Texas Bar Serves Up Cold Beer, Spicy Folklore

WICHITA FALLS, Tex. —  There are no ferns, no jukebox, no carpets, no pool tables, no happy hour and no dance floor.

There is no waiting room, no game room and no ladies room.

Wooden and windowless, it could pass for a remote shack on a large Texas ranch or a sturdy little fortress in a frontier wilderness. Or maybe just an upscale outhouse.

A wounded firefly would double the lighting.

This is Raymond Nipper’s bar.

It’s got longnecks and chicken necks, frosty mugs and sizzling ribs, fiery sauces and secret recipes. Signs tout armadillo burgers for $2.95 and pig lips for $1.95. Those are special. So are the carhops.

Remember carhops?

What we’re talking about here is yesteryear, with a twist. Hickory-smoked history. A mesquite-flavored legend.

We’re talking about a beer-and-barbecue pub with a strange name, a stranger clientele, deliciously greasy food and walls decorated with snapshots.

“There’s nothing but pictures and grease holding this damn place together,” a customer grumbled one recent noontime.

We’re talking about four decades of memories in a scruffy little saloon, about a history as rich and colorful as this rough-and-tumble city itself, about a service station that became a legend called P2.

That’s right. Ray Nipper’s barbecue joint is named P2, or, as it is known to many, The Deuce.

P2 was the second in a chain of Pioneer restaurants opened long ago by the McBride family of Wichita Falls and, with a certain logic, called Pioneer 2. Customers shortened the name to P2, and it stuck.

The wooden frame building housed a service station in 1922. That gave way to a beer barn, which the McBrides leased in 1947. They later bought the place and made it Pioneer 2.

It promptly became a stag bar, but not by design.

“It just happened that way,” recalled M. E. (Fat) McBride, who with his father and three older brothers founded the Pioneer dynasty.

“Nobody put up a sign or anything,” McBride said. “But when a woman would walk in, the customers kinda hushed up, and she’d feel uncomfortable.”

At its peak, the Pioneer chain numbered 11, but the P2 never quite fit the corporate image. So they gave it away, to the bartender.

The bartender, “Big Jean” Woodley, sold the P2 to Nipper in 1987.

Inside, P2 remains a brotherhood of beer, barbecue and good ol’ boys. Outside, it’s a family affair: a drive-in for mom, pop, kids and young folks on the prowl.

This is a popular feeding ground for judges, lawyers, prosecutors, plumbers, doctors, dentists, architects, accountants, cops, millionaire oilmen, roughnecks, ranchers, farmers and journalists.

They belly up to the wooden bar alongside some of the best ol’ boys in West Texas, not the least of whom is Lloyd Ruby, the Texas Hall of Fame Indy-type race car driver.

“It’s just a good friendly place,” said Ruby, whose newspaper and magazine clippings are scattered liberally among the snapshots.

“This is a redneck bar,” claimed P2 regular Joe Brown. “Used to run women off. Don’t do that anymore.”

Actually, there’s no serious threat of female infiltration. Not many women are inclined to wrestle regulars for one of six bar stools or three booths that rival a three-humped camel for discomfort.

Besides the carhops, the lone woman sparring with a recent daytime crowd was Lou Gibson. After six years tending bar for this bunch, Lou’s one savvy lady.

“This place is different,” she said. “But it’s a fun place, and I enjoy working here. Probably the nicest people in the world come in here.”

She thought about that a second, then added: “And a few others.”

The P2 has its traditions, among them the Red Draw. That’s a frosty mug of beer and tomato juice flavored with salt and ignited with hot pepper sauce.

“It was kind of a little hangover thing,” remembered McBride.

Nipper himself was a P2 regular and no stranger to a Red Draw when he bought the place three years ago, fulfilling a desire to own a bar where he could cook for his friends.

“Cookin’ gets in your blood,” he said. “It’s not a great way to make money, but I love it here. It’s fun. Some of these people are wealthy and affluent and some are just plain folks like me.

“But they’re all friends.”

Nipper will tell you anything except the secrets of his smoked meats and homemade sauces, which are making him famous.

Actress Cybill Shepherd persuaded Nipper to cater a party last fall for the cast and crew of “Texasville,” the film version of Larry McMurtry’s novel set in nearby Archer City.

“She doubled the size of the party from 200 to 400 on the Friday night before the party on Sunday,” Nipper laughed.

But he didn’t mind. It just added to the P2 legend, like the Red Draws, the fiercely competitive gin rummy games, the photographs, Ruby’s card tricks and Nipper’s Christmas parties.

For his holiday bashes, Nipper has been known to cook up venison, calf fries, wild pig, brisket and all the trimmings. And it’s free.

Part of the P2 legend involves a regular named Joe Hale, who once entertained his buddies by riding a horse into the bar. As luck would have it, the animal was moved by the most natural of urges, to which it responded.

Memorably.

So the story goes, they banished Joe for three days and his horse forever.

“Naw,” drawled a P2 regular. “They barred the horse for three days and Joe forever.”