Page 28 - July 2020 Barbecue News Magazine

As an enslaved man, Arthur never learned to read or write very well. In his first 28 years as a slave, the only book that he had been introduced to had been the Bible. Even then, he was given no instruction on the alphabet. As a free man, Arthur continually felt his disadvantage in being illiterate, but there was little he could do to fix that. Instead, he focused on his children and en- sured that they got a proper education. It is by that act which his recipes have survived in our family. Arthur's methods were so- phisticated and unique, and he continuously tinkered with them. Arthur had a keen mind and could manage these recipes from memory early on. As time passed, he began committing his recipes to paper by dictating them to his children to scribe. His recipes in their penmanship are our guide to keep us faithful to the flavors he first created some 160 years ago. For this reason, today, we donate a portion of our annual revenue towards select initiatives that promote children's literacy.
Arthur was proficient at barbecuing just about any meat you could present him with, and he had a variety of rub and sauce combos he would apply to each different meat. I asked his opin- ion for a large-scale barbecue; he preferred to cook a pork shoul- der. When he prepared for himself, however, his favorite wavered between a "shoat" - a young pig, especially one which is newly weaned, or a "Kid" – a freshly weaned goat.
It didn't take long for word of Arthur's barbecue to spread. Arthur would be "sent for" to execute large community barbecues and festivals, sometimes feeding tens of thousands of people over the course of a weekend or more. The call would come from commu- nities as far as fifty miles away. He would agree if those contract- ing him committed the manpower and resource to build a proper open pit. Arthur was meticulous in his specifications for building an open-pit barbecue. That meant they would supply the men and equipment to dig a trench forty feet long, by six feet wide, by four feet deep. They would throw untreated oak railroad ties into the bottom of the pit and then top it with a metal pipe at four- foot intervals and then cover the entire forty-foot span with cattle wire. The timber at the bottom would be set afire in the early evening so that by midnight the logs would be reduced to embers. While the fire was getting right, Arthur and his family would be prepping the shoulders with his secret rub. When it was time, they would place pork shoulders atop the cattle wire to cook. Arthur would space out men at five to six-foot intervals on both sides of the trench, with new brand-new pitchforks. They would then turn the shoulders through the night. With that timing, the shoulders would be done in time for lunch. Arthur insisted that pork shoulder be sliced, not pulled. His method ensured that every sandwich got a portion of that flavorful bark, which came from the application of his delicious dry rub prior to cooking.
Arthur's children were heavily involved in their father's more giant barbecues. Along with knowledge of his recipes, he also taught them his wisdom of managing meat over an open pit. As time passed, and they grew into adulthood, they would grow to share in his notoriety. For years, Arthur and his family were called on annually to execute the barbecue at their hometown of Kewanee's yearly Hog Festival. Following the lessons taught by Arthur, his sons prepped and served some five tons of pork shoul- der sandwiches in a single weekend at this festival the year the community celebrated their Centennial. As Arthur neared the century mark in age, we have newspaper articles that describe him "supervising" his children, elderly men themselves, in their execution of big-city festivals and community fairs!
Through hard work, Arthur was able to save enough money to purchase a small farm just a few miles from town. From this homestead, Arthur raised a variety of typical midwestern crops. On his farm, he also kept a permanent open-pit barbecue, in which the floor and walls were permanently lined with brick. He used this fully functional open-pit barbecue to continually prac- tice his craft and refine his recipes. Over the decades, Arthur's celebrity grew more and more, and demand for his skills and product came from up to 100 miles away. Having outlived his wife by almost a decade, he lived alone and actively farmed this land alone until less than a year before his death at 108!
An interesting fact about Arthur was that he always "kept" a wolf as a companion. He still had the habit of walking the woods in his free time to find herbs. During the fall and winter months, he would track wolves from their prints in the snow. He would fol- low them back to their den to find their lair. He would then sneak back in the spring and steal a wolf pup from the litter just before it was weaned. After taking it home, the puppy would need to rely on Arthur to survive the next few weeks. That created a trust be- tween them, the wolf then taking its lead from Arthur from that point forward. In no way could you call it domesticated. It did not live in the house with him. Instead, it came and went as it pleased, but always stayed relatively close. Arthur and the wolf simply kept each other in periodic company. The wolf would tol- erate Arthur, but no one else. If Arthur had a visitor to the farm, the wolf would retreat to the tree line and wait them out before returning. It was still a wild animal, distrusting of all other hu- mans. Arthur would repeat this action every few years, as needed if, for some reason, his wolf went missing or died. Local newspa- pers carried articles describing him at the age of 101, supervising the annual Hog Festival Barbecue in Kewanee. He outlived his wife, Laura, by some 25 years. He lived alone and continued to farm until the age of 107. Remember, farming at that time meant walking behind a workhorse, hitched to plow, which the operator had to steer and control to dig each furrow in the field. When Arthur went into town to run errands or take care of business, he hitched this same mare to his buckboard to make the three-mile journey. As he left the farm, his wolf companion would trot di- rectly underneath the wagon at pace. As they approached the town the wolf would peel off and go lay in the tree line at town's edge to await Arthur's departure. When Arthur left, the wolf would join up, and they would return to the farm. Arthur often made the tavern his last stop in town. Afterward, as long as he could get back into the wagon, his mare knew the way home. One late fall afternoon, at the age of 107, Arthur made such a trek into town to take care of business. After the obligatory stop at the tav- ern, Arthur climbed into the buckboard and promptly fell asleep. The mare began the trek home, the wolf came in from the tree line and fell into pace under the wagon. Unfortunately, the horse proved not to be the best decision-maker of the day. At about the midway point on the journey home, the road is crossed by a set of railroad tracks. Unfortunately, the mare stepped directly into the path of an oncoming freight train. The train hit the brakes but to no avail. They were hit. The horse blew to smithereens; the wagon obliterated, the wolf never seen again. Once the train came to a stop, the trainmen came running back to assess the damage; neighbors came running because they heard the screech- ing train brakes. They found Arthur had been thrown down the tracks. He was banged up pretty bad, but he was sitting up, alert and angry! They tried to take him to the hospital, but he refused. He insisted that they take him home!
BarbecueNews.com - 28
JULY 2020