Oklahoma barbecue's tallest tale telling

Texas has brisket, KC has ribs, and Oklahoma is full of smoked bologna

May is both National Hamburger Month and National Barbecue Month. In Oklahoma, our love of hamburgers is for keeps and this prairie-scape has produced the fried-onion burger and Theta to prove it.

When it comes to barbecue, it’s more like church. Worship is year-round and whether folks are as devout as they claim it doesn’t stop them from giving strong personal testimony they are prepared to back with a prolonged feud.

This May, I helped my buddy Nathan Poppe on a barbecue issue for The Curbside Chronicle, which I encourage everyone to have a couple of bucks at the ready for the next time you’re out. I put together a potato salad competition for Curbside vendors. The combatants were Clark Crew, Edge Craft, Iron Star and two varieties from Earl’s Rib Palace. To find out the results, you’ll have to pick up a copy.

Ben Felder, keeper of the Oklahoma Barbecue Roadtrip blog, also has a great piece about Tabb Singleton of Idabel in the issue. I met Tabb about a decade ago when he became the first Oklahoman to win on Food Network’s “Chopped.”

An Idabel-native, Tabb followed his career dreams to New Orleans and the chance to learn at Emeril Lagasse’s NOLA. Today, Tabb’s natural-born pitmastery blends with classic French technique at Phat Tabb’s Barbecue in McCurtain County. Business is taking me down to Tabb’s next week. Watch the socials for food porn starting in Pittsburg County on Monday and Tuesday then McCurtain County the rest of the week.

All month, I’ll share some barbecue tales and the first is an answer to the question: What is Oklahoma barbecue about?

Typical answers begin with the challenges of being stuck between Kansas City and Texas before straying into smoked bologna, mild sauce and/or what kind of wood is burned.

But nothing better illustrates Oklahoma’s longstanding love affair with barbecue and the barbecue Oklahoma might someday invent than the day, a little over 100 years ago, Oklahoma City played host to the largest barbecue in human history.

The site was the state fairgrounds, the occasion was the inauguration of J.C. Walton, who was voted Oklahoma’s fifth governor in November of 1922. Among Walton’s election promises was to hold a barbecue for all instead of an exclusive inaugural ball.

Walton’s inauguration committee spared no expense, spending about $100,000, which works out to more than $1.5 million today. (No truth to the rumor Brent Swadley is a distant relative.)  The state hired Oklahoma-native Poppa Miller, who made his smoky bones in Kansas City, to consult on the massive cookout. Miller was known as “The Barbecue King” after he barbecued 15,000 pounds of beef, pork, and mutton for a group of Fort Arkansas businessmen in 1902.

The state also summoned I.R. McCann of Pauls Valley. McCann was a renowned cowboy chef. Said The Pauls Valley Democrat: “McCann knows his business when it comes to barbecue and feeding a big crowd.”

The barbecue itself was hustle and bluster. The Ada Weekly News reported: “It was a scene such as Oklahoma had never seen before. The multitude formed in rough lines before the serving stands and barbecue assistants began handing out great hunks of beef, buffalo, bear and reindeer meat.”

That wasn’t a misprint about Yogi and Rudoph’s peeps being on the menu. To feed what they thought could be up to 200,000 people, Walton used the help of ranchers and hunters statewide to bolster McCann’s cause with 2,540 rabbits, 1,427 chickens, 289 head of cattle, 210 turkeys, 134 possums, 70 hogs, 36 sheep, 2,000 pounds of buffalo, 1,500 pounds of reindeer meat, 34 ducks, 25 squirrels, 15 deer, 14 geese, and a one antelope.

 McCann told The Tulsa World on Dec. 28, 1922, that he employed 30 meat cutters, 1,000 waiters, 52 fire-handlers and 500 cooks to execute “the biggest feat in the history of the world of its kind, and it's going to go off like clockwork.”

McCann proclaimed his team would deliver “more than one thousand carcasses all nice and brown awaiting consumption by the hungry hordes” and that he personally would see to it “pepper is used with discrimination” so that Oklahomans would celebrate with “a feast of beef like your mother used to cook.”  

Of course, an exposition of pit-roasted beast of that magnitude deserved an equal show of pageantry. It came in the form of a parade that stretched 10 miles long, winding through the streets of teenaged Oklahoma City before ending at the fairgrounds.

The Ada Weekly News observed: “Col. Zack Mulhall, founder of the Mulhall Wild West show, led the line of march wearing “a frontier suit of fringed and beaded leather and astride a prancing horse. … At either side of him trudged stolid Indians, decorated in war bonnets and paint.”

After all that pomp, the circumstance of Walton’s oath kept the hungry throng out of the increasingly aromatic feast. He finished around half past noon, but The Daily Oklahoman reported the National Guard was summoned to keep the peace within fifteen minutes.

Starting around 1 p.m., thousands filed through 15 serving sheds for piles of meat, bread, and pickles.

“Bread sliced and piled high like cotton bales began to shrink under the onslaught. Giant coffee urns, each holding 10,000 gallons, and heated by a steam engine, likewise became the mecca of thousands who as they received meat and bread went on to complete their menu with a cup of steaming coffee. It was estimated that serving of the barbecue would continue most of the afternoon, so great was the crowd.”

Organizers reported serving 125,000 meals, but attendance is disputed. The Daily Oklahoman reported between 60,000 and 80,000 attendees, but others reported as much as double that.

Sooner Magic, indeed.

No one in Oklahoma or anywhere else has attempted a barbecue of that magnitude since. Could be the price tag or it could be because Walton was impeached six months later and removed from office in November 1923.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma politicians continue to struggle to gauge how much scandal barbecue can cover up, based on the ongoing Swadley’s investigation. When the smoke clears from the Foggy Bottomless Pit of scandal, Oklahoma barbecue mythology will have an entertaining new chapter. Time will tell if it was worth $12 million.