'Livin' the dream!': Big O's Restaurant was a crossroads for Coleman County and West Texas

VALERA – That noise you heard last month? According to David Docter, it was the sound of the end of an era.

Lynn Owens, the owner of Big O’s Restaurant in Valera, closed his widely-known barbecue place for good on April 6, and indeed, on Facebook and other social media platforms, a great wailing did appear to rise.

Docter, better known to all simply as “Doc”, is a retired Abilene firefighter and a close friend of Big O for over 35 years. He's one of the many characters who dined their way through Big O’s place at the intersection of U.S. 67 and FM 503 over the last 31 years.

“It broke the heart of Coleman County,” Doc said. “I never would have expected it, but this whole county is just in mourning over Big O's closing.

“I mean, he was the man!”

'Livin' the Dream!'

For years, Big O had a go-to tagline whenever folks dropped in to eat and see how he was doing.

“Livin’ the dream!” he’d reply.

But over the last year, that dream hasn’t been living as good as it used to. While it's gotten harder to find help, Big O said he’s weathered dry spells before in the labor pool.

“The real reason is the cost of goods, the cost of doing business,” he said. “The electricity has almost doubled. The gas has doubled.”

Inflation has always caused suppliers to raise their prices, usually those higher costs would manifest themselves once a year. A business can budget for that when the level of the increase remains predictable and avoids surprises.

Not anymore.

“Now they do it about every three months,” said Big O.

The rapid increases began in late 2019. After the coronavirus pandemic, he said they began to snowball and didn't stop.

From those pre-pandemic days to now, costs nearly doubled for the restaurant.

“It’s the other stuff like the Styrofoam cups. They've doubled,” O said. “You take your dishwashing detergent. It used to be like 60 bucks. Now, it's $102.”

There are other reasons for closing too, of course. He’ll turn 67 this summer, working 65-75 hours a week for 31 years tends to catch up with a person even if you do take Sunday and Monday off.

“I used to get over it in, you know, a couple hours, and then it got where it was half a day, now a whole day, and now it takes both days,” he said. “Since COVID, I ain't caught up yet, I guess.”

Ultimately, the restaurant's closing turned out to be a sort of cold-turkey affair.

“I didn't intend to do it that quick. I wanted a lengthy goodbye,” Big O confessed. “But things just kind of snowballed, you know. Equipment was starting to have issues. It just seemed like it was the right time.

“You know, they say every business owner knows when it's time. Thirty-one years? It's time.”

Tackling a new career

The restaurant was Big O’s second act. His first was working for Texas Instruments in Abilene from 1975 to 1993. It’s where he learned how to cook brisket and other barbecue with a group of other employees who shared a love of bass fishing.

“In the early years when he was working at TI, he was a big fisherman — I mean, a big fisherman,” Doc recalled. “His big thing was to own a bait and tackle shop.”

Big O had already learned how to cook for large groups of people through company fundraisers and cookouts by the time he was laid off from the company. Hoping to parlay his love of fishing into a business, he opened Big O’s Shop and Tackle in a gas station just a block down from where his business would eventually settle.

The O.H. Ivie Reservoir, about 16 miles to the south, was still pretty new when Big O opened his store. As it was, there weren’t many businesses along the eastern side of the lake at the time, including restaurants.

“He was selling gas, bait and tackle to these fishermen that were going to the lake,” Doc said. “They always asked him, ‘Where’s a good place to eat around here?’ And there wasn't any.”

So Big O started making barbecue sandwiches out of a slow-cooker, wrapping them up and having them ready for anglers heading down to Ivie.

Doc said before Big O knew it, he was selling more sandwiches than bait.

Valera's No. 1 employer

There had been another restaurant at the corner of U.S. Highway 67 and FM 503. When that one closed, Big O took the opportunity to move in. Now, 25 years later, he still kids about how when it comes to the unincorporated community of Valera — population 177 in the 2020 census — he was its No. 1 employer.

The joke gets a reliable laugh, but the fact is that Big O has felt certain a responsibility to the community where his place was located. That watchful manner manifested itself in a number of ways.

“I mean, the world passes by here,” he said.

He always fretted about the trucks running down Hwy. 67. His worst nightmare was one of them losing control and careening through his front dining room. Thankfully, it never happened.

Big O walked his older customers to their cars sometimes, watching to make sure the highway is clear before they drive off.

“I'm in a parking lot mode with several of the older folks. I watch when they leave because I'm afraid they're gonna pull out in front of somebody,” he said.

Keeping an eye out

One of his favorite couples was Wes and June Hays, both of whom passed away in the last seven years. The couple regularly drove over from Novice. They came to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary at Big O's in 2013.

And, occasionally, it also means helping out a local when they forgot something at the post office, located diagonally across the highway intersection.

“That was kind of the morning meeting place at eight o'clock, back when they had a lot of old-timers still around,” Big O recalled, settling into a story. “Anyway, I noticed this pickup over by the stop sign when I left.”

Big O knew who it belong to, a retired Exxon worker nicknamed, “Lightning.” The truck was still running.

“I got to thinking about it,” he recalled. He dialed up the postmaster. “I said, ‘Has Lightning been to the post office this morning?’”

“Oh, yeah. Big O, he's been gone a long time,” the postmaster said.

Okay. Time to call the man himself.

“Hey, Lightning. This is Big O. You go to the post office this morning?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“How’d you get there?”

There was a pause on the line, and then it all came out with a rush, ”Oh, I left my truck there, didn’t I?”

“Hell, yeah you did,” Big O said, laughing.

A place to learn and grow

But it’s not just folks’ parents Big O has watched over these many years. He’s watched out for their kids, too.

There’s been a long tradition of high school kids working at his restaurant. More than once, I’ve met folks at Big Country eateries who, upon learning they're from Coleman County, proudly name themselves as “Big O alumni.”

Julie Rae began working at Big O’s Restaurant when she was 16 while attending school at Panther Creek ISD in 2007. Now she’s a teacher there, the campus being a straight shot south ten miles on FM 503.

"He impacted all of our lives by giving us a job, teaching us a good work ethic and how to have fun while you're working," she said.

While some Coleman kids over the years did work for Big O, Rae said in her time it was mostly Panther Creek students who staffed the restaurant.

“It's one of my favorite memories of high school, and I loved that he worked with our schedules,” Rae said, adding that even though she had an active extracurricular life with cheerleading and basketball, it was important to Big O that the kids who worked for him didn’t miss out on those seminal high school experiences.

“Anytime a couple would come in, if he knew the boy or the girl, he always put a little candle out just to embarrass,” Rae said, laughing. “I thought it was so funny. They would just turn bright red and go, ‘Big O, stop!’

“He was always cutting up with people.”

The interior of the restaurant was scattered with pictures. One of them was a picture of Big O and Rae striking a Charlie’s Angels pose. Others feature more friends, some gone, some still here.

One family, the Tapias, had all four sisters and the little brother work at the restaurant for over a decade. At a wedding for one of the girls, their father put an arm around Big O's shoulders.

“Big O, all I got to say is you raised some mighty fine girls,” he told him, laughing, “You saw them more than I did!”

Coach?

When a portion of your labor model is dependent upon high schoolers, you’ve got to factor in a certain amount of turnover.

“It's no different than a football coach with a new team every year," said Big O. "You know you've got to start over."

But when there was a crisis, it was time to call in the big guns.

“One day, he had a emergency out there. A couple of his hands, I think it was a man and a wife, they had a death in their family, and they had to go,” Doc recalled.

It was Saturday night — Steak Night — and it was the man grilling the steaks that had to go. But things weren’t looking so well at the restaurant, so Big O rang Doc on the phone.

“Man, I’m in a bad way. I need your help," he said.

“Anytime Big O called me, I was there, no matter what,” Doc recalled. “We'd been gathering cows that afternoon and had just finished up. He called me, and I said, 'I'm on my way right now.’”

Doc pulled into the dirt lot, hauling a horse trailer.

“I was still all cowboyed-out, wearing my chaps and everything,” he said.

Doc walked in and Big O sent him straight out to the steak pit. But apparently, Doc has a gift for the grill.

“For some reason, one of the guys inside eating, he just thought that steak was the best thing he ever had. And he wanted to congratulate the chef,” Doc said, beginning to laugh.

Big O, wearing his trademark red apron over shorts and a T-shirt, waved to a door.

“Well, walk on through the kitchen there. He’s out beside the pit,” he told him.

Stepping through the passageway, the man came upon an unanticipated sight.

“I guess he didn't really expect to walk out to the steak pit and see some cowboy dressed like he just walked off the ranch,” Doc said, now fully laughing. “That guy walked up and saw me decked-out, and he went, 'Now I get it.'”

Dressing in the dark

I’ve had my own adventures with Big O over the years. We’ve gone searching for white buffalo at the nearby Goree Ranch or wandered around the shore of O.H. Ivie when drought had reduced the lake to a sliver of its capacity, well before it became Bassmaster's No. 1 bass fishing lake in the nation.

Then there was the time I dropped by for a late lunch after an assignment, sat down with him and then eventually noticed something peculiar under the table.

“Hey, Big O,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I bet you’ve got another pair of shoes just like that at home.”

Looking down, he realized two different types of mid-top sneakers were strapped to his feet. Now mind you, it’s not like he can’t always see his feet. The man wears shorts even in the driving snow.

“Aw, hell! That’s what I get for dressing in the dark this morning,” he said, chuckling. “I even went to the bank today, nobody said nothing!”

As good as gold

The beauty of Big O’s situation has been that while some of the restaurant equipment was his, he only leased the building. It’s allowed him to walk away from it a lot easier than if he'd owned it outright, and it increases the chances of a new eatery rising after his departure.

But after 24 years of living in the Big Country, it’s been my observation that what gives a barbecue restaurant staying power isn’t only the quality of the food but the spirit imbued within the place. Call it the “vibe.” You can even call it “mojo," but only the most successful places seem to shine with it.

“I've got to say, 99 percent of it has gotta be Big O, himself,” Doc said. “The guy is just as good as gold. I mean, he would give you the shirt off his back. He's that kind of guy.

“All I know is, he was good for this county.”

Julie Rae expressed a similar sentiment.

“I swear, he never had a stranger come in there,” she said.

What will she miss most now that the restaurant has closed?

“I think just knowing he's there,” she said. “He lives in Coleman. I'll see him around.

“But you know, it's nice just to go in, say, 'Hey, Big O!' and kind of shoot the bull a little bit.“

Hold the brisket

What’s Big O going to do now that he’s got 70 extra hours each week? When fall comes, there’s probably more than one football game he’d like to finally attend, most of which will certainly be over in Tuscola where his son Dustin Todd is the athletic director at Jim Ned ISD.

“I'd like to go back to writing. I could write a book on what not to do in business,” said Big O. “Obviously I figured out something, or I wouldn't have lasted this long out in the country.”

A bucket-list item of his has been taking an Alaskan cruise, seeing some glaciers and maybe even getting back into fishing again.

But will he keep cooking?

“I’ll still do it at the house,” he allowed, then dropped his voice.

“But it probably ain't gonna be brisket.”

This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: Closing of Big O's Restaurant the end of an era in Coleman County