Gary Marbut chucks split hickory logs into the brick pit on the back side of The Rocket, a mom-and-pop barbecue-and-burger joint that’s been in his family for more than 60 years.
The cooking grate is loaded down with a couple dozen Boston butts that will smoke for about 10 hours before they’re chopped up to serve on barbecue sandwiches, plates and salads.
While those butts cook low and slow on a brisk January morning, Marbut steps inside The Rocket’s cramped kitchen to man the stainless steel flat top grill.
As the lunch hours approaches and the orders start to pour in, Marbut uses his spatula to press baseball-sized mounds of ground chuck into quarter-pound hamburger patties that sizzle in symphony with the French fries that burble in the hot cooking oil.
Marbut was just a little fellow when his parents, Cecil and Eunice Marbut, launched The Rocket in 1958 here on Alabama Highway 21 in the eastern Alabama college town of Jacksonville, in Calhoun County.
By the time he was a teenager in the late 1960s, he was putting in long hours here, doing everything from sweeping the floor to flipping burgers.
He’s never left.
“I just needed some spending money, and I got stuck here,” the 68-year-old Marbut says. “First thing I knew, I woke up one morning, and I was 50 years old. Where did the time go?”
An institution in Jacksonville, The Rocket has been around so long that folks here use it as a point of reference when they give directions.
“Sometimes, somebody will call me and say, ‘Hey, I want to talk to you about some business; where are you located?’” says Lamar Sims, senior vice president of Cheaha Bank, which is next door to The Rocket. “I say, ‘Do you know where The Rocket is?’”
Being neighbors with The Rocket, though, is not without its daily temptations.
“You walk out there sometimes, and you smell that smoke,” Sims says, before biting into his barbecue sandwich. “If you’re not hungry, it makes you hungry.
“My wife puts me on a quota,” he adds. “I can’t come over but once a week, but sometimes I sneak over without her knowing it.”
Prior to running The Rocket in Jacksonville, Ala., Cecil and Eunice Marbut operated The Gamecock Drive-In, which is pictured here in this archival photograph from the 1950s. (Photo courtesy of Jacksonville State University Archives)
The early years
In the early 1950s, a few years before The Rocket came along, Cecil and Eunice Marbut operated another famous old Jacksonville dining spot, a place called The Gamecock, named after the hometown Jacksonville State University Gamecocks athletics teams.
“There wouldn’t have been but four or five restaurants in Jacksonville (then),” Gary Marbut says. “There’s about 50 now.”
When the opportunity presented itself, the Marbuts moved a few hundred yards up the highway and started running The Rocket, an old-school drive-in straight out of “Happy Days.”
Customers pulled their cars up into a covered parking stall and picked up a phone to place their order, which a carhop delivered on a tray that latched onto the driver’s door.
“It was like a Sonic (Drive-In) today; that’s the best way I can describe it,” remembers former Birmingham sportscaster Herb Winches, who used to hang out at The Rocket when he played football at Jacksonville State in the late ’60s and early ’70s. “It was hamburgers and French fries and the typical stuff that kids in college would want to eat.”
While they were growing up, all five of the Marbut siblings – Gary and his older brother, Cecil Jr., and their sisters Jane, Gail and Pam – worked at The Rocket at one time or another, Gary says.
In 1967, when Gary was still in high school, his father was killed in a car accident, and he and his brother stepped up to help their mother, who was struggling to keep The Rocket going by herself. Eunice Marbut, who lived to be 85, continued to work there until her mid-70s.
The Marbut brothers worked alongside each other throughout the 1970s before Cecil Jr. opened a burger business of his own, called Cecil’s Place, which he ran from 1980 until it closed at the end of 2018. Cecil Marbut Jr. died this past September at 75.
Gary Marbut eventually took ownership of The Rocket, and in 1983, he remodeled the restaurant, eliminating the curbside service and adding a dining room.
“We were trying to be a little bit more modern is all that was,” Marbut says. “We wanted something inside. We didn’t want the curb service anymore.”
Gary Marbut, who started working at The Rocket in Jacksonville, Ala., when he was a teenager in the 1960s, grills cheeseburgers during the lunch rush at the family-owned barbecue-and-burger restaurant. (Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
All in the family
Around that same time, Marbut, who was divorced, met Patsy West when he took his oldest son, Brandon, swimming at the apartment complex where they lived.
Gary saw Patsy’s sister, Margaret, struggling in the water. She appeared to be drowning, so he jumped in to rescue her. Patsy jumped in, too.
“That’s when I bumped into Patsy,” he says. “Kind of odd, isn’t it?”
They got married a few years later, and not long after they did, Patsy left her job as a buyer for Walmart to come help her husband at The Rocket.
She’s usually the first face people see when they walk into the restaurant.
“I enjoy meeting the people,” Patsy Marbut says. “I have friends that I have made over the years. We know each other by name. We know if each other is having problems. They’ll just come in and talk to me and tell me if something’s going on.
“Justin kind of gets after me sometimes when people come in and I start talking,” she goes on. “He’s like, ‘Mom, we’re busy.’ And I’m like, ‘I’ve got to talk for a minute.’”
Justin is Gary and Patsy’s 34-year-old son, who, like his father, started working at The Rocket during high school and kind of got stuck here.
“I’ve been here since I was in diapers, I guess,” Justin says. “It’s just something I’ve been used to my whole life.”
(Gary Marbut’s oldest son, Brandon, who now works in the medical field, and his daughter, Kimberley, who is deceased, also worked at The Rocket when they were growing up.)
These days, Justin helps his mom work the front counter and manage the dining room. Eventually, when his parents retire, he will likely take over The Rocket, becoming the third generation to carry on the Marbut family business.
“He’s done the same thing I have,” his father says. “History repeats itself, if you think about it.”
Gary Marbut, left, and his wife, Patsy Marbut, right, receive a plaque from Brian Jones of the Alabama Tourism Department recognizing their restaurant, The Rocket, as one of the inaugural inductee in the Alabama Barbecue Hall of Fame in 2015. (Photo by Tommy Cauthen)
A well-earned reputation
Around noon, Bobby Burns and his 85-year-old mother, Mary Burns, stop by for lunch and sit down at one of the 11 tables in The Rocket’s cozy dining room.
Patsy Marbut comes up to their table and greets them like family.
“I’ve got to come get me a hug from my favorite grandmother,” she tells Mary.
Bobby Burns, a retired deputy school superintendent, has been eating at The Rocket for as far back as he can remember. He’s such a regular that when the restaurant really gets rocking, he’ll jump behind the counter to help Patsy and Justin fill the drink orders.
“I’m 66, so all my life we’ve been coming here,” he says. “To me, it’s just sort of the place to go in Jacksonville.
“It means a tremendous amount to the community – the fact that they’ve been here this long, and it’s stayed in the family,” he adds. “You can come back here, and it’s like stepping back in time.”
Over its 60-plus years, The Rocket has earned a reputation for serving one of the best burgers and some of the best barbecue in Alabama.
Bobby Burns can confirm that.
“My favorite is the cheeseburger,” he says. “My wife says it’s the best barbecue anywhere, so that’s what she gets.”
Lamar Sims, the banker who works next door, concurs.
“You won’t find anything better in northeast Alabama,” he says. “I guarantee you.”
One of the secrets is the restaurant’s Rocket sauce, a ketchup-based concoction with a hint of hot sauce, some salt and pepper, and a little brown sugar.
The original recipe is from Gary’s father, although Gary says he’s “doctored it up” over the years.
“People call it a barbecue sauce, but I just look at it as a sandwich sauce,” he says. “We put it on everything.”
In 2015, the Alabama Tourism Department included The Rocket among its inaugural inductees into the Alabama Barbecue Hall of Fame, and the restaurant regularly wins the Anniston Star’s readers’ choice awards for the best hamburger and best barbecue in the area.
Gary Marbut says all the accolades are a testament to his family’s hard work and their little restaurant’s longevity.
“Well, dern,” he says, “when you’re down here cooking for 60 years, you kind of get a reputation.
“We’ve been fortunate,” he adds. “We’ve had a good business, especially for a small town.”
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This little Alabama burger joint keeps on rocking, 62 years later - AL.com
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