Vanderpool - The Texas hamburger : history of a Lone Star icon

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403
www.historypress.net

Copyright 2011 by Rick Vanderpool

All rights reserved

Cover design by Natasha Walsh.

All images are by the author unless otherwise noted.

First published 2011
e-book edition 2012

ISBN 978.1.61423.349.7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vanderpool, Rick.

The Texas hamburger : history of a Lone Star icon / Rick Vanderpool.

p. cm.

print edition ISBN 978-1-60949-085-0

1. Cooking (Beef)--Texas--History. I. Title.

TX749.5.B43V36 2011

641.8409764--dc23

2011023476

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contents

Foreword

Someone described Rick Vanderpool like a balloon with the air rushing out of it, going in all directions. Someone else described him as a creative genius. Someone else said he was a poet. Someone else said he was extremely rich in experiences.

As you can tell, people talk about Rick Vanderpool. Hes a tall Texan with plenty of stories to tell. I first got acquainted with him in northeast Texas when he was heading up the Bois dArc Bash in Commerce, where he lived at the time. I think he not only was in charge of the whole shebang, but he also wrote a song about that tree and the hard wood it produces.

Rick Vanderpool has ideas sprouting from his fertile brain by the second. People admire that and envy his energy and enthusiasm. They are also amazed at all the ways he finds to make money with his camera. He is an excellent photographer and takes pictures of everything. He uses those photos to make posters of wildflowers, cactus, coffee, spurs, stars, the word Texas and other things.

The next time I saw Rick was when I discovered on the web that he had once traveled to all the cities in the United States named Columbus. He completed the unique project with a traveling photographic exhibit to celebrate, in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus discovering America.

He has taken time to be a newspaper publisher, entrepreneur (creating everything from posters and jigsaw puzzles to quilts and fine art with his photos), consultant, teacher, traveler, husband, father and grandfather, but more than anything, he is a student of life.

Now hes into Texas hamburgers. And boy, does he have big plans. Well just have to see what happens.

Stand back. Rick Vanderpool is on the loose.

Tumbleweed Smith

Big Spring, Texas

www.tumbleweedsmith.com

Acknowledgements

After Looking for Texas: Essays from the Coffee Ring Journal was published in 2001, I promised myself that if ever I had the chance to author a second book I would not make many of the mistakes I made in the first one. In an effort to fulfill that promise, I herewith dedicate this book to myself, for without me, it would not have been possible. I will refrain from further dedications, and though I really would like to retract several that seemed so appropriately tendered ten years ago, I will not.

As for offering acknowledgement and thanks for help with this book, well, thats another difficult lesson from my first publishing adventure. Therefore, in the event that I may very well, in the future, experience a change of heart or other regretsor, worse, omit a thanksI have decided to limit my sincere thanks to the following:

First, praise God for creating beef; for giving us our daily buns, along with onions, mustard or mayo, cheese, etc.; and for the invention of the hamburger. By a Texan, in Texas. Thanks, too, for the sandwich inventors inspiration to pair the hamburger with fried potatoes.

Nextly, thanks to Jack Biblefor his and Riccis friendship and for Jacks suggestion that I undertake my Texas hamburger quest in the first place. Hes expecting neither credit nor compensation for the idea. He is, however, expecting to accompany me on at least one trip looking for the best Texas hamburger.

Okay, thanks to my familythose members who speak to me regularlyand to dear friends, lovers (of Texas hamburgers, of course) and others who know who they are or ought to be.

I also thank the guest writers who grace these pages.

And last, but hardly least, I would like to thank everyone who knows how to prepare a real, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness Texas hamburger and serve it with real fries or handmade onion rings that have never been frozen. Drinks, garnishes and other sides optional

Rick Vanderpool, Hambassador/Big Cheese

Lubbock, Texas

Not a Rainbow Connection Exactly

Someday youll find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers and me.
Kermit the Frog

As a boy, I spent nearly every summer with my younger brother and sister at our grandparents home in Flat River (now Park Hills), Missouri. Florene Elizabeth Vanderpool was my fathers mother and an excellent cookthe real, old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness, nearly-everything-made-from-scratch variety cook, of a generation almost gone.

Grandmother prepared every sort of meal and cuisinefrom fresh game and fish that my grandfather provided in abundance, garden-fresh vegetables that a bazillion neighbors supplied and slow-cooked spare ribs to strawberry and rhubarb cobbler, homemade ice cream (my brother and I got to turn the crank and add the ice and salt) and hamburgers that she prepared in one of her ancient cast-iron skillets.

I dont know if Grandmother really enjoyed eating out, but you could look at her five-foot stout form and tell that she certainly enjoyed food. As I said, even though she could and did prepare almost any dish, we often ate out during those long-ago summers. And more often than not, we ate at hamburger jointsSteak n Shake in St. Louis (we went to the world-famous St. Louis Zoo every summer), Toms in Farmington (nearby town; Toms was a very popular liquor store with a small lunch counter and fantastic hamburgers), Dunks Pool Hall in Desloge (also near Flat River, DunksHome of Dunks Burgerwas frequented by my father when he was a high school student; coincidentally, I attended high school in St. Louis with Dunks grandson) and even a Whataburger in Cairo, Illinois (most likely not an early franchise, although the time frame works). All those hamburger dining experiences left vivid impressions on my palate.

July 27 (son of Dean and Arletta; brother of Reggie and Sue).

When I told my father that I was writing this book, he explained my genetic predisposition for an appreciation of old-fashioned hamburgers this way: my fathers German-born father, Dewey Marvin Statler, was employed as a butcher by my fathers grandparents at their small grocery in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. It was during this period that Mr. Statler met, courted and married my fathers mother.

Mr. Statler died of tuberculosis when my father was eight, but years later, when Dad was attending college in Cape, he, too, worked as a butcher for his grandparents. In between, he had developed a love for good meatespecially hamburgersand he recalled his grandparents, with his mother, eating them at one establishment in particular. The place was named Uncle Dudleys Hamburgers, and Dad said the owner/cook was not given to turning out round hamburgers. Rather, he simply flattened a glob of fresh meat with his spatula, producing what my father, as a second- or third-grader, dubbed feather-edged. Uncle Dudley, or whatever his real name was, liked that description, and soon his menu touted the place as Home of the Feather-Edged Hamburgers. Voila! The burger-loving youngster who would become my father had named a hamburger.