Looking Back: The Great Ribs Caper

In 1977 as a probationary Officer I was assigned to Wilshire Division. My partner was Tom Garvin, a 17 year plus, LAPD veteran. Tom was African-American and he had been a USMC drill instructor (harder than Woodpecker lips) which tells you a bit about the amount of slack he cut me during my probationary status which was essentially, well, none! Wilshire was predominantly an African-American community. There was a prevalent theme which ran throughout the community during the 4th of July. Many of the blocks had barbeque ‘cook-off’s.’ The entire block would be essentially turned into a block party. Now some might think of barbeque ribs, chicken and tri-tip as a mildly interesting evolution. Not so the case in Wilshire Division.

Usually the barbeque itself was a split, 50 gallon steel drum customized to the Nth degree. It had everything on it including mud flaps and whip antennas. Each barbeque ‘chef’ took great pride in the top clearance, double secret probation, eyes only, secret squirrel handshake, Area 51 recipe he had concocted. Tom and I would cruise down the block and…

would be stopped multiple times on a single street. We were handed foil wrapped ribs, chicken and tri-tip and told that this was the best thing we would ever experience.

In short order we would have multiple bags of these ‘one-off’ uniquely, one-of-a-kind recipe derived delicacies. Some we would eat in the Black and White and somewhat naturally, no one had the foresight to give us napkins so our LAPD dark blue uniforms concealed the barbeque sauce spills quite well. These were ribs to be sure. Tom and I would munch on the ribs and then…

compare notes as we rode around and tossed the bones out the window. Some ribs were real doozies. Whether they had soaked them in kerosene for a month or so I’m not sure – but they would put you on your knees they were so hot… and I mean right now! Others were simply out of this world tasty. The problem was that you never knew who it was that had concocted the best ribs that you had ever had. There were simply too many ribs and too many different chefs at too many different locations to keep track of. Those who had proffered their wares to us as we had patrolled the streets probably awaited our verdict later in the evening but we were always too busy with hundreds of shots fired calls on the 4th!

I was single, living in an apartment in the Valley, so my refrigerator had bags upon bags of ribs for weeks on end after these great rib evolutions. When you’re young, unattached and possess a high metabolic rate, you can live on these puppies with nary a problem. Plenty of ribs, ice-cold beer, a surfboard, two bars of surf wax and three days off… it was pure heaven!

What was really amusing was the passion with which each chef described how he had prepared, nurtured and cooked the ribs they gave us. It went something like this: “These ribs were smoked in my garage for 6 months from the exhaust pipes of a 1966 Lincoln, soaked in a bathtub filled with ethanol and formaldehyde for two weeks, rubbed down with Los Angeles soot gathered from industrial smokestacks, cooked at 1,200 degrees for twenty minutes then cooled with liquid nitrogen for 30 seconds and finally slathered with my secret sauce pulled from the crankcase of a 1958 Edsel Corsair!” I’m telling you (believe it or not) that they were the best ribs you could ever experience.

That was a great time when things were not nearly as complicated as today. It was a great way for Tom and I to bond with the community and from time to time we’d cross paths with one of the chefs who’ ask us how we liked his ribs. Naturally our standard response was “The best ribs we’d ever had.” We had no way of remembering which of the ribs we had been given were his, but our gratitude was always genuine.