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Hot off the grill
Jeff Williams ladles sauce on a brisket sandwich while his wife RoseAngela watches at The Texas PitStop Bar-B-Que in Medford. The Williamses trekked around the country before landing in Medford almost nine years ago. The couple developed the restaurant when Jeff was sidelined from his trucking job after a serious highway accident in 1996. His tasty home-grown barbecue won a lot of friends in town before he went into the business of selling it last year. By GREG STILES How RoseAngela and Jeff Williams came to own and operate Texas PitStop Bar-B-Que is a tale almost as delicious as the aroma wafting through the Medford Main Street restaurant. It begins in Texas, where seeds were planted nearly 40 years ago. It winds through 48 states before the Williamses planted a vegetable garden on a vacant lot destined for new construction. It's about neighbors who can't get enough of a reluctant chef's fixings and it's a matter of faith and persistence. It took several stabs for the Texas PitStop Bar-B-Que to meet the demand for its smoked meats. All the remodeling and metal fabrication at the downtown site, where a succession of eating establishments have come and gone, takes time. The process in which the Williamses decided to become restaurateurs goes back a dozen or more years. So what was a few more weeks? Since the doors swung open on June 27, however, business has been good enough to make the Williamses look beyond the next day's menu selection. Until he came to Oregon, Jeff Williams never envisioned himself cooking for a living. "Not at all," says the 45-year-old Williams, admitting he had long turned a blind eye to the skill he had learned early in life. Their early days revolved around Texas Southern University in Houston, where Jeff's dad was dean of students and RoseAngela tagged along to school with her mom. It was during summer visits to rural Palestine - about halfway between Houston and Dallas - that Jeff Williams was introduced to barbecue pits. "Momma used to send me to the country to pick peas and corn on my grandparents' 15 acres, Williams says. "It's not what my brothers and sister or my cousins wanted to do; we were city kids. We wanted to bicycle, play baseball and that kind of thing. "In Palestine, Texas, there was nothing. No stores. The best thing we had for entertainment was a rope swing. We were occupied with that thing when we weren't going down see GRILL, Page 3E the rows or getting the weeds out." Burl Hughes, Williams' grandfather, would dig a hole in the ground, build a fire and put a grate over the top of it. "Every so often, he'd take a chicken out of a hen house or during see GRILL, Page 3E hog season, an old hog, and barbecue it," Williams recalls. "He'd say 'Jake,' - that was the nickname he gave me - 'come over here.' I'd watch him barbecue for hours, while he used to tell me stories about how he'd hop freight trains and ride around the country, I couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 years old. "As I got older, he showed me a little more. One day he said 'Now, Jake, I want you to do it. I want your to split the wood, throw it down the hole and ring the chicken's neck.' It didn't come easy, but I finally got the hang of it." The years passed, somehow Jeff Williams didn't recognize his calling. He earned a degree in automotive engineering, taught for two years at Houston Community College then went to work for National Tire Wholesalers, where he opened new stores. In 1986 he married RoseAngela. His income was enough for her to stay home and raise a daughter from a previous marriage. Then Sears Roebuck and Co. bought National Tire and the resulting changes cut his income and he left to join United Parcel Service as a mechanic. But the graveyard shift wasn't suitable for a family man. He thought back to the summer days in Palestine, but not about farming or barbecuing. It was the trucks rambling past his grandparents' spread that sparked his next career move. "I had always wanted to drive trucks," Williams says. "From the time I was a little-bitty-something, I'd listen to the logging trucks go by at night. When they'd hit the hill, they'd drop a few gears and that 'rrrr' got me. I got a chance to drive a bit when I was in college. So when I left the area of my study, I thought that was the best thing to do." He took a job with Werner Enterprises in 1991. Rather than fret over the promise of RoseAngela spending weeks at home in the Houston suburb of Katy with children MariAngela and Jeffrey II, the couple decided to go on the road together and homeschool their children. "It caused us to focus on each other more than financial gain, the getting, the pushing, the shoving," RoseAngela says. "When we left Houston, we were completely broke. That set the tone for the rest of our life. We didn't have anything to go get any more. It was what the Lord was leading us to do. "We learned to live and share together. We cooked on the truck, went to museums, parks and a lot of libraries, shopping centers and sightseeing places. The kids got a good fundamental education of what's in the world and how to use resources." The Williamses passed time talking about what made businesses succeed or fail as they rolled along. "We talked about what we would do and then laughed about it," she says. "We never thought we would have one." The Williams' traveling homeschool crisscrossed the country and Canada until the family got a call for help from a close friend - "I call her my sister," RoseAngela says - Pamela Epperson, who had moved to Medford from Texas. It was the winter of 1992-93. RoseAngela admits she was ready for a break because she had developed food allergies from "eating too much stuff on the road." A planned stay of four months has turned into more than eight years. But the trucking career came to an abrupt halt in December 1996 when a car crossed a median and struck Williams' truck north of Denver. He avoided a head-on collision, but suffered back, hip and shoulder injuries. Williams was idled from 1997 to 1999, going through therapy, living on disability and waiting for a financial settlement. He had surgery in early 1999. But the doctor told him his driving days were over. During this time he developed a 5,000-square-foot garden plot, complete with hay-padded walkways, on vacant land next to their house on Delta Waters Road. Soon they were selling vegetables to their neighbors. He had also taken to barbecuing with a pit grill that his wife had bought in the leanest of times in Uvalde, Texas. "He had played with it on weekends and the Fourth of July," RoseAngela says. "But here we are in Medford and this pit is in the garage and I can see him looking out of the corner of his eye." But RoseAngela remembers that her husband was unsure. " 'I can't do it; nobody would like my barbecue,' " RoseAngela remembers him saying. "I was adamantly against it," he admits. "But I thought on it and kept on thinking. When I realized that you can't find the same foods here you can find in Houston, the more I considered the idea." Visitors to the garden caught the scent and were soon sampling Williams' cooking. Others followed. "We would often drive home that way and see the smoke and smell it," says Beth Berghofer, former organizer and manager for the Pear Blossom Street Fair. "We eventually stopped by and they said 'Do you want some barbecue?' We were sold from then on." Berghofer invited the Williamses to join the Pear Blossom vendors in 2000. "I said I wasn't ready for something like that," Williams recalls. "She said 'Ready or not, show up.' " With less than two weeks to prepare, Williams scrambled into action. He got a used truck from Williams Bakery, gutted it, tore the side out and put in a window, added tables, plumbing, water and the Lyfetyme barbecue unit. In the meantime, his sister stenciled on the now well-known Texas PitStop Bar-B-Que lettering. "I begged Rose to let me have the utility money, because I thought I could make it back and some money off it, too," he says. "My sister loaned me some money to buy a little meat and buns for the event." A $300 investment netted $962. "In three hours, everything we had - every drop - was gone," Williams says. "I was so excited, we went out to Red Lobster to celebrate the next day." Soon the phone began ringing and a catering calendar developed. A Rogue Disposal & Transfer picnic at the Family Fun Center for 300 people in August 2000 was the first test. "We were about as disorganized as you could get, but we managed to get through it and they were satisfied with the food," Williams says. The $5,000 from the dinner was poured back into the business. "I felt like my life had been cut short in the truck accident, because I wanted to become an owner-operator," Williams says. "But the door got shut on me. But the Lord opened another door." Then in November, coffee roaster Sal Mellelo hooked up Williams with Kurt Bennett, a former City Council member, and things began falling in place. "I felt that Jeff has a God-given talent and made the best rib I ever tasted," Mellelo says. "Since there were so many empty buildings downtown, it made sense if someone was able to give him a chance, he would be very successful. I believe in him as a person and his ribs speak for themselves." Bennett wanted to know what it would take to get him downtown. "I told him we were interested, but didn't have the money to do anything," Williams says. Shortly afterward, the chef became convinced that was what he needed to do. "I had a dream that confirmed this is what I was supposed to do," he says. Neighbors told the Williamses that The Bridge cafe had gone out of business on Main Street. He met with John Ehrlich of Ace Properties of Oregon, who holds a lease from U.S. Bank, and signed a two-year lease with options in November. The only problem was that the Williamses had little cash and were still waiting on a settlement check from the Colorado accident. "I went home and prayed hard," he says. "I told the Lord exactly what the situation was and what I wanted to do. Two weeks later, the money came in and I put the deposit down." Ehrlich says the Williamses were going to rent half the building at first, but handicap access became an issue and the whole building was leased. That's when the work began. Williams did as much of the remodel work as he could and then got in-kind help from painters and tile layers. The major part of the operation was bringing in the $6,000 locomotive-shaped cooking grill and racks, fabricated by Pro-Weld. "We had just enough to pay for everything, get our doors open and just enough to buy supplies," Williams says. "I'm grateful. Every day I thank the Lord for another day and another few dollars. "I keep working hard and thinking about my grandfather. The tears keep coming. "I don't know what he had in mind when he was showing his barbecue to me. Momma used to say that someday I'd turn out like Granddad. And I guess she was right." Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail business@mailtribune.com Entrepreneur's wife strives to give couple's restaurant cozy family feeling At the Texas PitStop Bar-B-Que, the day starts at 5 a.m. and often continues until midnight or later. Any new business demands more time than is physically prudent, but that's what it takes. It's before dawn when RoseAngela Williams, groceries in hand, greets the food prep crew. By 6 o'clock, husband Jeff Williams fires up the grill. The beans start their six-hour journey to per-fection. Lunch runs from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner 4 to 8 p.m. In bet-ween, there are few idle moments because the meat racks are filled with ribs, brisket and chicken for the next day's meals. Then there are the catering and take-out orders to fill as well. As much as RoseAngela Williams wants to double her staff, she's more concerned about training employees than throwing unready workers into the mealtime fray. "I'm a fanatic about vegetables," Williams says. "I want food cooked and selected in the same way. You have to know how to sort vegetables and put them in the cooler as opposed to just throwing them in the refrigerator. It takes a while to find people to do culinary arts in that manner." In her mind, you're coming to her house for dinner. "I think of it like a boarding house scenario here," she says. "The world is busy, crowded and wacky. (Customers) want to know when they come in here it's a different, comforting environment. "There's no rush; it's a place for your mind to relax, maybe even for your soul to be uplifted." |
