Cowtown Pod History
As part of Cowtown CASI Pod’s runup to its 30th anniversary cookoff, in 2006, I decided to research the history of the pod, how and when was it formed, who was responsible, what has the pod contributed and how has it operated over the years. Houston and San Antonio pods were the first and second pods founded, respectively. The following picks up with the history of the third pod founded, Cowtown. The information presented here, obtained thru personal interviews, research and old newspaper articles is as accurate and factual as possible.
--Dale, Great Peppper, Cowtown Pod, 2005-2006
The Chili Trail Reaches Ft. Worth. Cowtown, The Third Pod.
It was a small blurb in the newspaper that caught his eye, something about a Prairie Dog Chili Cookoff in Grand Prairie. Sounded interesting, so Jimmy & Beth Moon went to check it out. Some people were setting up, some were cooking various things, but overall a pretty tame atmosphere. Before long, the weather started acting up and they decided it was time to go home. Because it was by now sleeting, they took a short cut through a campsite, and in the process were yelled at by one of the cooks. Turns out, the guy doing the yelling had recognized Jimmy and was an old friend , and he was just yelling to say “Hi”. The Moons returned the next day to help with the cooking and asked where the next cookoff was. It was something called HowdyRoo and was being held in Marble Falls, Tx. They decided to go.
And so it was with these early doings and cast of characters that Jimmy and Beth Moon found themselves cooking chili, making new friends and in general, having a great time.
Chili cooking was still in its infancy in the mid 1970s. There were no chili cookoffs in the North Texas area. If you wanted to go to a cookoff you had to go South; to Houston or San Antonio. It was during one of those trips to the San Antonio area for a cookoff that Jimmy and Beth Moon had the good fortune to meet Tom Wayne and Karen Tate.
At the time, Tom was working as a disk jocky in San Antonio, and both Tom and Karen were active in the local chili scene. However, as the Moons were soon to learn, Tom was to be transferred to Ft. Worth to become a deejay for station KXOL. The Moons and Waynes agreed to get together after the Waynes had gotten moved and settled in Ft. Worth.
They soon became good friends and made numerous trips back to the South to attend chili cookoffs in Houston or San Antonio. It didn’t take many of these 500 mile round trips for Tom to decide there had to be a better way. Why not start a chili pod in the Ft. Worth area? The pod could have a cookoff of its own, which would attract additional interested individuals to chili cooking, and perhaps lead other interested groups to organize and promote other local cookoffs.
To get the ball rolling, a “meeting” was soon held in the Moon’s backyard. The Moons were there of course, along with the Waynes. Also attending were Bill Cook, Jim Luhn and the Motleys. It was during this gathering and after much discussion and many beers, that a new pod was born, the third pod in CASI. The year was 1976.
Tom was chosen to become the Supreme Great Pepper and Jimmy was to become the original Pepper Popper. But this new pod needed a name. Since the pod would be serving the North Texas area with an emphasis on Ft. Worth, Cowtown was a natural, and so it was named. It was also determined that a logo of some sort was needed to reflect the identity of this new group of chiliheads and the pod’s geographic origins. By this time the hour was growing late and many more libations had been consumed, allowing the creativity of the group to flow. Lacking paper, Tom and Jimmy grabbed a marker and started sketching right on the top of Jimmy’s table they were using. When finished, the ‘horned chili pepper’ still used today had been designed to the group’s satisfaction.
Soon after the ‘birth’ of the pod, an inauguration party was held. The December 1976 issue of the Goat Gap Gazette reported, “Cowtown CASI, headquartered in Ft.Worth, got underway November 20 with installation of officers at “Tag” Taggart’s giant and modern flea market in Grand Prairie. Officers installed at a really great party were Tom Wayne, Great Pepper, Jimmy Moon, Pepper Popper, Karen Wayne, treasurer and Beth Moon secretary. Beth is this year’s Texas State Ladies Chili Champion.”
In attendance were many of the ‘chilibrities’ at the time from the Houston and San Antonio areas, including Jack Lierbo (GP, Houston) and Yellow Dog Marsh (GP, San Antonio). Tex Schofield was emcee. Chiligula, God of Chili was represented by Hal John Wimberly. It was fitting that mounted sets of steer horns were awarded by the new pod to several dignitaries. The new officers of Cowtown were sworn in with much fanfare, the sprinkling of chili powder and swearing allegiance to chili, and of course, cold beverages. The pod was off and running.
“A very large number of the out-of-town participants in the inaugural ceremonies stayed overnight with the Wayne family at their palatial residence just west of Ft. Worth. A body count at 6 a.m., Sunday, November 21, showed 24 on the floor and two in bed. Children were not counted. Nor were dogs,” reported the article in the GGG.
From these early beginnings, the Cowtown Pod experienced growth in membership and prominence within the chili world. Meetings were held at various places including Trader’s Village, Ben E. Keith’s offices in downtown Fort Worth, Fuddrucker's at Irving Mall, Top of Texas Restaurant in Irving, BJ Keefer’s in Fort Worth, Logan’s Roadhouse off 820, even a Sports Bar on 157 in Euless before being moved to the Arlington Elk’s Lodge in 1998, where the pod continues to meet.
Several early Cowtown Pod members were active not only in promoting Cowtown, but developing CASI also. Richard Knight, Cowtown Great Pepper in 1979 was heavily involved, along with Ray King and Vann York, in turning CASI into an organization that made Terlingua a qualifying event. They developed the basic set of rules that still influence CASI today.
It was during one of these early ‘organizational’ meetings that Knight designed the CASI logo (world map inside the pepper) on a napkin in Paul Smith’s kitchen during a discussion with Ray King and Frank Tolbert on how to take CASI from a Texas organization to an international organization. Talk about forward thinking!
The Branding Iron Trophy
In the early years, the Cowtown cookoff trophy was pretty much at the whim of the pod. At some point it was determined that a trophy reflecting the history and heritage of ‘Cowtown’ would be more appropriate and thus the ‘branding iron’ trophy concept was born, sometime around 1985-86, but not without its labor pains.
Originally it was simply the branding iron mounted on a piece of board, the assembly of which had been held at Jim Hudgins’ home. During one of these manufacturing sessions, Budda thought it might be a great idea to actually heat the branding iron and imprint the ‘brand’ on the board. In order to demonstrate this, he heated up a branding iron and proceeded to ‘brand’ a step on Jim’s back porch, which was constructed of wood. Jim’s wife Melinda came out of the house and was not real pleased! But the ‘branding’ idea caught on, and in fact, the ‘stacked double C’ with the current year’s number inside the C, was for years registered with the Texas Cattlemen’s Association as the official, state recognized brand of Cowtown CASI.
It was also determined that a simple board would not do justice to the branding iron and something more suitable should be found. Around this time, some de-construction was taking place in the stockyards with many of the old, original livestock pens being torn down. Several Cowtown members inquired as to what was to be done with the scrap lumber. They were informed that they could help themselves to the wood that had been pushed aside into a large pile. Which they did. But they also determined that this would not be nearly enough to last for years to come.
Being the ‘free’ thinkers they were, and also having a perfectly good chain saw with them, they went over to an area of still standing pens and proceeded to cut down entire sections of standing fence, which were promptly loaded on their trailer and hauled back to Manske’s warehouse for storage. Those involved in the ‘Great Wood Heist’ were Budda Manske, Bruce Stewart, Dean Reynolds, Ken Robbins and Dog Luhn. Over the years, the branding iron/original stockyard pen lumber trophy has become one of the most unique, symbolic and highly desired trophies in the chili world.
Old '320'
In 1989 Bob Whitefield, then CASI treasurer suggested that shares of the Terlingua CASI Rancho de los Chisos cooking site be sold to CASI members so that they might have a permanent cooking spot, and as a way to raise money to finance land purchases for the Rancho. He later named the shares “the Old 320”, which the Board agreed would sell for $200.00 per share. Cowtown Pod stepped up to the plate and purchased two such cooking sites, back-to-back, which the pod still owns and is available to any Cowtown Pod member to use on a first request basis.
Cookoff Venues
During the 1990s cookoffs were held in conjunction with Chisholm Trails Days in the Ft.Worth Stockyards with huge crowds and lots of activities. Towards the end of the decade, the promoters of Chisholm Trails Days started to experience financial problems. The current and past Great Peppers of Cowtown Pod were invited to a meeting at the White Elephant Saloon called by the Chisholm Trail committee. At that meeting, the GPs were informed that it would cost the Pod $8-10,000 to stage the next Cowtown CCO. As a result of this meeting, the Cowtown Pod cookoff was moved to Trader’s Village in 1998, where it remained until it returned to the Stockyards Station for the 2004 and 2005 cookoffs.
It was believed at that time that the Cowtown cookoff had returned to its roots and would be held in the Stockyards area for many years to come. As it turned out, while planning for the 2006 cookoff, representatives of the Stockyards Station area were apparently less than enthusiastic about Cowtown’s return, as repeated requests for information and pricing went unanswered. The decision was made to once again move the location for the cookoff, but that it should remain somewhere in Ft. Worth in acknowledgement of the pod’s name and heritage.
The Bull Sheet Newsletter
In the late 70s the Bottom of the Barrel Gang had a team newsletter that was mostly about Cowtown CASI. The first Cowtown newsletter, the Cowtown Crier, was published by Richard Knight in 1978. The Bull Sheet evolved from this original Cowtown Crier. At some point, it was decided that the newsletter should have a new name, and Andy Faber is credited with coming up with the name Bull Sheet.
Michele Goodwin produced the Bull Sheet in ’92 and ‘93, with approximately 100 copies going out to members by regular mail, email wasn’t big at that time. Then Ken Robbins did a one page version in ’94. Charlie Atherton took over in 1995 and expanded the newsletter to 4 pages. Charlie published the Bull Sheet for the next 9 years before turning it over to Dale Reinecker in 2004. As of January, 2006, 54 members received the Bull Sheet by regular mail with 120 receiving it by email. Times change.
The Constitution and By-Laws
From its inception, the pod had been loosely governed by a sense of ‘what was right’ and the majority opinion of who happened to be at the meeting at that time. In some cases the ‘rules’ were modified, bent or even broken to fit the situation at hand. It was eventually determined that some form of official structure was needed, so a committee was formed to draft a constitution and a set of by-laws.
The official Constitution and By-Laws for Cowtown CASI Pod were written and went into effect January 28th, 1997. Signing off on the document were Ken Robbins, Great Pepper; Don Tittle, Pepper Popper; Peggy Robins, Chili Scribe and Doris Coats, Chili Penny. The By-Laws have remained unchanged to date.
Today and Beyond
In 2002 a four-color brochure was produced about Cowtown and what cooking chili for charity is all about. The brochure was written and produced by Dale Reinecker and Clay Renick at no cost to the pod. The brochure remains in use today.
The first use of PodCast broadcasting for a chili cookoff and pod meeting was in 2005. This new technology, introduced by pod member Steve Heaser, can be accessed via chilipodcast.com. Steve’s broadcast is international and it is not unusual for him to receive hits and replies about chili cooking from around the world.
Through its charitable cooking endeavors, Cowtown Pod has raised and donated thousands of dollars to local charities and deserving causes, not including the money required to be turned back to CASI or outright donations to CASI for various funds and improvements at the Ranch.
As the pod moves forward with plans for the 30th anniversary cookoff, the future looks bright, more pages will be added to Cowtown’s history, and Chiligula willing, there are many pots of fun times yet to come. And so it goes on the chili trail.