Dodging Hurricane Ike last Friday, Juliet Stewart led her family and friends out to Giddings to stay on some land she owns there. Fourteen men, women and children from Missouri City, Sunnyside and the Southeast end of Houston camped out in two RVs, a tractor-trailer and a car. I ran into the caravan in the parking lot of the famous Southside Market on Highway 290 in Elgin. Juliet Stewart's brother, Pete Pryor, who was driving one of the RVs, said they were on their way back home now.

"You know, if you are coming from Giddings, you're heading in the wrong direction," I pointed out to Drexler Stewart, Juliet's son who was driving the tractor-trailer.

Clarence Pierson, whose outstanding smoked pork is featured in this week's Cafe review, pulls a brisket out of his bank safe-shaped pit.

Pierson & Company's smoker was built by one of Houston's most famous custom barbecue pit builders, BBQ Pits by Klose (2216 W. 34th Street, 800-487-7487).

These are the guys who built the world's largest barbecue smoker, the smoker that looks like a Continental jet, the smoker that looks like a beer bottle, and countless other outrageous rigs. There are photos of their pits on the company Web site, along with a nice collection of barbecue recipes and a place to order a free catalog.

The custom smokers go for tidy sums, but the simplest Klose smokers start at $69. -- Robb Walsh

This week's review of Pierson & Company put me in a BBQ state of mind.

It's my theory that the greatest barbecue in Texas is being served at some out-of-the-way barbecue joint that has yet to be discovered. Which is why I like to stop at barbecue trailers and those here-today, gone-tomorrow shade tree stands with hand-painted signs that pop up on summer weekends. That's also why I tend to fill up at gas stations that sell brisket sandwiches along with the unleaded.

I am always on the look-out for barbecue signs -- the weirder, the better. Here are some classics. -- Robb Walsh

Robb Walsh does a lot of driving around Texas. He also does a lot of eating. Photographing too. We thought, why not combine the three?

Fish Friday at a BBQ joint. -- Robb Walsh

When your barbecue breaks down, you need to know about the folks at D.W. Vasbinder’s (90A in Richmond, 281-342-0535). Not only do they repair barbecue rigs, they also take trade-ins and buy burned-out smokers for scrap.

The barbecue pits made here are way cheaper than better-known competitors like Pitts and Spitts. (Pitts and Spitts uses expensive stainless steel on the lids and charges $1,800 for a medium-sized unit.) You can get a nice size smoker at D.W. Vasbinder’s for $700, and a little one for $200. Or you can design your own and have them custom-make it. And we’re talking about the kind of heavy-gauge steel that will last for decades.

On Saturdays, Dewayne Pines tows his barbecue trailer to a quiet spot in the parking lot of the Rose Rich shopping center on 90A on the Richmond Rosenberg line and sets up a shade tree barbecue operation he calls Smokey’s Barbecue and Grill. The trailer is licensed by the City of Richmond health department.

Dewayne puts out a well-worn card table and four plastic chairs under the shade of a tree where his customers can sit and eat. I got a two-meat plate with brisket and ribs for ten bucks. It came with beans, potato salad, two slices of white bread, pickles and onions and a Fanta strawberry soda.

The East Bernard Kolache-Klobase Festival is only once a year, but Vincek’s Smokehouse (Texas 60 at U.S. 90A, 979-335-7921) offers up kolaches, homemade bread, fresh meats and smoked jerky and sausages all the time, except for Mondays, when the joint is closed.

I picked up a pound of thick-sliced, heavily smoked bacon for $4 (but more on that a little later). Vincek's has barbecue too, and it is excellent. -- Jay Francis

“His mama called him Sugar Lump,” one of the customers at Sugar Lump’s Fine BBQ said pointing in the direction of the owner, Roosevelt Brooks, when I asked about the restaurant’s unusual name. Roosevelt Brooks shot me a dour look, just in case I was thinking about calling him Sugar Lump too.

The barbecue joint was housed in a trailer on Highway 84 just south of Lubbock in the small town of Slaton where I stopped for late lunch. Brooks and his two buddies were sitting at a table when I walked in on a Friday afternoon around two. Judging by the cans of Coca-Cola and the pint bottle of Crown Royal poorly concealed in a brown paper bag, I’d guess they were enjoying a few Crown and Cokes when I so rudely interrupted.

Driving down Lockwood the other day, I was delighted to see smoke billowing out of the chimney at Kozy Kitchen. I stuck my head in the back door and had a chat with owner Bill Taylor who was getting ready for the Saturday lunch rush. Taylor is also the guy who cooks the barbecue at the Continental Club on Main Street. He has been smoking meat for a long time.

He told me there was a fire February of 2007 and Kozy Kitchen was closed for part of last year. The historic 5th Ward barbecue joint was opened in the 1940s. It is the last of the famous African-American barbecue joints that thrived in the 5th Ward during the days of segregation. Simpson’s, the Lockwood Inn and two others were located nearby.

Kozy Kitchen used to be the only place in town that offered barbecued veal, but that tradition didn’t survive the fire. Taylor told me he only cooked brisket, ribs and hot links these days.

The sign out front of this four-table barbecue joint on Business 6 (S. Lasalle Street) in Navasota read “3B Bar-B-Que: Buggies, Bar-B-Que & Bait.” I guess they used to sell crawfish along with the barbecue. And who knows what was up with the bait?

When we sat down to eat, the menus we were given read “Mama G’s Bar-B-Que & Home Cooked Food.”

What happened to the 3B? we wondered.

Today's Chicago Sun-Times includes an article about the Houston Rodeo Barbecue Cook-Off with a sidebar on Houston barbecue joints--it mentions Pizzatola's, Thelma's, Goode Company and Gerardo's. I was happy to help out reporter Lori Rackl with a few tips about where to find different styles of Texas Q in Houston. She already had a copy of Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook which she quoted for the food history. -- Robb Walsh

“Barbecue isn’t supposed to taste like smoke,” Bubba Roese said adamantly. I thought he was just a cantankerous old crank at first. But as he ranted, I began to realize the 69-year-old Santa Claus look-alike was actually a relic of an older barbecue era.

His family once owned a grocery in Graball called Roese’s Store that sold groceries and barbecue -- back before Graball became a ghost town. Now Bubba can be found most days holding court at the 105 Grocery & Deli in Washington, where he is referred to as “the Mayor of Graball.”

“Old time Texas barbecue was cooked on an open pit, and that’s the way we still do it,” Bubba told me. He was right, of course. Walter Jetton, the barbecue impresario who catered Lyndon Johnson’s barbecues at the LBJ Ranch, said the same thing. The idea of enclosing the pit to capture the smoke was crazy in Jetton’s opinion. In the days when the meat was cooked over a hole in the ground or a cinder block pit, the smoke just blew away.