9:34 p.m. March 29
My mind has been in Mississippi.
I just finished Larry Brown's last (unfinished) rugged novel "A Miracle of Catfish" (Algonquin) and with murky headliners like John Mayer and Rod Stewart, I will pass on this year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, perhaps in favor of a trip to the Delta.
This piece was published Jan. 20, 2002 in the Sun-Times. Remember back then? We were in the cold shadow of 9/11 and people set out to retouch America. What went wrong? I went to the Shack Up Inn and wound up being one of the first travel writers to discover the place. I've visited the Shack Up Inn a couple of times since this article appeared and it continues to expand by spirited leaps and bounds I've edited this piece and for more background, please visit www.shackupinn.com. Tell 'em this Yankee sent ya'.
CLARKSDALE, MISS.--- A funky piece of folk art commemorates the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 in downtown Clarksdale. A welded pair of 900-pound metal guitars point toward the heavens because this is supposed to be the place where bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil. The truth is that it is unlikely the mystical 1938 detour took place at this intersection. As Steve Cheseborough points out in his fine road book Blues Traveling (The Holy Sites of Delta Blues), even then downtown Clarksdale was too busy for such an event to happen. I am driving Highway 49 outside of Clarksdale, looking for the Shack Up Inn, Mississippi's "Oldest Bed & Beer (est.1998)." ............
........It is just before New Year's Eve. The compound of four restored sharecropper shacks is on the historic Hopson Plantation, four miles south of town. The plantation can barely be seen from the highway. There are no streetlights. There are few headlights from oncoming traffic. Big Maceo is belting out "Worried Life Blues" on my car radio. I am lonelier than a boll weevil in Bolivia. A full moon is rising over miles of flat cotton fields. The light of the moon blankets the Delta soil in a cobalt blue. It is around 8 at night, yet I can see pretty clearly. This is pretty creepy. I can see how someone could lose their soul.
But you can find Mississippi's heart at the Shack Up Inn. I've slept in hotel lobbies in Havana, pontoons on the Mississippi River and a bordello in the Dominican Republic. But I've never stayed at a place as cool as the Shack Up Inn. The Shack Up Inn is owned and operated by five guys who call themselves "Shackmeisters." J
James Butler is kind of the head shackmeister because he is married to Cathy Patton (no relation to Delta blues legend Charley Patton). She is a great-granddaughter of the Hopson family who have owned the plantation since 1852. The other shackmeisters are Jim Field, a Colorado architect; Guy Malvezzi, Bill Talbot and Nashville songwriter Tommy Polk. There are no women directly involved with the shotgun shacks. "I think I'm the only one with a wife," Butler says during a conversation in the plantation commissary. "No, wait a minute. I think Guy's got one." (Malvezzi owns and operates eight shoe stores in the Delta.) Butler is cradling his dog, Brandy. I think she is a girl, too.
Each sharecropper's shack has been moved to the plantation from nearby plantations. They have only been restored to the bare necessities. The shacks were built from cypress grown on the farm. My "Crossroads Shack" has a space heater, shower, indoor plumbing, a kitchen and a brown, rusty refrigerator that looks like it was last used by Howlin' Wolf. I open the refrigerator to find one half-empty bottle of Coors beer. My shack also includes a Washburn piano from the 1800s, an antique Victrola and CD player-radio. The shack is equipped with CDs representing regional artists like Son House. A sealed Moon Pie is resting on my bed as I check in. The bed is perched on a beautifully restored pine floor.
The four shacks are neatly spaced on 12 acres of the plantation. The whole town knows about the shacks. While searching for the Shack Up Inn, a gas station clerk laughs, "You stayin' at the tin shacks?' The plantation looks pretty much the way it did when it was a working plantation. The original Hopson cotton gin is still standing, as are seed houses and other outbuildings. Butler says the shacks honor the sharecroppers, rather than exploiting a bleak moment in American history.
Sharecropper Robert Clay lived in the Shack Up Inn's red flagship shack, the largest of the four. It has a full kitchen and separate bedroom and living room. "Robert lived on a plantation 26 miles north of Clarksdale," Butler says. "He raised seven sons with no running water and no electricity. We're certainly not leaving it like it was when he was there. He died in that shack. All his sons went to college. His kids tried to move him into town, but he said he loved the shack too much. We hope that visitors think of that, rather than any disrespect." Shackmeister Talbot lives in the tractor shed and three-bedroom, two-bath house where you register.
Once you check in, ask him to show you the wombat in a cage. When I check out around 8 a.m. New Year's Eve, Talbot is sound asleep on an old sofa in the house's living room. He is surrounded by dog-eared books and tattered copies of the Oxford American magazine. He looks like something out of a Faulkner story. The original Hopson commissary has been transformed into a juke joint replete with a stage. The commissary has a corrugated tin roof and Mississippi cypress walls. The commissary hosts live music once a month, and it is rented out for private parties. The North Mississippi All Stars have performed in the commissary, which can hold up to 300 people.
Cathy (Patton) Butler works in the commissary. A happy hour is held for shack guests in a small bar adjacent to the commissary. The bar and kitchen are adorned with vintage Hatch print posters, a Cate Brothers poster and a modest kitchen menu. Every Thursday the shackmeisters host a Busby-B-Q, named in honor of Butler's friend John Busby. "You take a Boston butt," Butler says with an emerging smile. "Then you slit and stuff it with pickled jalapeno peppers. It's incredible."
The guys worked on the Shack Up Inn for six years. It opened in 1998. I only found out about this place through my friend Tom Marker, the blues expert at WXRT-FM radio in Chicago. Butler looks out a window at the plantation, still drenched in a nocturnal Delta blue. He says, "This was 4,000 acres in the Hopson heyday. Some of my wife's relatives have 1,200, maybe 1,500 acres they own and still lease out. Others have been lost or sold."
The cotton picker was invented on this property. In 1935 the Hopson Plantation began a transition to become one the world's first completely mechanized cotton operation from planting to harvesting. "International Harvester would send experimental models on the Illinois Central railroad tracks out in front of the plantation," Butler says. "They worked for 17 years in developing the picker. In 1944 they introduced the first pickers here. It revolutionized cotton." It also revolutionized blues music.
The industrial revolution sparked the northern migration of blues musicians and their families. These future Chicago legends came from this area: Muddy Waters (from Rolling Fork, Miss., moved to Clarksdale when he was 3); Howlin' Wolf (born as Chester Burnett in Aberdeen, Miss.); Roebuck "Pops" Staples (Drew, Miss.); Sam Cooke (Clarksdale), and Elmore James (from Richland, Miss., he 19 he relocated to the Turner Planation inBelzoni, Miss., when he was 19). A newly transplanted shack is in the process of being dedicated to Waters' legendary sideman Pinetop Perkins, who was born in 1913 in Belzoni. While growing up, Perkins worked in the shop on the Hopson Plantation. Charley Patton came from this area.
A native of Natchez, Miss., Polk says, "We want to preserve the music and culture of the area. These shacks are falling by the wayside to weather and demolition." Actually, the shackmeisters aren't the first to relocate sharecroppers' shacks. In 1996 the one-room log shack where Muddy Waters grew up was restored by House of Blues founder Isaac Tigrett. The shack--originally on the Col. Howard Stovall cotton plantation in Clarksdale--appeared at the 1996 Chicago Blues Festival.
Songwriter Polk, 46, and Butler, 44, are cousins. Polk had four songs on country singer David Ball's 1994 debut record with Warner Brothers, including "Honky Tonk Healin'," which he co-wrote with Ball. Polk has introduced the Shack Up Inn to fellow songwriters Verlon Thompson and Austin Cunningham as an artistic retreat. The compound is 300 miles from Nashville. Other visitors have included the Squirrel Nut Zippers (their CD was in my shack), Blue Mountain and Boogaloo Aimes, a blues piano player from Leland, Miss. Polk's shack was formerly a cook's house on the LeFlore plantation 10 miles down the road.
Butler says, "These shacks were disappearing fast. All of the original Hopson shacks are gone. They were a quarter mile away on the Sunflower river. I never thought about having visitors actually stay in them." Talbot says it cost between $2,000 and $2,500 to move a shack.
Talbot, 51, is from Dublin--Mississippi, a small town near Clarksdale. The congenial shack-greeter works his day job in decorative concrete in the Clarksdale area. Butler and his wife purchased the commissary and future shack property in 1988. They opened an antiques shop in the commissary before turning it into a music room. Butler is Public Works director for the city of Clarksdale. He says, "This is just a hobby we're hoping will be a job someday." All the shacks are sold out during my visit.
The modest shackmeisters have big plans. Two years ago Butler, Talbot and Polk formed the nonprofit organization PORCH (Preservation of Rural Cultural Heritage). They want to create a cultural arts center in the cypress seed house at the north end of the compound. They have received $400,000 in a grant from the Mississippi Arts Commission with the stipulation that they have to match 40 percent of the grant. They also want to create an agricultural museum in a fenced-in tractor shop on the west end of the compound. Mississippi's secretary of agriculture, Lester Spell, spent a night last week at the Shack Up Inn to discuss the project. "It's not just people traveling through, spending the night, packing their bags and going on," Polk explains. "They're taking something with them and they're leaving something behind. I've had people leave harmonicas, candles and books from around the world in my shack."
Butler adds, "One afternoon I was headed in after lunch and I saw this couple out in front taking pictures of the International Harvester cotton picker. I stopped and talked to them. They were really young. They both lived in New York City. The boy had grown up in Manhattan. She had grown up in Little Rock, Ark. They had just gotten married in Little Rock. "It was the Monday after Sept. 11. They had planned to go to Cancun for their honeymoon, but they canceled. So we got to talking, and I said, 'Where were you on 9/11?' And this guy answered, 'Ninth floor of tower one of the World Trade Center.' It was unreal. "Then he said, 'We needed to get out in the country.' "
A few weeks ago I drove through a fierce snowstorm to the western suburbs of Chicago to talk to piano player Roger Williams. Some things just need to be done.
Life is short, which is why you take long shots.
You know Roger even if you don't know Roger. His dramatic piano is heard in dull elevators, dentist offices and shopping malls. He put the braggadio in the arpeggio. Williams has been named the best-selling pianist in history by Billboard magazine. He has released 115 albums and his best-selling hits include "Born Free," "Autumn Leaves" and "The Impossible Dream."
It was the impossible dream to convince people I was interested in this soundtrack of our lives. You would've thought I was pitching a story on Andy Williams. Or Barry Williams.
Now a spry 82 years old, Roger Williams did not disappoint.
Especially when I asked what happens when he hears his music along the American landscape...
...."You never know," said Williams, who was sitting alongside the legendary Henry Z. Steinway (the last member of the historic piano making family) at the opening of the Chicago Piano Superstore in Downers Grove. "When 'Temptation' was a hit I played with the New Orleans Symphony."
In 1960 Williams had an instrumental smash with Perry Como's 1945 recording of "Temptation." Williams recalled, "We went to the French Quarter and I hear 'Temptation' coming out of one of the strip joints. Then I had an excuse to go in. And here was this girl dancing to my song. The waitress said, 'That's Roger Williams up there.' Every girl took the name of someone they liked. So she was 'Roger Williams the Stripper'."
Mr. Steinway listened and offered a chesty laugh.
He is 91 years old.
Williams the pianist continued, "So she came over and I told her I was playing with the symphony the next afternoon and if she wasn't working she could come to the show. So she said, 'I'll bring my boyfriend.' It was a Sunday afternoon show. So I played the concert and she came backstage after the show . Someone asked, 'Would you sign Roger's left boob?---the stripper Roger. So I signed her left breast. I've got a picture of her in my house and every time I go by, I say, 'Hey Rog, how ya' doin'?"
Mr. Steinway wore a red bow tie and creased gray suit. He appeared more proper than a first communion but he chuckled and told Williams, "That is a wonderful story."
I drove Mr. Steinway kind of nuts asking him questions about his family legacy (he admitted to being a lousy piano player) so he got up and excused himself.
Williams then told me he knows 20,000 different songs.
"I will play whatever people ask for," he said. "And I know most of the songs. I don't know all the rap things, but my favorite song is whatever they request." I told Williams my favorite song of his was "Born Free." He smiled and said, "Hey, you're older than I think. That goes back at least 25 years ("Born Free" was a crossover pop hit in 1966).
Williams was born as Louis Weertz in Omaha, Neb.
He began playing Steinway piano at the age of three in Des Moines, Ia. "My Dad was a former boxer who won a championship in a non-title fight," he recalled. "And my mother was a violin teacher. So I had a pair of gloves on since I can remember. I was a boxing champion in the Navy during World War II."
Eye-hand coordination is as important in playing the piano as it is in boxing.
"A left to the body is practically the same as a left to the piano," Williams said. "And I always had the fastest hands in the Navy. But I didn't have the knockout punch. I could dance with them for 10 rounds."
After giving up boxing Williams went on to perform for eight United States presidents, beginning with Harry Truman. On Oct. 1, 2004 Williams and President Jimmy Carter turned turned 80 years old. To commemorate their shared birthday, Williams performed a 13 and a half hour concert for President Carter and wife Roslyn at the Carter Library in Atlanta, Ga.
"I played for Reagan because he and I started out at the same radio station (WHO) in Des Moines," Williams said. "I was a 12-year old pianist and he was 'Dutch Reagan,' the great sportscaster. One of the last times I performed for Reagan he just come back from meeting (Russian leader Mikhail) Gorbachev." This would have been the 1986 summit in Iceland when President Reagan refused to back down to Gorbachev's request to compromise on the Strategic Defense Initative (SDI).
Williams said, "Reagan was under a lot of pressure to be conciliatory with the Russians. He wouldn't go to their demands and the summit collapsed. He said, 'Roger, I'm always trying to stump you. Can you play the theme song from (his television show) 'Death Valley Days?' I said, 'Mr. President, I don't know that song.' He said, 'I'm only kidding, play 'The Impossible Dream,' which I did. Then he said how the words to that song embodied everything he dreamt for this beautiful country." Williams offered a satisfied smile, almost as if he was sweeping his left hand along the keys of his life. Despite the bad weather it had been a beautiful night. The best stories are those that break preconceived notions.
4:30 p.m. (local) March 10
SCOTTSDALE, AZ.---The "Last of the Breed" concert tour kicked off Friday night in Prescott Valley, which is scattered like buried treasure south of Route 66 near Flagstaff, Az. In order to find this town, you have to drive by a shotgun cantina called Billy Jack's, a neon roadhouse named Left-ts and down an old stagecoach trail called the Reata Pass.
It was worth it. "Last of the Breed" could be the Rat Pack of country music: Ray Price assumes the sophisticated role of Sinatra, Merle Haggard is the playful conscience who takes a lot of pride in who he is and Willie Nelson is everyman's best buddy who knows everybody loves somebody sometime.
All three men stand tall in the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The trio is backed by the Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel. I wanted to catch "Last of the Breed" in the event it ended abruptly, as in the case of the 1988 Rat Pack reunion tour which only made it to Minneapolis and Chicago before Dean Martin went home.
The first time the "Last of the Breed' felt unique wasn't until down the home stretch when Haggard sang "Okie From Muskogee" and got to the line about "the long haired hippies out in San Franciso," Nelson sauntered on stage with red bandana and his braids nearly to his beltline. The crowd of cowboys, bikers, old hippies, outlaws and rodeo riders roared with approval at a joint called Tim's Toyota Center. The 5,300-seat venue opened in October and this was the first sell out in its history.
The Last of the Breed will appear March 25 at the Rosemont Theatre outside of Chicago,
The crowd will be different............
And there wasn't much different about the "Last of the Breed" show at the outset.
Price opened up with his own 35 minute set with his own band of Cherokee Cowboys. He set the bar for vocal performance. At 81 years old Price's smooth pipes are in amazing shape, especially on ballads like "For The Good Times," "Make The World Go Away" and "Release Me." He hit his notes with clarity and integrity. Price deployed a three-piece fiddle section to set a Western Swing motif, in fact they delivered "Crazy Arms" and "Heartaches By The Number" in the same dance hall tempo.
Dressed in blue jeans, a crisp white shirt and black blazer, Price offered the evening's mission statement: "This is the music they've been trying to kill," he told the crowd that included a six-month old with a red bananda (I'm not kidding). "And they're not going to get it done."
After Price's performance, there was a 15 minute intermission to reset the stage for "Last of the Breed." Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel opened up part two with their own set that consisted of "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66"--with a shout out to Flagstaff---and "Miles of Miles of Texas."
But still no "Last of the Breed."
Finally, Haggard strolled on stage like the eternal hipster saint. He hoisted his fiddle and took authentic delight in interacting with the twin fiddles, consisting of his own fiddle player and Jason Roberts of Asleep at the Wheel. Haggard twirled his foot and shook his ass before slicing into Bob Wills' "Take Me Back to Tulsa" and hitting the classic two-beat on "I Wonder If You Feel The Way I Do." Haggard covered the latter track on the Wheel's excellent 1993 tribute to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Haggard followed with several of his greatest hits: "Silver Wings," "Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" (big crowd pleaser with this crowd), and "I Take a Lot of Pride In What I Am," a '45 that used to have regular rotation in my old loft jukebox. Dean Martin also covered "Pride." When Haggard sings about things he learned in a hobo jungle, it is clear these guys are the last of a breed. Who sings about hobo jungles today?
I heard Brad Paisley's "Celebrity" while trying to find a decent country radio station on the midnight drive down I-17 back to Scottsdale. As much as that pop song panders it fails to connect with any real country music fan.
Haggard covered "BIg River" with more intensity than usual (due to the fiddles) and offered some succulent electric guitar jazz runs on "Misery and Gin," a song he doesn't often perform. I should know. I've seen Haggard about 50 times. He is America's voice.
When he got to "Muskogee" the event finally began to take shape.
Price could be seen smiling in the wings as Willie and Merle traded verses on "Muskogee," with Benson dropping in on the last verse. Willie and Merle reprised Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho & Lefty" from their 1983 duet album of the same name (and a song Merle and Dylan should have done on last year's tour) and they dealt a convincing version of Willie's "Reasons to Quit," ("...reasons to quit below it always lower than the high..") from "Pancho and Lefty.".
Towards the end of his duet section with Merle, Willie invited singer-songwriter Freddy Powers on stage to cover Fats Waller's "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter." Powers, who wrote the Haggard hits :"Let's Chase Each Other Around the Room Tonight," and "A Bar in Bakersfield" and co-produced Nelson"s "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" LP, is suffering from Parkinson's disease. Powers sang in charging Western Swing tones despite keeping his trembling left hand in his coat pocket.
Nelson took more edgy Spanish-influenced guitar solos than I have seen in recent years. He seemed amped up to be reunited with his old running buddies. Nelson has been down this 'country supergroup' road before with the Highwaymen and now two of them are gone (Cash and Arizona's own Waylon Jennings). Nelson will make these moments count.
After Powers cameo, Price returned to the stage and said, "Willie, here we go,,,,,"
The trio then played songs from the "Last of the Breed" two-disc, 22-song CD that is out March 20 on Lost Highway. The three giants climbed new heights on Harlan Howard's 1958 honky-tonker "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down," wiith Haggard mimicking Bob Wills yelps and "I Love You So Much It Hurts" (both on the CD, produced by the empathetic Fred Foster). They followed the downbeat on the underchampioned Floyd Tillman material from the new record, most notably "I've Gotta Have My Baby Back."
Willie brought back the Bob Wills number "Still Water Runs The Deepest" from the '93 Asleep at the Wheel tribute album, whiile Merle chipped in with fluid vocals. Friday's ringer that is not on the "Last of the Breed" record was Price and Nelson's searing verison of Willie's "Nightlife." During Price's vocals, Nelson played deep blues lines while Haggard messed around with the fiddle section.
Deep within his heart there lies a melody.
The Last of the Breed gave a no-nonsense performance on the CD's leadoff track "My Life's Been a Pleasure," a chestnut written by Jesse Ashlock, who was a Wills vocalist-fiddle player. Willie and Merle first tackled the tune on "Pancho and Lefty," but the Breed's updated version is less maudlin. However, after "My Life's Been a Pleasure," Nelson sang "Crazy."
Haggard picked up his white cowboy hat and walked off stage, exit right.
He was never seen again at Tim's Toyota Center.
Price remained but did not sing along on "Crazy" or "Always On My Mind." He coughed a lot. With Nelson's long time harmonica player Mickey Raphael on board, a Willie concert broke out. Nelson sang "On The Road Again," and Price did add vocals to Kris Kristofferson's "Why Me Lord" which appears on "Last of the Breed." Benson took Haggard's parts. The show ended with Nelson's "Whiskey River." just like any other Willie Nelson concert. The concert clocked in at two-and-a-half hours, including the short break after Price's set.
The Last of the Breed wasn't like the Who or the Rolling Stones where the stars conclude the evening by embracing arm around arm at the front of stage. Willie said so long and the entourage was off to the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas where they were scheduled to appear on Saturday.
So this is my longest blog ever.
I won't even get into how I watched the Cubs blow a 5-0 lead to Sammy Sosa and the Texas Rangers a few hours before the concert. (But don't forget this future Cub star: TYLER COLVIN, a smooth left handed swing like John Olerud but with more pop). As a liefelong Cubs fan, I'm used to all things last.
But tonight the "Last of the Breed" is first in my heart.
Long after Ernie Edwards closed the Pig Hip Restaurant on old Route 66 in Broadwell, Ill. (pop. 200), he still wore a tall white chef hat that was tilted somewhere between yesterday and today. Ernie was always cooking up something. This is who he was. This is who he is.
Ernie, 89, lost his beloved Pig Hip to a fire on Monday night.
Ernie and his wife Frances---a former Pig Hip waitress--were running errands when the fire broke out and they're okay. Their spirit is strong and when I called to Broadwell on Tuesday morning they were surrounded by family and friends of Route 66. You can still see Ernie's pig mailbox from I-55 and that's a a good sign. The Pig Hip will be back in some form.
Route 66 is a ribbon of small communities and when the groups band together there isn't much they cannot accomplish. That's the essence of Route 66. I'm tired of dealing with outsourced phone operators. Route 66 is insourced!
I'm looking at a faded vintage Pig Hip placemat Ernie gave me during a 2003 visit. There's Ernie's own cartoon of a rotund chef who resembles Dom DeLuise hoisting a knife and a map depicting the restaurant's location, about 20 miles north of Springfield.
Best of all is Ernie's placemat motto: "They made their way by the way they're made."
And they don't make them like Ernie anymore.
Ernie opened the Pig Hip in 1937 and he closed the restaurant in 1991.....
.....But Ernie was restless in hog heaven.
So in 2003 he reopened the Pig Hip as a museum filled with Route 66 artifacts and pictures of famous restaurant visitors such as television star David Hartman. More than 20 volunteers from the Route 66 Association of llinois helped Ernie and Frances restore the diner.
Ernie loved to tell museum visitors about the history of the Pig Hip sandwich, forcefully stating how he used fresh ham instead of cooked and cured ham. "But what really makes it better is when a hog scratches, it has a tendency to raise its right leg and scratch," Ernie told me in 2003. "That makes the skin tough. So we only use the left side." Ernie has a million stories like that, although the sandwich story may be his favorite.
Ernie's family arrived in central Illinois in 1932 in the bone chilling heart of the Depression. His father Ernie, Sr., was employed by the state making shoes for handicapped children. Ernie, Jr. was born in Murphysboro in 1917 and lived in tiny Central Illinois towns like Salem and Lincoln. He arrived in Broadwell in 1937. When Ernie opened the Pig Hip, his only previous experience in food service was operating a popcorn machine at the Illinois State Fair. Ernie introduced yellow popcorn at the state fair. His parents loaned him $100 to start the Pig Hip.
Ernie expanded his menu from the Pig Hip sandwich to include 16-ounce T-bone steaks and hamburgers. His fresh ham came from a Broadwell slaughterhouse. Ernie would purchase 18 and 20 pound hams. He told me, "We'd bake them and slice them thin, about the size of a quarter. We'd use a three-inch bun instead of a four-inch bun. The meat was around the outer edge. We'd put the lettuce, tomato and secret sauce (prepared sweet with a mayonnaise base--I got that out of him) on top of that. When you took a bite, you didn't pull a whole great big slice of ham out. The Pig Hips went over real big."
A local farmer gave Ernie the 'Pig Hip' name. The customer pointed at a pork roast sitting on the counter and said, "Just cut me some slices off that pig hip'.
Ernie liked that phrase.
Today it would be a hip-hop lyric.
Ernie had his first big time visitor at the Pig Hip in the spring of 1938 when Col. Harland Sanders dropped in. In 1930 Sanders opened his first restaurant, the Sanders Court & Cafe in Corbin, Ky, the site of another roadside museum I've visited.
Ernie and the Colonel sat together at the counter. "He was trying to sell me a franchise," Ernie said in 2003. "He hadn't sold a franchise yet. I tried to talk him into selling mine with his, but he didn't want to do that. He pointed to a table and said, 'You get a chicken and I'll get my pot and herbs and I'll fry the chicken.' It was nothing but a pressure cooker pan. Well, he fried my chicken, we ate it and it was good. Then he said, 'I hate to run, but I've got a prospect in Springfield.' He got down Route 66 a little ways and I got to thinking, 'Hey, that guy talked me out of a dinner!' A few years later I saw him at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago. He was standing there in his white suit with his chicken sign. I walked up and said, 'You don't remember me, but I remember you and I'm REAL hungry. We wound up friends."
Ernie is everyone's friend.
During the weekend of June 9 and 10, the little town of Broadwell will celebrate its 150th anniversary in a big way. The Route 66 Association of Illinois wanted to honor the Pig Hip as part of the event and those plans are still on. And although Ernie turns 90 on Aug. 5, he wants to celebrate his birthday that June weekend. He promises to make the Pig Hip sandwich, something he hasn't done in years.
On Tuesday Ernie said, "If we get it cleaned up by June, I'll pitch a tent there and have our celebrations there. We'd have quite a party." Make plans now.
Its hip to be square, but you're square if you're not there.
