The Texas Hamburger by Rick Vanderpool

Author:Rick Vanderpool
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2012-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

Great stay with breakfast burger—Matador.

Memories of Pop Bargees Hamburger Joint

by Carol Lewis

Anybody in Alpine who liked a good hamburger will tell you that Pop Barger made the very best. My mother always said that it was the tobacco spit on the grill that made the difference. I think that is the consensus of opinion, because when I have asked other people who had the privilege of eating Pop’s burgers, their response has been the same. “It was the tobacco juice!”

My family did not eat out often. We had a grocery store, the Alpine Supermarket, on the corner of Fifth Street and East Avenue E, so we had plenty of great food choices. Both of my parents were good cooks, and they enjoyed cooking, but when we all wanted either Mexican food or a good hamburger, we went out to eat. Leno Cano’s Little Mexico Café and the Gallego’s Green Cafe were favorite Mexican food spots and the tacos at the Toltec were great, but in our opinion, Pop[’s Chuck Wagon] had no competition when it came to hamburgers.

NOTE: Information provided by Archives of the Big Bend–Bryan Wildenthal Memorial Library at Sul Ross State University. The 1944 Alpine Company Telephone Directory ad:

ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STREET IN EVERYBODY’S WAY

OUR FOOD IS GOOD AT HALF THE PRICE…

—PAPA OF THE CHIUBURGER—

OPEN NIGHTS

POP’S CHUCK WAGON

Pop’s, at one time (1937), was located on downtown East Holland by the present-day Kiowa Gallery, but I remember it at the location of the present-day Railroad Blues on West Holland (early 1940s).

This is the way that I recall Pop making a burger:

1. Heat the grill and spit on it to test the temp.

2. Make a big meat patty, probably chuck because it was pretty greasy.

3. When the meat was done, sop up the grease with the bun and lightly brown it.

4. I guess you had a choice of mayo or mustard, but we all had mustard on the meat side of the bun.

5. That was topped off with big slices of tomatoes and onions, dill pickles and lettuce all smushed together.

6. It was salted and greasy and just too good for words!

This is one of my favorite Pop Barger stories:

I graduated from Sul Ross in August 1958, moved away for a time and returned in August 1963 to teach English at Central Junior High. Most of the teachers ate lunch at the school cafeteria, but sometimes we would order burgers from Pop’s and someone would go pick up the order. We would sit in someone’s classroom or outside on the fire escape and eat. The kids could always tell if we ate inside. They could smell Pop’s hamburgers!

One of my fellow faculty members was a young coach named John McCabe. He had a wife and several kids, and he always said that he was so poor that he couldn’t pay attention. But he would splurge occasionally and buy a hamburger at Pop’s.

John left Alpine in 1964 or ’65, and I think it must have been during the summer following his first year away from Alpine.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.