Ernie Foust has 60 years of cooking
This is a republication of a story which appeared in the Jimplecute on March 27, 2014
By Carla Bass
Most people do well to stick with the same job for 25-30 years before retiring, but Ernest L. Foust of the Johnson Creek area celebrated cooking and selling BBQ for the past 60 years on March 4.
Foust, 83, has been cooking and selling BBQ at the lake since 1983. For years a sign out in front of his stand proclaimed “Bolo Burgers,” consisting of a thick slice of barbequed and smoked bologna in sandwich.
Foust was raised in Sweetwater, Texas. At age 23, in 1954, he moved to Ft. Worth, Texas, and went to work. He had never before cooked! There was a chain of grocery stores in Ft. Worth called Buddy’s Supermarkets. The owner wanted to put a BBQ stand at each store. He worked there until 1961.
After 1961, Foust opened four of his own BBQ establishments around Ft. Worth. After visiting his niece, Sharon Beene, in Johnson Creek, in ‘71 or ‘72 and falling in love with this area, he told family, “This is where I’m coming when I leave Ft. Worth.”
He sold his business, and moved to East Texas in 1973. He setup shop and sold BBQ beside Hollis Johnson’s store until 1975 when he moved back to Ft. Worth. He returned in 1983 to settle here permanently.
His cooker is a 1959 model that he has used all this time. For each weekend’s fare, it requires about 20 pounds of charcoal and a couple of sticks of hickory in the firebox to cook a load of meat. His menu includes chicken, ribs, hot links, bologna and brisket. Sides include home cooked pinto beans and homemade potato salad, pickles and onions.
In 1983, he and Glen Beene took nine days and built the little building he is still in today.
He said they worked straight through those nine days “in the hottest part of August.” After losing his wife in 2001, Foust cut back his days to Saturdays and Sundays only. Following her death, he lost two of his three sons; one in 2002, and another in 2010.
Foust has been an asset to his community over the years. He has helped many people, as well as the Mims Volunteer Fire Department and Ambulance Service and various churches.
He helps out friends in the community by taking them for doctor appointments in Shreveport, La. He is always willing to give someone a hand up. His advice to others would be for them “to try to do more for the people around them, too.”
The volume of meat Foust cooks has decreased since cutting back on his days of operation, but when asked, he said, “I’d like to know how many pounds of meat that I have cooked in those 60 years.”
There are many residents and visitors to the lake who depend on Foust’s food, as several came by during two afternoon visits, all expressing thoughts that “they didn’t know what they would do if he did quit cooking!”