Once Upon a Time in Austin... Blog Question Answered!
9/8/2011
Last week, we announced the winner of our blog question contest, and promised Dee Taylor an answer to this question:
What inspired you to open Pok-E-Jos, and how did the name come to be?
To answer this question, we interviewed current Pok-e-Jo's co-owner Doug Bohne, who was also one of three original owners of Pok-e-Jo's. So if you'll all get in your barbecue time machines with me, we'll take a trip back to the 1970's to look at the origin of an Austin barbecue tradition! So without further adieu, once upon a time in Austin....
To start off, let's look at our 3 main characters of this story, and where their lives were in the mid-1970's:
1. Porky Haberman- Real Estate investor in Austin, one of three original Pok-e-Jo's owners.
2. Joe Slaton- Successful life insurance salesman in Dallas, and another of the original Pok-e-Jo's owners
3. Doug Bohne- Recent graduate of the University of Texas, had been working as a construction worker/gopher for Porky's Real Estate agency for a year and a half
The idea of opening up a business in Austin (not yet a barbecue restaurant) came about when Porky found a piece of property on what was then Burnet Road at a price that was below market value, in an area in which they felt that the value of this property would only increase. Joe, an old friend of Porky, decided to invest in this piece of property with Porky. To cover their costs of ownership (taxes, payments, etc.), they decided to open up a business on this property.
The question of how they arrived at choosing to open a BBQ restaurant in this spot on Burnet Road is a slightly longer story. It begins with Joe Slaton's brother-in-law, Mike, who had worked for years as a union laborer in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. By the mid-1970's, Mike became tired of the union going on strike every couple of years, and losing the money he had saved up since the last strike, so he wanted to go into business for himself. So Mike turned to his brother-in-law Joe, who just happened to be an acquaintance of a Dallas BBQ man named Sonny Bryan, who was the owner of Sonny Bryan's Smokehouse in Dallas. Mike worked for Sonny Bran's for a while for free, just to learn the business, and then turned around and, with Joe's help, opened Mike's Smokehouse in 1977 or 1978 (give Doug a break, it was a long time ago and a long ways away!) back up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Back in Austin, Joe and his newfound insights into the barbecue business attended Porky's 40th birthday party. This party was catered by a big name barbecue joint in Austin, and this joint just left Porky and Joe disappointed in the offerings of Austin barbecue. And if you want something done right, then gosh darnit you better do it yourself!
Porky and Joe then turned their attention to who was going to get in there and run their new barbecue joint, and they looked to the hardworking construction worker/gopher who had recently graduated from UT; Doug Bohne. Doug did have ambitions of working for himself one day (or if that didn't work out, going to law school), and he was fortunate enough to get that opportunity almost fresh out of college! Porky and Joe sent Doug up to Eau Claire to learn the tricks of the trade and get some hands on experience in January of 1979, when Doug swares that it was -20 degrees every day he was there in the middle of the cold Wisconsin winter. That cold might have been enough to make some Texas boys turn tail and run, but Doug survived and made it back to Austin to open the first Pok-e-Jo's on Burnet Road in 1979, the sign of which is the picture in this blog post!
The only question that remains is how the name came about. The simple answer is that over a few too many glasses of red wine, Porky and Joe decided to mash their names together in some inexplicable way to form the name that's made us an Austin tradition: Pok-e-Jo's Smokehouse.
So Dee, we hope we've answered your question, and to everyone else, we hope that you've enjoyed reading what we've decided is the most comprehensive history of Pok-e-Jo's ever put into print!
What do you think of this story? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below!
Tags
Austin
BBQ
origin of Pok-e-Jo's