Florida team wins BBQ Festival title
Monday, August 13, 2007
The Skin and Bones team lived up to its larger-than-life billing and took home the grand championship Saturday at the 2nd Annual Greater Emporia BBQ Festival at Peter Pan Park.
The five-person team from Largo, Fla., was in the middle of changing its name from Big Daddy’s BBQ. The Big Daddy pig still towered high above the spacious wooden mobile building that housed the team’s operations. Displayed on billboards next to the pig was a list of competitions they’d already won.
“We left Florida in March,” said team member Lionel Cunningham. “We’ll go back in November. We go places we’ve never been, see things we’ve never seen. We pick and choose where we go.”
Skin and Bones was in Colorado the previous week; members plan to compete in the Beef Fest Blues and Barbecue contest this week before heading to Chillicothe, Mo., and subsequently on to South Carolina and back north to Wisconsin and Minnesota, Cunningham said.
In Emporia, they competed for prizes and also were a food vendor for the festival.
“When Pigs Fly,” in contrast to the professionals at Skin and Bones, came to the event for the first time. The team is new this year to barbecue cookoffs.
“We’ve had such a good time, and everyone’s been so courteous,” said Eli Villalobos of Gardner.
Villalobos made smokers for the team from 55-gallon drums that formerly held a window-cleaning product. Exhaust tubing welded on the sides allow the flow of smoke to escape.
“I got about $22 in it — the cost of a Weber grate. It’s a friendmaker,” Villalobos added, mentioning the number of people who come by to look over the set-up.
Villalobos and his partner, Rick Torrez of Gardner, said that the heat and chiggers hadn’t dampened their enthusiasm for the local event. They simply sprayed the grass for chiggers and brought a large fan into the tent. Both said they preferred Emporia’s heat to the five-inch rains they encountered earlier at a competition at The Woodlands in Kansas City.
“You’ve got shade, you’ve got trees, you’ve got friendlier people,” Villalobos said. “They’ll come pick (up) our trash up and bring us ice.”
The park provided enough shade to make the heat bearable for onlookers who ambled through on their way to pick up lunch at the Reeble’s Country Mart tent. A portion of the proceeds there were to be donated to the Peter Pan Park Playground fund.
Farther down, past the rows of tents, campers and a snazzy wooden building mounted on a trailer for hauling, a live band performed under the Wolf Creek Employees’ tent, children took cooling dips in the wading pool and a car show was under way in a shaded grove near the lunch tent.
Emporia firefighters operated a popular feature on the Congress Street side of the park. They set up a wooden house prop and helped children spray a fire hose at “fires” painted on boards hinged into the house’s windows. A solid hit with water caused the board to fall backwards and the fire to disappear.
Vendors selling everything from grills and smokers to small American flags were scattered throughout the east side of the park.
Adults and children of Community Theater of Emporia entertained audiences on Friday and Saturday with performances of “Taming of the Shrew” and “Puss ‘n Boots.”
Winners in the barbecue contest, in addition to the grand champion, were: Smokers Wild of Paola, reserve grand champion; Smoke-N-Things of Lawrence, chicken; Florida Skin and Bones, pork; Sho ’Nuff Great Butt, ribs; Smokers Wild, vegetables and Grease Fire of Emporia, hometown award.