Up In Smoke

Steve’s Barbecue, in Denton, was a colorful little place. You can tell that from the picture, even after the devastating fire that destroyed it.

Steve's Barbecue up in smoke

We fell in love with it on our wedding day. Oh, we had known it was there — Steve had been in business for twenty-three years, after all. The little shack stood on Hickory Street, just off of Bell Avenue (which is a major thoroughfare in Denton). But, it was just that: a shack! I had heard that the barbecue he served was delicious, but the place looked like a dump. I was never tempted to enter it.

The morning of our wedding on Saturday, April 19th 2003, all of my husband’s family had gathered from around the country to stay at a local bed and breakfast inn. As we talked about what we might want for lunch, his brothers mentioned barbecue. Steve’s was nearby, so my husband and his brothers went on an adventure.

Entering Steve’s Barbecue definitely qualified as an “adventure.” They came back with delicious barbecue and even more delightful tales of what Steve’s Barbecue was like on the inside. If I thought it looked dumpy outside, I didn’t know the half of it. We had the best time eating our lunch and sharing the tales.

They said that Steve was quite a character, who talked and joked the whole time he waited on them. As Steve put together our order, my husband and his brothers marveled at the place. The walls were covered with tattered menus and paraphernalia from Steve’s many years in business. But, everything was coated in grease, because Steve kept his barbecue smoker inside the building. My husband joked that if anyone lit a match in the place the building would go up in a poof of smoke.

On the door of Steve’s Barbecue, there was a sign that said: “Have a snack and you’ll be back.” We knew that was true! We loved the barbecue we ate that day, and vowed that Steve’s Barbecue would be our “new favorite restaurant.”

Unfortunately, some love’s are not meant to last.

Sometime in the wee hours of the very next morning, Steve’s Barbecue caught fire. Even though the fire station was catty corner across the street from it, firefighters couldn’t get to the building in time to save it. The structure was totally engulfed in flames before they even got to it.

There was some talk of Steve re-building his business, but I suppose he didn’t have the heart for it. The corner is now empty where his building once stood. But, folks around town still talk about Steve’s Barbecue. It might not have been the best barbecue in the world — maybe it wasn’t even the best in Denton — but the legend remains. And, I probably don’t have to tell y’all that in our memories things always seem bigger and grander than they were in real life. In my memory, that barbecue on my wedding day was the best I ever tasted.

If you’d like, you can see other pictures of Steve’s Barbecue before it burned at Mike Ziegler’s World. Or, you can visit some other bloggers who used the prompt from Take This Tune to write a post. Mine was a very loose interpretation of the theme of “things not being what they seem” and “beauty in unexpected places.”

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4. You Could Smell Their Pits A Mile Away
5. As Simple As Black and White

Tagged as: barbecue, Denton, Memories, Take This Tune, writing prompt