Jack Ramey has been operating the Cross Timbers Chuck Wagon for 20 years, and for most of those years, he’s put in an appearance at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s Chuck Wagon Festival. That event, which is expected to attract 6000-7000 people this Memorial Day weekend, is in its 34th year, and it’s the museum’s largest annual community event. Seven chuck wagons and two Native American food spots will serve up beans, stew, cobbler, fry bread, dumplings, chicken-friend steak, Dutch oven potatoes, and yeast rolls – basically, chuck wagon fare, but with some “cheater” ingredients like sour cream and butter.

“When we do chuck wagon competitions, you can’t use sour cream and butter,” Ramey said. “But for gatherings like this one – they’re called gatherings – we can use them.” 

Ramey has owned a metal building erector company since 1974, but the cooking is a passion that goes back to his childhood. Anyone raised on Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The High Chaparral, and The Big Valley or any of John Wayne’s cattle drive films will have childhood memories of the cook’s wagon featured at some point in a season. Ramey is no exception; at 67, he was the prime age for those American Westerns in 1960s and ‘70s.

“I was probably 7 or 8 – I was still riding Shetland ponies – when I told my mom one Saturday that I wanted to cook beans,” Ramey said. “I had just watched a Western movie, as I did most Saturdays. She gave me a can of pork and beans, and I went to a nearby pasture, started a fire, and warmed the can. The horses were shedding because it was spring, so I’m pretty sure we had as much horse hair as beans in the can when I was done.” 

Ramey’s love of wagons goes back to his childhood as well. His grandfather hauled logs in a wagonin southeast Oklahoma. After his father died in 2002, Ramey met a man about his father’s age named B.K. Nuzum, who introduced him to the chuck wagon life. Ramey built his own wagon – historical models were built by popular manufacturers like Studebaker. He has been on the competition circuit ever since, and he said the Oklahoma City gathering gets the credit for generating renewed interest in chuck wagon history and culture.

 

“This is the oldest chuck wagon gathering in the country,” he said, “and it started all the other chuck wagon events.” 

Ramey actually lives along the Chisholm Trail. A major crossing is very close to his house west of Mustang. “The crossing was a slow process,” he said. “It took a full day to get a herd from Mustang to what is now Yukon.” 

The cattle drive era was relatively short, as it was quickly replaced by train transportation, but from about 1866 to 1885, it was the dominant model to get cattle from the Southwest to the huge slaughterhouses of the Midwest. Charles Goodnight, a Texas Ranger and Confederate soldier, returned to Palo Pinto County Texas after the Civil War, and he built the first chuck wagon (from the now antiquated British term for hearty fare “chuck”) for a cattle drive in 1866 on what would become the Goodnight-Loving Trail.

Ramey’s Cross Timbers wagon serves chicken-fried steak, Dutch oven potatoes, baked beans, yeast rolls and cobbler. “I use whatever fruit is in season locally for the cobbler,” he said. “When I’m in Ruidoso, I use apples. I’ve used blueberries in Wyoming, and I use lots of peaches in Oklahoma.” That practice too is in keeping with what trail cooks would have had to do, since they can’t store fruit for what could be as much as a five-month cattle drive, so they acquired fresh fruit along the way.

“Becky Conway will be at the festival,” Ramey said. “She makes raisin pie, and she’s the one who taught me how to convert a raisin pie recipe into my blueberry cobbler. I’ve made raisin pie too, like my Granny did, but I typically just use whatever fruit is common to the area.” 

Seth Spillman, the Chief Marketing Officer for the NCWHM, said tickets for the event get attendees samples from all the food spots. “We’ve been doing this long enough that we’re now seeing people who came as children bringing their own kids,” he said. “The vendors come from Choctaw, Mustang, and a few surrounding states, and it’s fair to say they’re akin to reenactors rather than food professionals, but the quality of the food is excellent.” 

Tickets for the event start at $25; children 12 and under are admitted free, and family packages are available, and there are activities like face painting and bandana coloring, a petting zoo, andWestern-themed demonstrations, arts and activities for all ages. The Chuck Wagon Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, May 24, 25, and more information, including how to purchase tickets, is available at the NCWHM website.