C.B. "Stubb" Stubblefield statue.

Stubb's Bar-B-Que Memorial

Lubbock, Texas

Christopher B. "Stubb" Stubblefield, known today for his supermarket barbecue sauce, opened his first roadhouse restaurant, Stubb's Bar-B-Que, in Lubbock in 1968. It was a ramshackle building in a former motor court (Stubb lived in one of the old guest rooms), but it became a hangout for famous musicians -- among them B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson -- who would stop by and "play for their supper."

Despite the Bar-B-Que's popularity, Stubb was forced out of business by money problems in 1984. He then had the Bar-B-Que building bulldozed and left town on bad terms. Stubb moved to Austin, where he launched his sauce line in 1992 and died three years later. In a gesture of reconciliation, Stubb's body was returned to Lubbock for his funeral.

Stubb's Bar-B-Que slab, with sign and statue.

The city, still smarting from Stubb's departure, erected an unusual in-your-mind memorial to the man and his restaurant in 1999, officially titled, "Barbecue Beyond the Grave."

A life-size bronze statue of a smiling Stubb, wearing farm overalls and a cowboy hat, stands on the crumbling concrete slab once occupied by the restaurant. Stubb extends one hand in greeting, and hoists a heaping mound of barbecued meat with the other. Tiny plaques attached to the concrete slab outline the footprint and various parts of the long-vanished building -- pit, kitchen, cash register, restrooms -- and the one at Stubb's feet repeats one of his familiar sayings, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm a cook."