Big Mike Brown at the World Championship Barbeque Cookoff

One of Jim Goode's Barbeque Pits on the way to the Houston Cookoff, back in the day.

                          

     I passed another milestone yesterday.  On September 15, 2013, I became seventy-seven years old.  I don’t really celebrate birthdays anymore, but I do notice them.  One of the good things about having a lot of birthdays is that a long life gives you time enough to meet and get to know a lot of interesting people.  I have many friends because I have lived a long time and I like people and I like to hear what they have to say and laugh with them about this funny world we live in.  My only rule about friends is “Please don’t bore me.”

     “Stormin’ Norman” Hanks, “Big Mike” Brown, and Bob “Booger” Poland were among the friends I used to work the Barbeque circuits with.  We talked and we laughed and we cooked Barbeque together.  None of these guys could ever get near being boring.  When you’re seventy-seven, you think back and remember.  This is one of my memories:

      The Houston Livestock Show committeeman came by to enforce the rule prohibiting private vehicles at the team locations for the World Championship Barbeque Cookoff.   Mike Brown explained what appeared to be a pickup parked next to our area, was actually not a pickup, but a UFO.

     “Well now, I admit, in this light, it does sort of look like a white GMC pick-up.  But when it came down and landed, it was shaped like one of them discuses they throw in the Olympics.  Silver colored.  You shoulda seen it.  We watched them three olive drab fellas get out of it without opening the door.  Just stepped right out on the pavement through the side of the machine, like they wasn’t nothing even there.  Then one turned around and pointed at it and it quit being a silver discus-looking thing and started looking like a white pickup truck.”

     “Tell him what them green varmits did to ole Smokey Rawlings, Mike.  Tell him what happened to ole Smokey.”  Stormin’ Norman enjoyed adding reinforcement to Mike’s tales, even though Mike didn’t need any help.

     “You know Smokey, don’t you?  He was our committeeman.”  Mike drawled.  “Well, ole Smokey come up on them guys and told them to move that truck.  Like you, he thought it was a pickup, parked in the pedestrian zone.  One of them green dudes pointed at Smokey and lighting flashed out the end of his finger and ole Smokey went ‘pop’ and disappeared.  All is left is that oily spot on the pavement over there.  See the light shining off it, right there next to our front gate?”

     “Now wait a minute, Mike. He didn’t go ‘pop’.  It was more of a ‘poof.’  Smokey went ‘poof’ ‘fore he disappeared.”  Norman corrected.

      “You trying to tell me a little green man went ‘poof’ and Smokey disappeared?  What you all been drinking?  Smokey must weight two-eighty-five.  He’da left a bigger spot.  Which finger that fella use to do all that pointin’ with, anyway?” The committeeman was getting into Mike’s story.  He didn’t believe it, but was curious.  He wondered where it might go.  Mike was playing him like a trophy bass on a light-weight fly rod.

     “Why, he used his long finger.  Only had two on each hand, and one was a foot long.  His thumbs were short, though.  All of Smokey didn’t settle down on the street in that one spot, neither.  Most of him went up in smoke and drifted over there towards the supper tent.  People smelled it.  You could tell.  They’d get a whiff and look over here.  Pretty soon everybody was looking over here. I really liked Smokey—gonna miss him.” Mike’s story was taking on a life of its own. 

      Mike Brown prided himself on his ability to create Prime B.S. out of thin air.  He had decided that he was not going to move his truck.  The truck came in handy in a lot of ways, and all he had to do to keep it was B. S. a couple of committeemen into overlooking a silly rule.  That was no step for a stepper.  Mike was a salesman—he made a good living passing out Grade A B.S. 

      As the evening progressed, the team-members started to place bets on the action.  Odds were running eight to five Mike would succeed and leave his truck parked there for the duration of the cookoff.  Only ones that bet against Big Mike didn’t know him.

     “Ah’ll tell you what Ah’m gonna do.  Ah’ll take a turn around the grounds and be back here in about a hour.  Ah hope that truck is gone when Ah gets back.  Ah’d hate to have it towed.”  The official walked through our entry and out onto the street.  He carefully stepped around the oily spot.

      Mike fired a parting shot as the committeeman left. “O.K., sir, but I’m afraid to touch that UFO.  Ain’t no telling what might happen if them green dudes rigged it someway.  They can do anything—they made it look just like a pickup.  I wouldn’t get too close if I was you.” 

     The official passed near the truck and lifted his hand to pat the hood, hesitated, then stuffed his hand in his pocket and hurriedly strolled away.  No sense tempting fate.

      About two hours and several beers later, the committeeman strolled triumphantly back into our assigned space, with Smokey Rawlings in tow.  “Looka here who Ah found.  Now, let’s hear that bunch of crap again.  Start over at the part where Smokey went “poof.”

     “Oh My God, it’s a miracle!  A miracle!  Are you OK, Smokey?  You look good, considering.  Where’d them alien bastards send you?  Did separating all your molecules hurt?”  Mike was genuinely concerned.

     “They ain’t nobody done nothing with me.  I ain’t been nowhere, ‘cept here and over yonder, doing my job.”  Smokey’s porch light was on, but it was pretty dim.

     “Norman, get over here—it’s worse than we thought.  They hit him with a Amnesia Ray.  He don’t remember nothing.”  Brown was talking fast, constantly ad-libbing, letting his instincts guide.

      Norm, wide-eyed, said,  ”You don’t remember telling that chartreuse fellow to move that truck and him giggling and zapping you with that long finger?”

     “Nothing like that never happened—I’d remember getting zapped by a green dude.”  Smokey’s porch light flickered.

     Brown moved in for the kill.  “Not if they hit you with a Amnesia Ray.  I bet you don’t even remember how you turned on Miss Lake Jackson so much, she French-kissed you in the ear?  Do you remember that?  If you don’t, it was the A-Ray for sure.”

     “Miss Lake Jackson sure is purty, but she didn’t kiss me in the ear.  I know I’d remember that.  You sure that happened?” Smokey was glowing, remembering Miss Lake Jackson and hoping she had kissed him.  He rubbed his ear.

     “She told me she was just overcome with emotion while you was looking down the front of her dress, and she couldn’t help herself.  She just hauled off and planted her tongue in your left ear.  Who knows what it takes to turn on a woman like that?  Smokey dang sure found the way to her heart.  Look at that lipstick on his ear.  He needs a memory jolt.”  Big Mike was rolling.

     “Miss Lake Jackson says for you to go hang around the committee tent and she’ll be over later, when she can control herself.  She don’t know why, but when you stare at her with those little close-together eyes, she just has all these chemical reactions happening inside.  She said she’ll be by around midnight, if that’s all right with you?”

     The next morning, Mike Brown drove the truck into Houston, picked up 300 pounds of crushed ice and four dozen Shipley’s donuts, and waved at the security guard as he drove back in.  He parked in the same spot, right next to our space.  A truck comes in real handy at a barbeque cookoff.