1: That is Roland. Lindsay's son in law, Jordan Jackson. We
chatted at the recently reopened Gladewater location of Bodasias, about
fifteen miles west of Longview. Jackson quit his job at
Stanley's Famous Pit Barbecue and Tyler and he helped reopen
the original Bodeishas after Roland was forced to shutter it
for a time.
Speaker 3: In twenty thirteen.
Speaker 4: Roland discovered that he had the stage four lymphoma cancer
and he had to take treatments and we had to
close it for I think it was fifteen months, and
during that I was at my wits ends with Stanley's.
Speaker 3: In February, I drove straight to the warehouse.
Speaker 4: And asked my mother in law if I could reopen Moveley,
and she said, let me think about it.
Speaker 1: He had to wait until the time was right for
the whole family, but Jackson visited the empty store quite often.
Speaker 3: It was almost like a time capsule. It was in
perfect condition.
Speaker 4: I went over there and started putting everything together that
I wanted and stuff and got the pits that I wanted,
and we reopened in June of two thousand and fifteen.
Roland and I opened it together. He would help me cook.
Speaker 3: That was some of my favorite times.
Speaker 4: And when we first opened, I bought a bunch of
meat and had it in the cooler, and Rolling would
come in and say, so, after this week's over with,
we're just going to take all that raw meat down
to the mission because you're not going to sell all that.
And I said, look here, old man, fix and sell
all this food. I'm going to shut your ass up.
And that week he went over there to that cooler
and looked down and there was no raw meat in it,
and he goes all shut up. Now he got excited
about business. He loved watching businesses grow and take off,
and it made him feel really special because he's got
to see Moberley grow again and get back to where
it used to be. When he had it back in
the sixties and seventies, it was busy like it is now.
Speaker 1: Just two years after reopening, we named it number four
in our top fifty list of the state's best barbecue.
I fell in love with the juicy forty four Farms brisket,
those sweet baby back ribs, and the many varieties of
homemade sausage they'd produce. Jackson may have helped bolster the
statewide reputation of bodaceous barbecue, but he says he learned
most of what he knows about barbecue from Roland lindsay.
Speaker 4: When I went to culinary school, I was working with Roland.
He had just moved back from St. Angelo, and I
got to learn with him, and he wanted me to cook,
and he wanted to watch me cook. And he told
me that was gonna be the one cooking all day.
And I said, well, what do I do? And he said,
see that door on that pit. When you want it
to get hotter, open it, when you want it to
get cooler, close it that's it.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: He wouldn't tell me anything else. I think it was
the best learning tool I've ever had. He taught me,
would control, he taught me had a finesse, meat and everything.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 4: There was no better person to learn from about Finas
than him and who.
Speaker 3: Is rolland is my hero.
Speaker 4: He stepped up and when my dad passed away and
he became my father, and.
Speaker 3: He was not only was.
Speaker 4: He great at barbecue, but he's a great role model
with how how you should live your life and how
you should treat people.
Speaker 3: And that's who he is to me. He's more than
just barbecue.
Speaker 1: Jackson said he can still hear Roland's advice while working
the pits late at night, especially when the briskets are twinkling,
twinkling briskets. That's right. I've never heard such a thing
myself and had to inquire.
Speaker 4: Roland actually pointed it out to me one day. He's like, damn,
briskets are twinkling. You need to cool your pit down
a little bit. And I realized once they did. When
they start bubbling, they get too hot.
Speaker 3: They shouldn't. The fat shouldn't bubble, and if the fat
starts twinkling.
Speaker 4: I'll drop the temperature until this twinkling goes down on
the briskets, and then that will be my guaranteed spot
where you'll never ruin a brisket.
Speaker 1: Now he's watching the briskets twinkle inside the pit room
at the Gladewater location. Mel Garcia ran it until his
retirement just a couple of months ago.
Speaker 4: He had been working for Bodasias for about thirty five
years and he's almost sixty five. So they just decided
to retire, and he said, us having a vacant store,
I told Nancy I would come over here and get
it back and going.
Speaker 3: And I've been calling it Marverley number two.
Speaker 1: So what's happening back at Marverley Number one? You know
the number four barbecue joint in Texas that's now under
the steady watch of pittmaster Brian Bingham.
Speaker 3: Brian really came in his own.
Speaker 4: I mean, I couldn't be any more proud of how
great of a job he's doing. I don't ever have
to think about anything. And he's doing the name proud too,
being over there. He's creative, he's a freaking fantastic cook.
Speaker 3: You guys have a little friendly rivalry, friendly rivalry. Yeah,
I told him that.
Speaker 4: Remember when I told you, I said, is it going
to be weird that the best Bodacious is in Gladewater, Texas.
Speaker 1: After Roland's passing, Jackson's role at Bodacia's has gone from
living up to the expectations of a barbecue legend to
now carrying on a barbecue legacy. He has become the
barbecue face of Bodacia's, and I asked him what that
responsibility means. To him, it.
Speaker 4: Means we've got to do even more to carry on
his legacy. We've got to step up extra hard, and
all of us had to pull together, and we need
to do it like he would want it to be done,
clean and good quality meat, and making sure every customer
gets the best bot they possibly can.
Speaker 1: Jackson's duties in the business now span the entire brand
rather than just a single store. That's one of the
reasons he felt it was important to step up and
reopen the Gladewater location.
Speaker 4: And never planned on being in Gladewater, But sometimes it's
just the card you're dealt. It's exciting as long as
the hours are and stuff. It's still fun to plan
business and watch business grow I love that aspect of it,
kind of the research and development with this place. They
already had a clientele and it wouldn't close for very long.
But I think we're getting a renewed trust with the
clientele over here.
Speaker 3: People are very excited and it's showing they're very vocal about.
Speaker 1: It and would rolland have been excited to hear this
news as well.
Speaker 4: Come my gosh, you'd have been here every day. He
just lived right down the street. That's the one thing
that we wish that he would have been here with us.
Speaker 3: But he's I think he's looking over us, helping us
with this one. I feel like he is. He talks
to us.
Speaker 1: If you want to stop into the Gladewater store, try
the Melman Sandwich, which was developed and named after the
former owner, Mel Garcia. It's a sandwich generously stuffed with
brisket and sausage all chopped up together. The Mailman is
an East Texas delicacy, but you'll have to provide your
own Kansas gravy. Texas barbecue is built from the ground up,
from the wood to the smoke to the meat. You
have to have the right tools to create a masterpiece
on put your paper YETI coolers have you covered. Built
to be indestructible, keep ice for days, and keep a
brisket hot for hours. YETI is built for Texas barbecue.
You've been listening to Fire and Smoke Texas Monthly's barbecue podcast.
I'm Daniel Vaughan, and I'll see you out there on
the barbecue trail.