The woman, carrying cans of beer in both of her hands, asked for an autograph.
“And where would you like that?” said Mike Royko.
The woman raised her T-shirt, baring her stomach and more and said, “Anywhere you’d like.”
This was more than 30 years ago during what was one of the most joyful and weird and smoke-filled and, simply, wonderful events in this city’s history.
It was known, for its few years, as the Royko Ribfest.
It started innocently enough, when Royko wrote a 1982 column in the Sun-Times “claiming” that the greatest rib sauce in the world was created in 1449 in Warsaw by his ancestor, Aunt Willie Mae Royko. He wrote that that her inspiration came when her husband, Uncle Bubba Royko, slammed his fist on the dinner table and shouted: “I’m tired of always eating pierogi and kielbasa.”
He went on to provide the details:
“Unfortunately, the family’s pet pig was sleeping on the table when Uncle Bubba slammed down his fist, and the poor beast died of shock. “
Aunt Willie Mae wept, but being a frugal sort, she decided to make the best of the tragedy and have him for dinner. “She said: ‘He was a good and loyal pig. So, he deserves something special.’
“And that was when she made her sauce, with 351 secret ingredients.”
He wrote that this recipe had been passed down through the centuries until coming to him, which was the reason, he claimed, “why I am generally acknowledged — at least by myself — to be the world’s greatest barbequer, the man known as ‘The Top Slab,’ ‘The Thriller of the Griller’ and `The Bone that Stands Alone’.”
As an example of the sort of influence that some newspapers columnists had in the pre-internet era, and an example of how easily some people can fall for obviously fictional stories, Royko was bombarded with so many phone calls and letters disputing his best-sauce boast that he was compelled to stage the first Royko Ribfest.
Memories of this floated into the present while I was having dinner recently with Royko’s widow Judy. We were at Twin Anchors, an Old Town tavern that has been serving ribs since the 1930s. Frank Sinatra was, and David Mamet is, a fan of the tavern.
We remembered what a gloriously ebullient and funny master of ceremonies the late broadcaster Tim Weigel had been and the Ribfest events; the bands that played, mostly blues. We remembered some of the silly T-shirts that contestants wore; the smiling, sauce-stained faces of people no longer alive.
“I miss so many of them but that was so much fun,” said Royko and she was right.
As perhaps have many of you, I often find myself dragged into the past. Maybe it’s because the city is so quiet now that old memories can more easily wander around, sneak through.
That first Royko Ribfest, generally acknowledged, by no less an authority than “The Chicago Food Encyclopedia” (University of Illinois Press), to have been “one of the nation’s first large barbeque competitions,” attracted more than 400 contestants, spread out in 10-by-10 foot cooking areas across a vast portion of Grant Park, just north of the old band shell.
It was won by a Charlie Robinson, who Royko described as “a black entrepreneur who works his massive grill with the virtuosity of a concert pianist and has a secret sauce that goes back to plantation days.” Robinson, who was then an ice cream distributor, parlayed his prize (a certificate and a “Ribs 1” Illinois license plate) into a restaurant.
The second Ribfest took place in 1984 — Royko writing in his new home at the Tribune that “I don’t like to have annual events too often” — swelling to 600-some contestants. The winner was Cleo Williams, a Chicago fireman who, Royko wrote, learned his “secrets of rib sorcery as a child on his grandma’s sauce-stained lap.”
I served as a judge for both of these contests, a job that consisted of walking with two other judges (chosen from some of Royko’s pals and persuasive volunteers) along a row of 10 “chefs,” eating their offerings, drinking what they were serving (beer and wine to hard liquor), meeting their friends, seeing their decor (from a couple of folding chairs simplicity to Ravinia lawn-like opulence) and T-shirts (clever, crude and everything in between), listening to their pleas and refusing their bribes, generally playful but some involving real money.
This was fun and, for one of us, debilitating. I sensed it almost immediately, as one of my fellow judges began eating more than eight ribs at our first two stops, saying “I saved up my stomach and didn’t eat for the last two days to be ready,” finally collapsing and requiring a trip to the hospital.
We scored in various categories (taste, texture, sauce, etc.) and handed in our sheets.
Fifty semifinalists were scored and selected, and that number was pared to 10, with those ribs tasted by a small group of “experts” on stage, usually including noted food critics and previous winners Robinson and Williams. A grand prize winner was then chosen.
I suppose because I remained ambulatory in those first years, I was tabbed to be the chief judge of the 1985 event, tabulating all the score sheets.
Did my part. Winner was selected. And Royko felt “outright disgust.”
This was not, he would write, “because I didn’t win. I’ve lost before. I’ve lost at every one of my own Ribfests. If nothing else, my defeats serve to prove that the judging is on the legit.” The reason for his revulsion was that the winner was, in his words, “a white yuppie.”
His name was Steve Crane, 29 years old and, Royko wrote, “ethnically and racially a WASP … I didn’t even know that WASPs ate anything but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
After that year’s winner was announced, Royko directed me to hang onto the dozens of soiled and stained scoring sheets — “I want to make sure we have them if someone thinks a fix was in,” he said — which I dutifully did for many years.
But memories are not so easily discarded and so I when I recall the Ribfests what I remember is the unity, the harmony and the togetherness of them all. There were, side by side, groups from Glencoe and West Pullman, Rosemont and Roseland, Austin and Streeterville — white, Black and brown. There was no anger or violence, no arrests or trouble. If there were arguments, they were about cooking methods or sauces “sweet or tangy.” These were harmonious and hopeful gatherings.
There was another Ribfest in 1986, when Royko allowed a contestant from Oak Park to enter making “gluten (ugh) ribs.” He had previously put off vegetarians by writing, “I occasionally eat vegetables — a tiny onion in a martini or a stalk of celery in a bloody Mary. Keeps me fit.”
But by 1987, Royko had had enough. The event was becoming an organizationally nightmare, the prizes too lavish, corporate intrusions too frustrating.
Its playful innocence lost, Royko “retired” from the rib scene. Claiming in print that his life has been saved from hoodlums by a pet pig named Prince, he wrote, “I am passing the bone so to speak, to my colleagues, (Kathy) O’Malley and (Hanke) Gratteau, the authors of the INC. column. … They are superbly qualified, especially Ms. Gratteau who was my assistant for several years and with whom I entrusted all of my secret rib cooking techniques.”
So, Judy Royko and I both had ribs at Twin Anchors. They were delicious.
She showed me some old photos that she had taken at one year’s festival.
“I just found these. Not sure what year but aren’t they great?” she said. “You know, I once had Mike’s recipe, but it has long since disappeared.”
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
