Preserving a piece of history at this classic Alabama barbecue restaurant

Van Sykes made his mama a promise.

And the longtime owner of Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q -- the legendary Bessemer barbecue restaurant that his late parents, Bob and Maxine Sykes, started 66 years ago -- never forgot what his mother told him a few months before she died in 2015.

“My mama told me in her last months -- and I don’t know why -- but she said, ‘I want you to take care of my sign and my pig on top of that roof,’” Van remembers.

Over time, though, both the vintage roadside sign with the flashing neon arrow and the fiberglass pig perched on the restaurant’s roof had started to show signs of their years of neglect.

“I just felt awful about it,” Van says.

So, earlier this summer, he made good on that promise to his mother and did something about it.

The dingy, corrugated fiberglass sign with “Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q” spelled out in glued-on, black-and-red letters has been replaced with a bright yellow, molded plastic sign with all-red letters that, when it is illuminated at night, shines like a full moon against a cloudless sky.

“It’s got the glow at night that you really look for,” Van says. “You can come off (Highway) 150 now and make that right turn, and you can see that Bob Sykes sign like three blocks away.”

The new sign also features a green chile pepper in the tail of the “Q,” a look that Van incorporated into his logo a couple of decades ago but had not included on the sign. Now, the sign finally matches his other branding.

“I love that pepper,” Van says. “I was looking for a different logo that didn’t have a caricature of a pig, so I hired an artist and that was his concept.

“I actually had somebody copy that (logo), and my lawyer had to threaten to sue them,” he adds. “You know you’ve got a good idea when they start stealing it.”

Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q in Bessemer, Ala. — When it is illuminated at night, the new roadside sign at Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q is visible from "three blocks away," owner Van Sykes says. (Photo by Elaine Lyda; used with permission)

A touch of nostalgia

Most of the metalwork in sign’s accompanying neon arrow had corroded over the years and had to be restored with an aluminum-based material, Van says. The arrow’s neon tubing has been replaced, too.

“Everybody in the world tried to talk me out of neon,” he says. “They liked this new LED stuff. The glow of this neon was just really what I wanted, though, and I just stuck with it. I think I’ve got it right.”

Meanwhile, that rooftop pig -- affectionately nicknamed “Bubba” -- has been “re-fiberglassed,” as Van puts it, as well as repainted, relit, and reacquainted with his old, familiar spot.

“I just told everybody that he went to Florida for a few weeks on a vacation and a makeover,” Van says. “He’s back and rested and relaxed and ready to sit on top of the barbecue kingdom again.”

Sign Builders Inc. of Birmingham restored the sign and the pig, Van says, and Advance Sign & Lighting Company in Gardendale handled the dismantling and the re-installation.

The project took about two and a half months.

“I think it was well worth it, and I just hope everybody will come down and take a look at it,” Van says. “It’s very nostalgic.”

The backstory

The Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q sign has been a beacon for barbecue lovers traveling along U.S. 11 in Bessemer for more than 45 years.

Left over from when founder Bob Sykes had about 15 franchises around Alabama and Tennessee, the sign was installed when the original Bessemer restaurant moved into its current location in 1977.

To distinguish between the franchise locations -- all of which have long since closed -- Maxine Sykes added a smaller sign with a cartoon pig serving a barbecue sandwich and the words “The Original” above the main sign.

In honor of his mother, who ran the business after his father had a stroke in 1970, Van later installed a small, square sign that says, “And Maxine, too,” below the Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q logo.

“This place just wouldn’t be here without her,” Van says.

The ornamental fiberglass pig came along in 1991, when Maxine spotted it on the back of a truck, pulled up alongside the driver at a traffic light, and offered to buy it on the spot, Van says.

“He said, ‘Well, I’d like to sell it,’” as Van recalls the story. “And she said, ‘Follow me to the restaurant.’ He pulled up, she gave him a check, and that’s where the pig came from.”

Van originally put the pig out by the highway -- ‘”My vision of it being sort of like the (Shoney’s) Big Boy statue,” he says -– until he got wind that some high school pranksters were planning to kidnap it.

“So, I just decided, ‘Well, heck, I’ll put him up on the roof,’” Van says. “So, that’s when I put him over the doorway.”

And there Bubba remained until he briefly came down for his much-needed makeover this summer.

(As a customer recently pointed out to Van, though, Bubba, upon closer inspection, certainly looks more like a sow than a boar. “I said, ‘Well, it’s a little too late for that now,’” Van responded. “So, he’s still Bubba.”)

Here to stay

Now that he’s restored the vintage Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q sign and made the beloved Bubba look good as new, Van’s next project is repaving the parking lot and adding a second drive-thru lane.

“So, the question is this: Why am I refurbishing something to last 50 years when I’m clearly not going to?” Van, who turned 68 in May, asks.

He answers his own question.

“I feel 38, praise the Lord, and I love what I do,” he says. “The statement I’m making to my customers is, ‘Hey, I’m here, and I ain’t planning on going nowhere.’”

And you know how to find him. Just look for that shiny, new, bright yellow sign.

Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q is at 1724 Ninth Ave. North in Bessemer, Ala. The phone is 205-426-1400. For more information, go here.

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