Tag: Davey Crockett

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“Come And Take It” The Story of The Alamo Brisket


This Tall Tale is from 2021. With the anniversary of the final battle of The Alamo upon us, I figured a re-visit might be welcomed.

Tex R. Styles learned the art of grilling at a young age. His father, an expert, medal-winning griller, and smoker, proudly and meticulously teaches six-year-old Tex the art of cooking everything from burgers to ribs on his cast-iron Leonard Brothers charcoal grill. The family lineage of grilling over an open flame can be traced back to the British Isles and their ancestral home of Scotland, where a Styles family member cooked meat for Celtic warriors, the King of England, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

When Tex turns eleven, his father conducts a tiki-torch-lighted ceremony in their backyard and passes the sacred grilling tools to his only child. Father Frank, the local priest, attends the party and lays down a righteous blessing on Tex and the family grill.


When young Tex fires up the charcoal on summer evenings, the neighborhood gathers in his backyard to watch the boy genius at work.
Once he has entered his “Zen-cooking zone,” he serves up a better T-Bone than Cattlemen’s, and his burgers are known to bring tears to a grown man’s eyes. Around Fort Worth, the word is out that some little kid over on Ryan Ave is a “grilling Jesse.”

Tex receives a bright green Weber grill for his thirteenth birthday and a professional cooking apron with his name embroidered across the front. The Star-Telegram newspaper takes his picture and writes a glowing article that appears in the Sunday food section. Over on Channel 5, Bobbie Wygant mentions him on her television show and sends him a congratulations card. He is now a local celebrity. Dan Jenkins, the hot-shot sports writer at the Telegram, does a piece on Tex for Sports Illustrated, and just like that, young Tex is officially a “big deal.”

When Tex turns sixteen, like his father and grandfather, he is inducted into the “Sons Of The Alamo” Masonic Lodge. To become a member, your family tree must include one direct family member who fought and died at the Alamo. Tex’s great-great-great-grandfather was a defender and was killed in the siege. He was also the head cook and griller for the Texian Army and a rowdy drinking buddy of Jim Bowie and Colonel Travis.

New members must speak before the lodge elders, recounting the siege from their family’s history. Since childhood, Tex had heard this family story a hundred times and can repeat it word for word, but tonight, he is drawing a blank on some critical details and decides to wing it a bit. In the mind of a sixteen-year-old, his modernized recount of the battle makes perfect sense.

He stands in front of the assembled elders, leans into the microphone, and begins;
“In late 1835, my great-great-great-grandfather, Angus Styles, traveled from the Smokey mountains of Tennessee to the dangerous plains of Texas with David Crockett and his band of long-rifle toting buckskin-clad rabble-rousers. Angus was in the dog house with his wife most of the time, so he figured a year or two in the wilds of Texas would smooth everything out with the Mrs.

Before immigrating to America, Angus was the chief griller and top dog chef for the Duke and Duchess of Edinburg in Europe. David Crockett knew Angus was a master griller and wanted him to travel with his men so they would eat well. Crockett and the men killed the meat, and Angus grilled it to perfection.

Arriving in Texas, Crockett tells Angus they are making a stop-over for a few days at a mission called The Alamo in San Antonio De Bexar. A buddy needs help fighting off a few Mexican soldiers; it shouldn’t take more than two days.

Once at the Alamo, arriving in the dark, entering via the back gate, Angus realizes Crockett was wrong in his evaluation. The rag-tag Army behind the walls would be no match for the thousands of Mexican soldiers sitting on a riverbank a few hundred yards away, eating tortilla wraps and polishing their long bayonets. Mariachi music floating on the breeze gave the scene a weird party-like atmosphere.

Angus locates and converts an old Adobe oven to a smoker griller, working on some chow for the Texians. Brisket, ribs, and sausage, along with his secret sauce, will be on the supper menu.

A young pioneer woman from northern Texas is there with her father, a volunteer. Veronica Baird is busy baking bread and cinnamon rolls in another adobe oven and lends Angus a hand stoking his fire. A prominent German fellow, Gustav Shiner, wanders over and offers Angus a mug of his homebrew beer. It’s looking like the Army will eat and drink well tonight.

A chilly March wind is blowing toward the Mexican Army camp, and the troops smell the delightful aroma of cooking meat and baking bread. Having marched 1500 miles with little food, they are famished, and the wafting perfume makes them salivate like an old hound dog.

General Santa Anna and his officers also smell the same heavenly aroma and, having not much to eat in the past few days, hatch a scheme to get their hands on that meat and freshly baked bread. Santa Anna sends a white flag rider with a note to the gates of the Alamo.

Standing in the courtyard, surrounded by hundred-plus fighters, Travis reads the letter, ” Dear Sirs and Scurrilous Rebels, on behalf of our large and overpowering Mexican Army and of course, myself, General Santa Anna, we would be willing to offer you a general surrender of sorts if you would share your delicious meat and bread with my troops. Looking forward to a good meal. Yours until death, General Santa Anna.”

The men, in unison, yell, “hell no,” we are not sharing our chow. Being a bit smart-ass, Travis orders two 20-pound cannons to fire a rebuke into the Mexican camp.

The first cannonball destroys the Mexican’s chuck wagon and what beans and flour the troops have left. The second cannonball blows up the cantina wagon, vaporizing numerous cases of tequila and wine. Now, the officers and troops have no food and no hooch. Santa Anna is as mad as a rabid raccoon and screams, “that’s it boys, we are taking the mission pronto.”

The battle started that evening, and as we all know, it didn’t turn out well for the Texians. Veronica Baird survived the massacre and said that Angus Styles and Gustav Shiner fought off the advancing soldiers with carving knives, a keg tap, and her sizeable wooden baker’s Peel. They fought to their death.


As the women and children of the Alamo were escorted out of the mission, Veronica Baird spots Santa Anna, sitting on his black horse, about to take a bite from one of her captured Baird Cinnamon rolls. She chunks a rock and knocks it out of his hand. General Santa Anna’s Great Dane dog, Mucho Perro, gobbles it down before it hits the ground. Sweet revenge.

She later wrote a book about the battle, which sold pretty well here in Texas. Not only is the Alamo our sacred national treasure, but it was also the first BBQ joint in Texas. Thank you, and I hope you enjoyed the story of my grandfather Angus dying at the Alamo.” And with that, Tex takes a seat next to his stunned father.

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God Bless The Alamo


A few more days until we solemnly recognize the fall of the Alamo, March 6th, 1836. It’s not a day that will live in infamy like Pearl Harbor, the battles of Gettysburg and Yorktown, but for us native Texans, it’s a day of retrospect that deserves the reverence we bestow upon it.

The blog-es-phere is chock full of opinions about Travis and his men; poor old Santa Anna only wanted to get along, move along and be friends, but had to kill all the defenders because he was forced to. Bullshit, he was a murdering dictator and knew full well what he was doing. Three thousand plus soldiers against less than two hundred poorly equipped pioneers and farmers. Not much brotherly love was present in San Antonio that February and March. There are even stories, one of which I read today, that swear black slaves were picking Texas cotton outside the gates of the mission before the Mexican army invaded. If it’s on the internet, it’s got to be true. Right?

Starting in the first grade, I was taught the history of the Alamo. My teacher made sure my classmates and I knew the story of the battle, the events that led up to it, and the aftermath at San Jacinto. Mrs. Edwards, my teacher, was a native of San Antonio, so she was a bit “ett” up with the whole thing. Us six year- olds, although slightly lacking in historical proficiency, understood the enormity and the importance of the battle. We regularly staged a neighborhood reproduction of the battle a few times a month, using my parent’s garage as the besieged mission.

Walt Disney and his television series Davey Crockett, King of The Wild Frontier, turned every boy, and most girls, in my grade school into a rabid Texian defender, ready and willing to fight the battle a second time using our Daisy BB guns and Cub Scout knives for arms. Having a native Texan and hometown boy, Fess Parker, in the role of old Davey didn’t go unnoticed in Fort Worth. Fess, dressed in full buckskin and coonskin cap came to Fort Worth to promote the show and the schools had to declare a holiday because they were empty. That is how serious we are about our history. Yes, we are all braggarts, insufferable most of the time, and onery as a Honey Badger, but pound for pound, put us against any enemy, and we will get the job done. My fellow members at The Sons of The Alamo Lodge, of which I am a member in good standing, can attest to our state of readiness.

Keep your powder dry; God Bless The Alamo, Goliad, San Jacinto, William Travis, Sam Houston, Juan Sequin, Davey Crockett, Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, and George Strait.

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Born On A Mountain Top In Tennessee…


Christmas, 1955, and I found this under the tree: my first stringed instrument, made by my Coonskin cap-wearing hero, Davey Crockett. My father, a musician, tuned it up and put it in my tiny hands. I must have been a musical savant because I played and sang, with no mistakes, the theme song to the Disney show Davey Crockett. My parents, flaber and gasted, grabbed the Brownie Box camera and took my picture while I was wailing on my miniature ax, mailing it the next day to The Arther Godfrey Talent Hour in New York City. I continued to give impromptu recitals around the neighborhood for my buddies until Georgie accidentally sat on my Davey guitar and crushed it to splinters. After that, I couldn’t remember the words to the song and forgot how to play, and wouldn’t you know it, a week later, Arther Godfrey called my folks for an audition. I could’a been a contender!

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Death By Hot Pepper


I am not a food critic or a reviewer, so forgive me if this sounds a bit over the top; true accounts usually do.

Some years back, I was tinkering around making a hot sauce or a salsa for my consumption and gastronomic distress. A buddy of mine who served in Vietnam suggested I use one of the peppers he smuggled back to the States in 1970 and has, for decades, grown them in his backyard garden. Sure thing, I would love to use them. He warned me they are the hottest peppers on earth, and a grown man would die within twenty minutes if he ate a whole pepper. He saw a chicken eat one, and the poor bird exploded into a mass of feathers and guts within a few minutes.

A few days ago, he brought me one small pepper and said it was all I would need. It was triple-wrapped in foil, double-bagged in heavy-duty Ziploc bags, and transported in a soft-walled Yeti cooler.

“Why all the elaborate precautions?” I asked.

” He looked a bit nervous as he handed me the bag and said, ” These babies are so damn hot that even breathing or smelling them will singe your lungs, destroy your sense of smell, and might make you blind.” Now I’m scared.

Written on the baggie is the name of the pepper, “Vietnamese Death Pepper.” The name alone is enough to scare the liver out of me, but being a man and not wanting to disappoint my buddy and look like a pansy-ass, I proceeded on.

The cute little Vietnamese Death Pepper

I gingerly removed the foil-wrapped pepper from the baggies, took it to the back patio, positioned myself upwind, and unwrapped the foil cacoon. There it lay, a small, harmless-looking red pepper about the size of my pinky toe. It was quite beautiful in its own way. My buddy said to wear gloves when handling the little demon and to use only a tiny sliver in your recipe, or you might die in agony. I put on leather gloves, a scuba mask, and a triple filter breathing device, shaved a tiny sliver into a Tupperware container, then wrapped the pepper up and stored it in the bottom drawer of my fridge. I figure to use this in my salsa or hot sauce that’s cooking on the range.

Even with Jalapenos, hot cajun onions, and ghost peppers, my hot pepper sauce is too mild, so I put the sliver into the boiling mix, letting the brew steep for a few hours, and I shuffled off to watch cooking videos.

I bottled the mix into a clean Jameson Irish Whiskey bottle and corked it shut. Then completed my salsa and added one drop of the hot sauce to the mix. My wife, MoMo, stood on our patio while I Facetimed her the procedure. It’s now or never. I dipped a sacrificed corn chip into the salsa, raised it to my quivering lips, and popped it into my mouth. Dang, now that’s some good stuff. About two minutes later, my guts churned, my belly swelled like a dead whale, I had trouble breathing, and my vision blurred; then my legs gave out, and I went down for the count. MoMo rushed in and began resuscitation; she was sure I was a goner. I saw visions and was going to the light, but the ghost of Chef Anthony Bourdain told me to go back and “not use so much of that little pepper,” he also called me a moron as he floated back to his personal cloud. I spent the next three days in the bathroom or confined to my bed, but I made a full recovery and never felt better. My gut is cleaned out, my vision is better, I can smell a fly’s fart, and my skin rash has healed, and my teeth are gleaming white. This stuff might be a miracle elixir. I cooked a new brew and used a minuscule dot of the killer pepper. The new batch turned out perfect; just enough heat and flavor, but none of the life-threatening side effects.

I’m working on a label, and the name of my new hot pepper sauce is “Davey Crockett’s Ass Cannon.” A nod to my buddies over at “The Sons of The Alamo” lodge, of which I am a member. It’s guaranteed to blow out your colon, incinerate those pesky hemorrhoids, make the lame walk, the mute talk, turn your hair from gray to its natural color, and remove wrinkles. Pictured above is what’s left of my second batch of salsa using my hot pepper sauce.