by Wesley Harris
To Ruston’s younger generations, “Greasy Bill’s” sounds like the kind of place invented by old-timers to test whether you really belong here.
To Rustonites of the 1950s and 1960s, it needs no explanation at all.
It was not polished. Nor fancy. Anything but. Depending on who told the story, it may not even have been entirely level with the ground. But for generations of Louisiana Tech students, professors, downtown workers and local families, Greasy Bill’s Barbecue was as much a Ruston landmark as the Tech campus itself.
Bill Woodard’s little diner stood next to a spot later occupied by Bulldog Wash House and Cushino’s Pizza. At the corner of College Street and Arizona Avenue (now Dan Reneau Drive), it was as close as you could get to the growing Tech campus, near enough for students and faculty to make it a habit.
Bill had not started life as a cook. He had worked for Tom’s Toasted Peanuts as a deliveryman before he and wife Delia opened the little food stand in the 1930s. Born Elias J. Woodard in Bienville Parish, after opening the diner he became simply Bill, or more memorably, “Greasy Bill.”
The name seems to have come from Bill Beasley’s garage next door. Bill and Annie Beasley owned most of the block on which the diner sat. When William Beasley died in 1948 and the garage disappeared, the name remained, and Elias Woodard became Bill to nearly everyone who mattered.
The building itself became part of the legend. Jim Harris, writing in 1982, described it as a one-room diner with the combined atmosphere of a truck stop, a doughnut shop and a fast-food place—with considerably more smoke and less concern for appearances.
There was a grill behind the counter, a barbecue pit in an open lean-to out back, a woodpile nearby, and a roof that reportedly leaked “by the barrels.” Health inspectors likely cringed the moment they walked in the door, not so much because of an unsanitary facility but due to Bill’s casual culinary practices like using Garrett’s Sweet Snuff while he cooked.
Customers sometimes left smelling like smoke, but they came back anyway.
That was because Bill could cook.
For many, the lasting memory of Greasy Bill’s was the barbecue sauce. The recipe was a family secret, and part of its power lay in the mystery. It was not written down in any formal way. His son Jimmy and son-in-law Larry Stockle learned it by memory. The only known handwritten version, according to family accounts, was later found scribbled on a napkin.
As with any good local legend, the sauce came with its own folklore. It was said Bill may have accidentally dropped some snuff into a batch or two and if his sweat didn’t drip in it a little, it just didn’t taste the same. Whether that improved the recipe or merely enhanced the story is a matter best left to those who ate there.
The menu was simple: hamburgers, barbecue, ham, roast beef, pork, fried pies, and a few other standbys. Side orders were not the point. A popular take-out order was a pound of beef, ham or pork wrapped in white paper with a Dixie cup of the famous sauce.
Bill operated on an honor system, refusing to hover over a cash register. He spread coins on the counter and customers were expected to put their payment into a cigar box and make their own change. Some people forgot, maybe on purpose. But money also came back to him from far away, including from servicemen overseas who remembered their debts and sent it back.
Louisiana Tech’s engineering crowd across the street at Bogard Hall loved the place. For Bill’s 73rd birthday in 1959, some 40 to 50 members of the Engineering and Mathematics Department surprised him with a party. They marched to his back door, sang to him, and presented him with a mock proclamation declaring September 25, 1959, “Bill Woodard Day.”
The proclamation was written with the affectionate sarcasm only regular customers could get away with. It praised his “meatless hamburgers,” his “doughnuts” as “greaseless,” and his establishment as one of the most “substantial and driest” places on the Louisiana Tech campus. It also recognized Bill had “put up with Louisiana Tech engineering students for all these years.”
Beneath the jokes was real affection. Bill’s was their place.
Tech students left their mark in literal fashion. Equations, formulas, and engineering graffiti were scratched onto tables and walls. His daughter Kathryn “Sis” Stockle later recalled the family repainted every summer to cover the writing and the grease.
Bill Woodard died in 1965 at age 78 after a lengthy illness. His obituary noted he was a merchant in Ruston and listed his wife Delia, son E. J. Woodard Jr., daughter Kathryn, brother Albert Woodard, and 10 grandchildren among his survivors.
The business continued for a time after his death, passing through a number of proprietors. The Woodard family sold out and moved the business to the Farmerville Highway for several years. Even today, the family still cooks up an occasional batch of Bill’s barbecue sauce.
I am too young to remember Greasy Bill’s in its original location, but I do recall Bill’s son-in-law Larry Stockle running a place nearby. And later, my dad taking me out to the Farmerville Highway location to pick up gallons of sauce from Larry who let us fish in the pond out back.
Although I last tasted it over 50 years ago, I remember that savory sauce. Vinegar-based, it was nothing like the thick, sugary sauce you buy at the grocery store. It poured easily, finding every nook and cranny in a pile of smoked brisket. And that sauce is not finished with me yet. Andy Cross, Bill’s great-grandson, has offered me a quart of the family brew. Hopefully it comes without Bill’s snuff.
Greasy Bill’s left an impression on another Rustonite, local musician Bruce Gay. Founder of the Ruston dance band The Lightnin’ Bugs, Gay memorialized the diner in a song titled “Greasy Bills.” The song appeared on the band’s album Lighten Up, another reminder Bill Woodard’s little barbecue spot was more than a place to eat. It had become part of Ruston’s cultural memory.
The thing about places like Greasy Bill’s is flavor comes from more than ingredients. It arises from the building, the smoke, the counter, the regulars, the jokes, the students, the professors, the honor box, the old stories, and the man himself.
Ruston has had many restaurants. Some were cleaner. Some were prettier. Some offered longer menus. But few ever occupied the local imagination quite like Greasy Bill’s.
For those who experienced it, Bill’s was not just a diner. It was a rite of passage, a Tech tradition, a neighborhood landmark, and a story still told whenever old Ruston remembers how things used to taste.
