Hog wild for Pig Stands

Bob's and Van's offer a piece of history with each Pig Sandwich, no charge

One last Oklahoma Barbecue history lesson before we let the month of May slip into summer…

We all know barbecue has been popular since raw meat first fell into open fire, but in Oklahoma it became big business because of the Pig Stand. Founder Jessie G. Kirby opened his first with Dr. Reuben Jackson in October of 1921 in Dallas, fundamentally changing the way America eats to this day. Not because Kirby’s Pig Stand was home to “The Juicy Pig Sandwich,” though. That was incidental to the time and technology of the early 20^th century.

Kirby’s Pig Stand was a hit because when customers pulled into the parking lot a teenager in a white shirt and black bow tie hopped onto the running board of their car — often before it was parked — to take their order. Along with Pig Sandwiches, Kirby’s birthed the carhop. It also developed one of the first franchising arrangements in restaurant history.

Kirby liked to say, “Give a little pig a chance, and it will make a hog of itself.”

Hubert Marsh opened the state’s first franchise in the spring of 1924. After Marsh’s Pig Stand opened across the street from the State Capitol, Police assistance was needed directing traffic. More stores followed, including one on NW 18^th and Broadway.

Dub Adams managed that Pig Stand in 1950. He waxed nostalgic about it in a 1991 letter to legendary Oklahoma food writer Melba Lovelace. Among his claims, the old Pig Sandwich had no recipe. Even more controversially, he said there was no barbecue sauce – just a custom bun and Gandy’s sour pickle relish.

The Pig Sandwich, he wrote, was made by smoking bone-in hams rolled in salt and pepper overnight. The next morning, bones and skin went into a fragrant, simmering stockpot. The smoked pork was sliced and layered in hotel pans then topped with the pork broth.

The claims drove one of the Pig Sandwich’s last stewards to write a rejoinder. Phil Henderson bought Bob’s Pig Shop in Pauls Valley back in 1977 from Bob and Helen Hammons. Bob and Helen founded Bob’s Pig Shop 44 years earlier under the tutelage of Hubert Marsh himself.  Phil explained that Mr. Marsh sold Bob and Helen the equipment they used and taught them the secrets of The Pig. Henderson wrote that the secrets included a recipe for a “sauce built into the Pig Sandwich.”

“Bob (Hammons) admonished me to never write this secret recipe down, and it could not be duplicated without my permission,” Henderson wrote in a 1991 letter to The Daily Oklahoman. “He got out a crusty old pan that he had made pig sauce in since opening day.”

Henderson wrote Hammons used an old silver-plated spoon that was just as old to carefully heap the spices into the pan.

“He would watch me, and in the manner of craftsmen and apprentices over the centuries, corrected my measurements in minute detail,” Henderson wrote.

Henderson, who helped Bob’s become the birthplace of Oklahoma’s annual Noodling Festival, concluded: “I view my position in this little place as custodian of a sacred trust.”

Despite losing Henderson to a car accident in 2016 at the age of 73, Bob’s Pig Shop remains one of two places still serving a Pig Sandwich today.

The other sprouted in the oil fields before spreading from Wichita, Kansas, to Wichita Falls, Texas by a tool dresser named Leroy Vandegrift who everyone called Van.

Van copycatted the Pig Stand boom with his first Pig Stand inside a Wewoka hotel in 1928. Kirby’s sued Vandegrift the same year and lost. Buoyed by legal precedent, Van opened a second store in Seminole but quickly sold it to open a third in Shawnee. That was 1930, the same year Leroy married his wife Thelma and together the newlyweds ran Van’s Pig Stand, serving tender chunks of pork shoulder chopped and served on a sandwich bun with optional relish for 10 cents – curly-q fries and “Van-ized” potatoes were extra. They expanded Van’s across the street five years later and added the Charcoal Room in 1951.

Five locations endure, including the oldest in Shawnee. The Pig Sandwich remains a prominent menu item, but it now shares space with brisket, ribs, pulled pork and smoked bologna.

Before World War II, Pig Stands stretched to California through nine states. After the war, drive-ins diversified and left the Pig Sandwich behind for burgers, fries and milkshakes. Marsh would turn his Pig Stand on Broadway into a drive-in like the one Troy Smith opened out in Shawnee. Smith called his Top Hat at first, but by the time he and his partner Charlie Pappe expanded into Stillwater they settled on a new name, Sonic. It worked so well Leroy’s son, Jerry Vandegrift, began opening Sonic franchises in 1972 while still operating Van’s Pig Stands.

This concludes the Food Dood Feed’s coverage of National Barbecue Month, whew!

My top 10 burger list is ready, but I will hang onto it for a couple more days to give your inboxes a break. Tune into KSBI on Saturday at 4:30 to see the next episode of “Eat, Drink & be Local,” which puts the spotlight on La Baguette Bakery in Norman.

Stay hungry.