The weird history of a cigarette-smoking, hog-riding monkey and NC barbecue mascot

One of the most tragically forgotten heroes of North Carolina folklore lived in a tree house outside a rural barbecue joint, rode a full-grown hog to entertain customers, smoked whatever cigarettes people handed him and — on special occasions — performed high-dive jumps into a pond.

Joe the Barbecue Monkey.

For roughly a decade circa 1960, he perched himself on a mailbox at Morris Barbeque in rural Hookerton, screeching and chattering for the hungry neighbors lined up for fresh-chopped pork.

Nobody alive recalls exactly how this multi-talented primate found his way to Greene County, deep in the vinegar-and-red-pepper heartland of Eastern Style ‘cue.

But most likely, the thinking goes, Joe escaped from a traveling circus, where he picked up not only his nicotine habit but his affable nature.

‘A very friendly monkey’

“I’ll tell you what little I know,” said William Morris Jr., who still operates his grandfather’s business. “He was a very friendly monkey.”

The more offbeat chapters of North Carolina legend frequently involve exiles from the circus, notably poor Cancetto Farmica, an Italian immigrant who got murdered in a fight at a carnival passing through Laurinburg in 1911. Nobody knew where to send Farmica’s body, so a local funeral home placed him in a glass-top box, nicknamed him “Spaghetti the Carny Mummy” and put him on display for the next 61 years.

True story.

Joe suffered no such indignities.

He lucked into a friendship with Willie “Pop” Morris, who got his start in the Great Depression, driving a mule cart through the streets of Hookerton selling the ‘cue he cooked over a charcoal, oak and corncob fire.

Morris had a little country store on the side, where he peddled potted meat and Jack’s 1-cent cookies, and once times got better, he opened Morris Barbeque right next-door — open Saturdays only.

Joe wandered into this scene sometime in the mid-1950s, sometimes on his mailbox, sometimes in a treehouse, sometimes on a hog’s back — often puffing a smoke.

“Just like a human,” the younger Morris said. “They had a pond back then, and they would put a ladder up there, and the monkey would go up the ladder and jump in the pond. Just something different.”

A blurry, monkey-related memory

Somehow, Joe’s antics never got him into a newspaper or any other chronicle of life’s oddities — until now.

And the only reason this newspaper can rescue the monkey’s legacy from history’s trash can is a persistent memory that haunted Doug Llewellyn, who dimly recalled meeting Joe as a boy.

“I may have thrown rocks at him,” he said.

Now 68 and living in Raleigh, Llewellyn wrote to explain how a blurry, monkey-related memory kept haunting him from childhood, but figured he had imagined the whole thing. Still, he slowly tracked down Morris Barbeque, speaking with its current ownership and confirming that, yes, they did once own a simian mascot named Joe.

In fact, after Joe’s death, Pop Morris acquired two more barbecue monkeys: Susie and Mike.

“I was like, “Yes! Vindication!” Llewellyn said.

Joe’s tale also found its way to NC historian David Cecelski’s ears on a Saturday barbecue outing, which he recorded for the NC Folklife Institute:

“Naturally, Joe was a big attraction,” he wrote. “You didn’t see a lot of cigarette-smoking, pig-riding monkeys in Greene County in those days — but Pop Morris hardly needed gimmicks to lure customers.”

Morris Barbeque remains just outside Hookerton, still using much the same recipe and keeping the same Saturday-only hours. Last year, N&O food writer Drew Jackson listed it among the top 64 barbecue joints in the state.

And almost certainly, as barbecue pilgrims enjoy the vinegar tang of a chopped sandwich, they can sense a playfulness in the air around them — a spirit that only a circus monkey could leave behind.