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Neighborhood Tavern, Museum of American Space History, home of a great cheeseburger
By JIM SHORTT (Published 10/03)
Welcome. The scene is a friendly neighborhood tavern. At the bar, patrons are solving Bay Area and worldwide problems. Across the room, a pool game and a shuffleboard match are being contested to the music of cheers, groans, and laughter.
The scene is a museum of American space history memorabilia. A spacesuit hangs from the ceiling. The walls are filled with pictures of astronauts in action and NASA publicity photos. Most are signed and include personal inscriptions. The photos of the lost crews of Challenger and Columbia give one the feeling of a shrine.
The scene is a Texas chili cook off, da hottest, best kind [is that redundant?] Since dawn's first light, chili crews have been building their showcase booths. The ultimate goal is to win Best Chili & Best Showmanship.
The scene is the home of the best cheeseburger and fries on the planet, so voted by the customers. How many places do you know that making an order of fries starts with slicing a potato?
The scene is the Outpost Tavern (outpost-tavern.com), all of the above rolled into one converted Ellington Field Army Air Corps wooden barrack. If walls could talk ....
Well, walls can't talk but folks can. So on a recent fall afternoon, owner Stan Aden, Outpost historian Roger Mitchell and I talked about this landmark Texas beer joint where you can almost smell the adventure of space flight; and where the neighborly spirit of the Bay Area is very alive and well. So step through those famous saloon doors and listen in on our conversation.
Jim: Stan, how long have you and Sharon owned the Outpost?
Stan: Sharon and I bought the Outpost from the estate of previous owner Gene Ross in 1996. [Stan grins.] Sharon couldn't be here today because her daughter Lisa had twins yesterday. She's in Austin with mother and babies. Everyones doing great!
Jim: Excellent! Double congratulations. Stan, didn't you guys used to come here as customers a long time before you bought the place?
Stan: Since 1979. Twenty-four years for us and a lot of other folks.
Jim: Is that when it became the Outpost, in 1979?
Stan: 1980. In '79 it was owned by Terry Bone and was called the Universal Joint. Gene Ross bought it in 1980 and named it the Outpost Tavern.
Jim: Gene had a lot of friends in the space program. I see a lot of memorabilia on the walls. Tell us about those days when Gene was the owner.
Stan: This place was packed six nights a week and closed on Sunday. A lot of the older astronauts frequented this place. The newer breed of astronauts aren't like the old breed. They used to party and have fun, carouse and drink beer and pull practical jokes on each other. Now the newer breed is more into family, working out in the gym, stuff like that. So if astronauts come in now, they're usually retired or getting ready to retire.
Jim: Because of those days, weren't some space themed movies shot here?
Stan: Yeah. Roger, help us out on this.
Roger: The first movie that was made in the Outpost was in 1989. The producers shot a made for TV movie [4 stars] named Challenger. It was about the lives of the crew members leading up to the launch. In 1997, Disney Pictures came in and filmed a kind of forgettable comedy called Rocketman [2 stars].
Stan: The last one was Space Cowboys [3 stars]. They shot the bar scene here and then afterwards, the fight scene outside. That had to be every bit of five minutes in the movie. Roger played the bartender.
Roger: That was fun.
Jim: I'd bet that was a blast. Stan, you tried a live music experiment. Tell us about that.
Stan: I tried putting the best regional blues acts from all over the country in here. I know that you came out and reviewed some of them like Jimmy Thackery.
Jim: Yeah, and this place was about three quarters full for Jimmy when folks should have been hanging from the ceiling. The next year at the Seabrook Music Festival, Thackery played to an overflow crowd and knocked'em dead. His performance was easily the best of the festival.
Stan: We also had Debbie Davies, W. C. Clark, Deborah Coleman, Lavelle White, Anson Funderburgh and others; but we didn't draw enough people on a regular basis to support those high ticket acts.
Jim: I saw most all of those shows and they were all great! Roger, I understand that this building traveled a bit before it arrived here. What do you know about that?
Roger: This building was originally a WWII era Air Force, I should say, an Army Air Corps barrack out at Ellington Field. It spent some time down in Dickinson as a Pentecostal Church, which may account for why some of us feel blessed when we come in here.
Jim: Ha! Very good.
Roger: It was also a Western wear store located near where Heartbreaker's is now. It was moved to Harris County in 1968 and was a barbeque house, an auto parts store and Ð I haven't been able to verify this one Ð an Italian restaurant - before it became a bar. It was several different bars before Terry Bone bought it. During the 70s, it was a favorite hang out for JSC engineers getting ready for the Shuttle program.
Jim: Yep. I was one of them. Terry had a lot of board games like backgammon, chess and Othello, plus pool, darts and ping-pong for the more athletic patrons.
Roger: When Gene bought it from Terry in 1980, there wasn't much space related stuff on the walls. At that time, Bob Crippen and John Young were getting ready for STS 1. They liked to find out-of-the-way places and this was one that they hung out in. One day they brought their boss, George Abby, with them. Gene got to know George and asked him for some pictures to put up on the walls. So George said sure and got everybody in his astronaut office to autograph a picture for the Outpost. And that started a tradition of getting pictures for the Outpost walls. Gene and George became good friends and remained so until Gene's death in April of 1996.
Jim: So while Gene was the owner, the Outpost became a popular hangout for astronauts and aerospace types Ð sort of sophistication upside down. Then you and Sharon bought the place when Gene died. How did that come about, Stan?
Stan: Gene kinda wanted me to do it. We talked about it when he was sick and he wanted us to do it. He wanted us to try to keep the place going. So we figured out a way to do it.
Jim: There's another tradition we haven't talked about; that's having the best cheeseburger on the planet. Gene started it and Sharon must have gotten his recipe.
Stan: Yeah, it's pretty É
Roger: I think the secret is having a well-seasoned grill.
Jim: [Chuckling] Hmmm ... could be.
Roger: A couple of years ago [the city of] Webster got a new Fire Marshall. He red tagged the kitchen for not having a vent hood that was up to code.
Stan: See that new vent hood over there? Remember when we were cookin' burgers we'd open the window and turn on that little vent fan? Now we've got the whole deal. Tell Jim how we got it, Roger.
Roger: When Stan and Sharon found that out, the cost was going to be too much for this bar to pay for. So it became kind of a community project with cash donations and a lot of free labor.
Stan: The bar didn't do it. We had a town meeting in here one night and I told everybody that I couldn't afford to spend that kind of money on the kitchen. It wasn't ten thousand dollars. It ran what, fifteen-five or sixteen grand before it was all over?
Roger: Twelve thousand for the kitchen.
Stan: Donations came rolling in. Bob Crippen was in from Colorado for his NASA physical and came by and left a check for $500. All kinds of people donated. You couldn't beat that. That was great stuff.
Roger: After that town meeting, one of the people went home and set up a web site called, at the time, Save The Outpost. Within two weeks, Sharon got a call from Bruce Nichols of the Dallas Morning News. He had been to the Outpost while covering the space program. He wrote an article for their Sunday Feature section. Pretty soon after that Houston's Channel 11 came calling. It escalated to the point that one day a reporter from the New York Times showed up.
Stan: And they did an interview and published a big picture of the Outpost Tavern on Page 1 of their Sunday Community section.
Roger: And then it went international. I got a call from Sharon who doesn't like to do interviews so I sometime act as her spokesman. She asked me to show up and do an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation's World News program. That program is sent around the world by shortwave. It was pretty interesting, being interviewed by the BBC.
Jim: I'm sure.
Roger: Then one day at lunch -- and I have no idea how this came about -- I get a call on my cell phone and it's an aerospace oriented magazine in Turin, Italy. They had carried the original story that was in the New York Times and wanted an update -- were we successful and still in business?
Jim: Incredible!
Roger: So we're now known internationally. I just wish we were better known locally.
Jim: Yeah, that would be good. Tell us about the chili cookoffs.
Roger: Terry Bone started the cookoffs and Gene and Stan continued them.
Stan: We do the cookoff every year in late April. It's been successful every year and we've always had a good turnout. Last year we had 21 teams.
Jim: Do you still have the contestants build the showcase cookoff booths?
Stan: That's right. We award three places for chili and the overall Showmanship Award.
Jim: Besides all this, the Outpost hosts a bunch of NASA related events, doesn't it?
Stan: We do. We hosted the Columbia end of crew training party. And when tragic NASA events occur, we become a community focal point. After the Columbia tragedy a lot of the community came here to mourn. We were literally snowed by a barrage of interviews from reporters from around the world. Sharon's picture was in the New York Times along with a story on the Outpost. I was told that I was on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. It was a madhouse for three days.
Jim: As to the future, how will the new road affect you?
Stan: You mean if they ever build a road?
Jim: It has been postponed a lot.
Stan: The Transportation and Safety Board told me there will be an exit ramp right at this property; they said that it would curve around and take off a little property but not much.
Jim: So you're not in any danger from eminent domain?
Stan: Not anymore. Until the final plans were made, we were.
Roger: With that out of the way, last spring a lot of folks volunteered their labor and we did a lot of landscaping and exterior remodeling. We got help from Silver Street Construction, B & B Construction, Bayside Construction and many others. We built a new deck and re-sided over half of the building to pretty up this place. On the inside we had already done some remodeling and put in new, nicer restrooms. Hopefully, the community will start coming in a little more often.
Stan: That's all you can hope for, Jim. That people will come in and support the business.
Jim: Things seem to be going pretty well.
Stan: Things are fine.
Jim: Stan and Roger, thanks a lot.
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