CHICKASHA — A relic of culinary history will be displayed in the renovated Savoy Hotel building in Old Town Chickasha.
Chet Hitt, who bought and is restoring the Savoy Hotel in Old Town Chickasha, was reminiscing recently about a childhood friend, Garfield Doakes, with whom Hitt shared a locker at Anadarko High School in about 1980. Doakes now lives in Edmond.
“He took me to Wilson’s BBQ in Anadarko. It was the first time I ever had barbecue from a place like that,” said Hitt, a 1982 graduate of Anadarko High School. “I had never had smoked brisket before,” he said. “Where I came from in California, the meet was cooked on a barbeque but wasn’t smoked.”
Hitt said that when he bought the Golden Shores Marina in 2005 and renamed it the Topock66 restaurant, bar, and riverstore on historic Route 66, along the Colorado River in Topock, Arizona, “I featured barbeque.” And, in turn, Topock66 was featured during one episode of “BBQ Crawl” which aired on the Travel Channel for three years: June 30, 2013, through June 30, 2015.
Approximately eight years ago, Hitt said, he traveled to Anadarko “looking for the old Wilson’s BBQ sign,” but couldn’t find it. “I called Garfield and asked whether any of the Wilson family were still around. He put me in touch with Linda Wilson, Bob Wilson’s daughter. She thought she knew where the sign was.”
Acting on her hunch, Hitt traveled to Anadarko a couple of months ago and found the sign laying on the ground outside in the back of the Anadarko Heritage Museum. “They didn’t have any room to put it up, so I bought it.”
Because Bob Wilson “inspired me in barbeque, even though my place will be the ‘Savoy 1902 BBQ and Deli’, I will pay homage to Mr. Wilson by hanging his sign inside to show him the respect he deserves,” Hitt said. “Wilson’s turned me on to barbeque.”