Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

 @JeffHouck
 The Stew
 Table Conversations
 StewVision
 Foodspotting
 Email Jeff Houck

Most Recent Entries

• All Hail The Cuban Sandwich! [Festival Celebrates Tampa’s Iconic Food This Weekend In Ybor City]
• Universities board begins daunting task of creating new university
• USF marketing students finalists in gas promo contest
• USF website pulls together research, services for veterans
• USF Poly budget director Bresler says he’ll fight efforts to fire him
• Incoming Speaker Weatherford speaks at USF conference on college access
• USF St. Pete forms alumni society
• Goodbye Michael Kovac; nanotechnologist, roller coaster lover
• USF Poly administrator resigns; report recommended dismissal
• Anyone For Road Snapper? [Chef Ben Sargent Visits In Key West On “Hook, Line & Dinner.”]
• Universities eye cuts; USF remains quiet
• Banana Bourbon Caramel Cheesecake, Boiled Crawfish, Mussels & Clams [This Week’s Weekend Eats]
• Last USF Poly class graduates; Dockery lays in to “leaders” behind split
• Get your skin checked for free at USF
• Finally the scissors are out for the revamped USF Sun Dome

More

• The Stew
• The Dirt
• Hot Pursuits
• HOMEwork
• Inside USF
• L Archive
  • Green Lite
  • Bring It!

Monthly Archives

• May 2012
• April 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011

The Brotherhood Of Nachos [Farewell To Lee Roy Selmon]

Posted Sep 9, 2011 by Jeff Houck

Updated Sep 9, 2011 at 02:45 PM

The eulogies are beginning at this hour at Idlewild Baptist Church in Tampa.

The tears will continue long beyond.

And on Sunday, Lee Roy Selmon will return for eternal rest to the red soil of his beloved Oklahoma.

His legacy in his adopted home of Tampa is secure. It is a story of leadership and kindness, civic duty and generosity.

It’s a breathtaking thing for a man to pass into the void, only to have that gigantic space he left behind filled with overwhelming amounts of admiration, esteem and tender love of those he played with, worked with and touched by his example.

Me? I’ll remember the nachos.

It was June 13 of this year. There was no indication whatsoever that Lee Roy would leave us less than three months later.

That evening was a Night of Champions, a grand opening of sorts for the new Lee Roy Selmon’s restaurant in Palm Harbor. On that night, the restaurant was chock-full of sports stars from Tampa Bay’s past and present. Derrick Brooks, Shelton Quarles, Vinny Testaverde, Fred McGriff, Dave Andreychuck and Raheem Morris all hob-knobbed over appetizers and beverages.

Somehow, I got tucked into a booth. Caddy-corner from me sat Lee Roy. To my right was Dewey, his older brother by 11 months and now a construction contractor. In front of me sat their older brother Lucious, a football coach and scout.

Three of the eight Selmon siblings in one place.

I had to pinch myself.

For the better part of the early 1970s, these three were human wrecking balls for the University of Oklahoma Sooners. Growing up in Tampa, I was 11 when Lee Roy and Dewey suited up for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as the team’s first and third draft picks respectively.

Sitting with the trio was like saddling up with three horsemen of the apocalypse.

I had shared meals with Lee Roy before on several occasions when the restaurant introduced new menu items or promotions. Each time a voice in my head – the 11 year-old Bucs fan inside me – kept saying, “Lee Roy has better things to do than to pass me a plate of brisket sliders.”

The first time I sat down with him to eat, I did what I normally do when I get nervous. I over-shared.

“I have to admit, I was a Dave Pear fan back then,” I told him. “I wanted to be a nose tackle. I wanted to windmill.”

He smiled. His eyes creased behind his glasses. His chin dipped into his chest. “That’s okay,” he told me. “That’s quite alright.”

I was seated at a corner booth that day, too, as our group waited for Lee Roy to arrive. He was on time – the man was punctual to a fault. But there was no way for him to make a direct route through his own dining room. There was always a hedge of outstretched hands to shake, autographs to sign, camera-phones ready to snap. For all the quarterbacks he rushed, I never saw him rush a request.

It was the same on the Night of Champions, only more. As many rings and trophies were in that room from so many different leagues and teams, Lee Roy was still the champion of champions everyone wanted to meet. I thought about how appropriate it was that the expressway named in his honor bridges south Tampa with Brandon and, soon, with Interstate-4. The man was a connection between so many places and things.

Plate after plate of appetizers crashed ashore on our table that night. We talked about the early days of Tampa’s sports scene, back when franchise owners shared drinks and tobacco with sports editors and powerbrokers.

He and Dewey weren’t part of that crowd, mostly because it cost too much. Instead of steaks and cocktails at Malio’s, it was fast-food and an early bedtime. In the off-season, before the big-money days of NFL free agency, Lee Roy worked at a Tampa bank to make ends meet.

Dewey and I talked about those days, about how a dream of bottling their family’s barbecue sauce turned into a chain of restaurants, about how his mother’s farm-table cooking became the basis for the home-style menu.

At one point, Dewey left the table for a few minutes right as a plate of nachos arrived.

Lee Roy looked at Lucious. Lucious looked at Lee Roy.

And, in Dewey’s absence, both took turns decorating this Gibraltar-sized plate of tortillas and cheese with Jalapeno slices. Dewey hates spicy food. I snapped a photo.

When Dewey returned, he put his napkin back on his lap and then pinched a bite of the nachos, not noticing the spicy surprise nestled on top.

Lee Roy looked at Lucious. Lucious looked at Lee Roy. Both looked at Dewey. They dissolved into giggles waiting for steam to erupt from their brother’s ears. Lee Roy broke the tension.

“How are those nachos?” he said.

Mouth full, Dewey muffled out a response. “They’re good. Lots of flavor.”

More giggles erupted. Lee Roy clapped a couple times. For that moment in that place, they weren’t football players, restaurateurs, coaches or construction men. They were just brothers on the farm in Oklahoma, full of mischief.

The eulogies are over. The tears will continue.

And, because there are restaurants with his name on the outside, so will the nachos.