“Sure they stop, but it ain’t to eat. . . . An’ when you stop you got to buy sompin so you can sling the bull with the broad behind the counter. So you get a cup a coffee and a piece of pie. Kind of gives a guy a little rest.”
–A truck driver
to Tom Joad, The Grapes of Wrath
In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck tells the story of a migrant
family–refugees from a vast catastrophe–and the people who help, hinder, or
simply watch their progress as they move down the road. The road was a particular
one–what’s left of it is now called Historic Route 66.
Charlotte Beeler’s life resonates with the history of that road, her journey
mirroring the rise and fall of the kind of place that Steinbeck described–a
place where a traveler could get “a little rest.” The Dixie Truckers Home was
always more than a business to Charlotte, or C.J., as friends call her. It was
started by her father, John Geske, and her grandfather, J.P. Walters, on January
1, 1928. C.J. was born the following December, and her own story has closely
followed the fortunes of the Dixie.
C.J. and her husband, Chuck Beeler, had dated in high school. Chuck jokes
that his advantage was having a 1940 Pontiac. Very few kids had cars during
World War II, but he had a permit because he worked on his family’s farm and
needed the Pontiac to get into town. When C.J. married Chuck in February of
1949–and, later, when they took over the reins from John and Viola Geske–they
not only continued but enhanced the truck stop that opened soon after the birth
of Route 66. This month they relinquish control of the Dixie Truckers Home,
and their departure closes yet another chapter in the history of that fabled
road.
The Beelers’ journey resembles Route 66, with the occasional twist and turn,
rising and falling with the rhythm of the land. And the story of the Dixie is
like the story of the old road: it cannot be told without following the travelers
and the people who served them on their way.
“From the very beginning, it was always about service,” says Chuck Beeler.
“We weren’t the cheapest,” C.J. admits, “but we aimed to be the best.”
“The philosopy of C.J.’s dad was always about pitching in,” adds Chuck. “If
something needed to be done, you did it. Everybody pitched in with anything
that had to be done–clean the restrooms, wash dishes, work out on the drive,
whatever. Everybody took pride in making it first-rate. Nobody thought of not
doing something because it wasn’t their job.”
Tom Teague, executive director of the Illinois State Historical Society and
the founding president of the Route 66 Association of Illinois, has spent 19
years studying the history of the road and the businesses that grew up around
it.
“You have to realize, as recently as 1918, there were only 3,000 miles of
paved roads in the country,” he says. “Most were postal roads. Today we have
37,000 miles of paved road in Illinois alone. You can’t have that kind of change
without sweeping culture with it. It’s worth remembering and saving, and it’s
becoming more and more worthy of study.” Route 66 “had a real impact on how
business and commerce was done across the country,” Teague says.
“It was a blue-collar, mom-and-pop road. It ushered in the golden age of the
small-time entrepreneur. It was a populist road, a great example of just enough
government assistance. Government built the road, but the entrepreneur along
the road gave it character. Yes, it had great scenery. Yes, it provided greater
access. But its real function rested in the psyche. It inspired people to dream,
and it gave them a chance alongside its pavement to work and to build and to
realize their dreams. It was a road of possibility.”
The Dixie “was not really much when it started,” recalls C.J. “My dad and
grandfather bought this old mechanic’s garage right on 66. Only used about a
quarter of the space, and there wasn’t really a restaurant then–just six counter
stools for people to sit while they got something to eat.
“The very early years were the Depression years, from ’29 to ’33. I don’t
really remember much about those times, except I know beggars would come to
the back door of the kitchen to get something to eat. Hoboes got off the train
that went close by, and they knew they could always get something. My mother
would never turn them away.”
During its first years, the Dixie functioned as a local cultural center, regularly
turning into a primitive drive-in theater. “One night a week we would have free
shows,” says C.J. “Usually every Saturday night people would come for the show.
There would be a couple of rack wagons for the stage out in the back parking
lot, and we would have Aunt Polly and her crew. She was a very popular musical
show in those days. People would come from Minier, Stanford, from all over–people
would come from 30 miles away. If we didn’t have her, people would lay blankets
down and we’d show movies on a big screen. People would come in at intermission
and get pop and candy and hamburgers and ice cream. I remember that’s when Dad
would say, ‘C.J., I need you in the kitchen.’ I’d spend the rest of the night
washing dishes by hand.” Paper plates were still several decades away.
“I have good memories growing up there–I started working when I was 10 or
11,” she says, and laughs. “I remember we had comic books that told about astronauts
going to the moon–it seemed so far-fetched and impossible.”
At 74, C.J. is still trim and straight-backed. Her clear eyes and infectious
laugh enliven her retelling of the Dixie’s early days. “My girlfriends would
come down from Shirley, and we would play upstairs. We’d have slumber parties,
and you can imagine . . . we’d stay up all night, and always people coming and
going. We’d go down and get pop and ice cream. It was a treasure.
“And all the time it kept growing,” she says. “Back then there was not much
on 66. There was a filling station in Shirley, and another in Bloomington. In
’39 the filling station burnt down, and then the place in Bloomington closed,
so we were the only one on a good long stretch of road. We began to concentrate
on the Dixie and started enlarging it.”
“In those days there weren’t many filling stations,” says Teague. “There wasn’t
a lot of cross-country travel. People carried their own gas or bought it from
farmers. There was a growing retail demand for gasoline, and the Dixie came
at a perfect time to meet that need.” The highway’s busiest commercial corridor
ran between Chicago and St. Louis. “A great number of truck lines sprang up
to carry freight between the two cities,” Teague says. “Companies like Night
Hawk, BeMac, Red Ball Express, Campbell’s 66–the famous ‘Humpin’ to Please’
trucks with the galloping camel known as Snortin’ Norton.
“This was always a hallmark of the original Route 66, from its beginning to
its close. It was a great economic engine and it attracted a lot of possibility.
I’ve heard it said that Route 66 represented the paving of our manifest destiny.
It inspired people to wonder what might lie over the next hill and, for the
first time, they could easily find out. They could drive on a single continuous
pavement that stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles. It linked the nation’s
second and third largest cities, and it became a tremendous agent of change–both
economically and psychologically.”
By the time it closed, Route 66 was famous internationally. When the last
portion was shut down in 1984, a radio crew from Yugoslavia traveled to Arizona
to cover the event. The imaginations of these foreign visitors had been captured
by The Grapes of Wrath (both the book and the 1940 John Ford movie),
the Bobby Troup song “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” (recorded by artists as
diverse as Nat King Cole and Depeche Mode), and the TV series Route 66 (which
ran for four years in the early 1960s). But perhaps most stirring to their imaginations
was the fact that you could travel 2,400 miles without ever crossing a border
checkpoint and being asked to present your papers.
Route 66’s borderless expanse suggested freedom, which is central to the mystique
of the highway. “Virtually every ethnic and demographic group is represented
somewhere along that route,” Teague says. “It was always a road of the people.
It was always a road of small, unexpected, idiosyncratic pleasures.”
Just as the road was leaving its imprint on the world, the world affected
life on the road.
“During the war years, there was a time when the speed limit on 66 was reduced
to 35 miles per hour,” Teague says. “It was posted to save wear and tear on
rubber and to save fuel–both of which were rationed in those years. But the
truth is, it was never really a safe road.”
“It used to be called ‘Death Curve’ out here,” C.J. says, referring to a spot
where Route 66 swung around the town of McLean. “It was just two-lane traffic.
If you didn’t slow down, you’d go off the road, or run into people head-on.
“I remember in World War II troops in caravans traveled up and down 66. You
could see long lines of military vehicles out on the road, and they would stop
at the Dixie to get something to eat. Dad would get things arranged so they
could all come in. He would set up special serving lines to accommodate that
number of people, and we could get them in and out pretty fast.
“And I remember the end of the war,” C.J. says. “The night that peace was
declared everybody kind of stopped what they were doing and went out and hugged
everybody and loved each other. We were all just so happy.”
Whether feeding hundreds of troops during wartime, or an army of hungry drivers
during peace, food has always played an essential role in the life of the truck
stop. In days past, a good roadside restaurant could be recognized by the number
of trucks parked in back. Truckers served as informal food critics for the nation’s
highway dining establishments. The Dixie, by any light, exceeded the standard.
“C.J.’s dad was a pretty innovative guy,” Chuck remembers. “And he paid a
lot of attention to the systems we used. A lot of the recipes came from him.
We were a burger-and-chicken place basically, but there was a lot of care that
went into how we did it. We had a very precise system for how we’d marinade
the chicken, how we spiced it, and then the times used for cooking. The thighs,
for example, would go in before the breasts because they would take longer.
Everything was very precise and repeatable.”
“This is one of the things that made the Dixie stand out,” Teague says. “There
were no franchise manuals in those days. Everyone who went into business had
to figure it out for himself. The Dixie existed for 75 years because they were
successful at hitting upon the right formula for serving their clientele.”
“We sold an awful lot of cornmeal mush in those days,” says Chuck. “It seemed
like a lot of people would come out from Bloomington just for the mush. We’d
cook off the cornmeal and then put it in big serving pans to set overnight.
The next morning we’d slice it and put it on the grill or in the fryer. We sold
a lot of mush.”
Fern Gresham worked the Dixie’s grill for more than 20 years. “I cracked a
lot of eggs,” she says. “Lot of times there’d be a long line of customers when
I came in, and a long line of customers when I went home–and it’d be like that
all day. It made the time go fast, though. And there were plenty of times Chuck
Beeler would be right there, shoulder-to-shoulder with me at the grill.”
Gresham has plenty to say about the unusual culinary preferences of some of
her truck-driving customers.
“I had one guy who always wanted the chili,” she says. “Our chili was always
really popular, but this guy got to where he’d want it on everything. It got
so bad that I worked a breakfast shift once when he was in and he’d have me
put that chili inside an omelet. He seemed to like it, but, if you ask me, it
was disgusting.
“I fixed every kind of egg you can imagine. I even had one guy who would want
his eggs raw in a glass. He would drink them.”
“We went through a lot of eggs down there,” C.J. remembers. “In those years,
Chuck was still farming full-time and helping out down at the Dixie during the
winters and filling in when he was free. At one time, he farmed almost 2,000
acres. In addition, we had a chicken operation, almost 1,800 eggs every day.
We supplied all the eggs at the Dixie from our own place, and you can imagine
the work–everyday they all had to be candled and graded before we could bring
them in.
“Chuck farmed and helped out down here from the time we were married in 1949
until 1967, when my folks retired and turned it over to us.”
“The original building burned in 1965,” Chuck says. “We were open continuously
from the day we started right through to now with the exception of a few hours
at the time of that fire. We had cabins around the perimeter at that time–I
think about eight of them. We would rent them out for people to catch up on
their sleep. We towed one of them over and set up operations from there. We
were pumping gas again within hours, but we didn’t get the new building open
until 1967.”
The new building gave the Beelers a chance to put their own stamp on the Dixie.
They expanded services and added new profit centers. “Most truck stops in the
early days were very primitive affairs,” says Rich Henry, part of a family of
Route 66 truck drivers who well remembers the road between Chicago and St. Louis.
“They were typically very small with maybe one or two pumps and a small one-room
building. What you see today with the multi-lane fuel islands, full-service
restaurants, gift shops, and convenience stores–they hadn’t been invented yet.”
The Beelers re-invented the truck stop. C.J. has fond memories of rebuilding
the Dixie.
“We decided to put in a small gift shop,” she says. “When you came in, you’d
go to the left to go to the restaurant and right into the gift shop. I wanted
to sell cards in the gift shop, and I wanted the best. I called the people at
Hallmark and talked to them. They wanted to provide me with an off-brand of
cards, but I told them I wanted the Hallmark card. They didn’t want to do it.
They told me they had never had their greeting cards in a truck stop before.
I remember telling them, ‘The Dixie is no ordinary truck stop.’ ” She smiles.
“They ended up giving us the line to sell–so we were the first.
“We did very well with those cards. Do you know what the most popular card
turned out to be?” She pauses. ” ‘Happy Birthday to My Wife.’ ” She laughs.
“Those truck drivers were on their way home when they remembered their wives’
birthdays. They’d buy a card, and we sold Fannie May candy. I imagine a lot
of truckers’ wives got a card and candy from the Dixie.
“We had so many kinds of people come through,” C.J. says. “Guy Lombardo used
to come through in his bus with maybe 40 or 45 musicians. He’d most often come
through on a Sunday afternoon when the place was full. He’d walk through and
find tables that had room–like a table for four with only a couple there. He’d
ask if a couple of his musicians could join them and, of course, they’d always
say yes. He’d get his whole band seated like that.”
In an industry that today often measures a worker’s longevity in days and
weeks, a significant number of Dixie employees have tenures measuring in years
and decades.
“We were fortunate to have so many good employees,” says Chuck. “We’ve had
several that have been with us for 30 years, right from the beginning. Nelva
Menzel and Margaret Kirby were waitresses. Margaret Kirby is in her 90s now,
but there’s five generations of Kirbys–starting with Margaret–that have worked
here. And Lena Hall, she worked as a cook. Larry Bailey–still here–worked on
the drive.” He rattles off names, conjuring up the memories of not merely employees
but significant people.
“I never planned on staying here so long,” says Liz Hunter, who’s been working
at the Dixie in one capacity or another for 23 years. “And I wouldn’t have either,
except for the Beelers. They just treated everyone like equals.
“They made it a pretty special place to work. They’d take care of people,
not just employees either. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Chuck take
money out of his own pocket to help a driver that needed a hand.”
The Dixie holds special meaning for Hunter: it’s where she met her husband,
Dan. “There was always a policy that we couldn’t date other employees or we
couldn’t go out with truck drivers,” she says. “Dan came here as an accountant,
and when we decided we wanted to be more than friends we went and asked. We
decided if they wouldn’t let us date one of us would resign. But they told us
to go ahead and they were happy for us.
“Dan worked here as an accountant, but he always wanted to drive a truck.
We’re married now, and Dan got his dream. He drives a truck and still works
part-time with the books.”
So Liz Hunter is now going out with someone who is both an employee and a
truck driver. Though this violates the rules on two counts, the Beelers have
always been ready to put people before the rules and the immediate concerns
of business.
“We never let anybody get stranded,” Chuck says. “Just as a matter of policy
we tried to help out wherever we could. We made arrangements with a local church,
and some of our people were always directly involved when someone needed a hand.
Nelva would quite often take people to her home if they needed a place to stay.
I remember a couple came through on their honeymoon one time. They broke down
and had no place to go. Nelva took them to her house and put them up and fed
them until they could get going again. I guess, in a way, they spent their honeymoon
at the Dixie.
“And I don’t know how many times we had runaway children come through. They’d
get stopped here and get scared and we’d look after them until we could get
in touch with their parents or the local authorities.
“One way or another, we just meant to help people out,” Chuck says. “There
was a guy in here last month on the Fourth of July. He told me that he’d been
in here 35 years ago on the Fourth of July. He said he had no money and we fed
him and his family and filled his tank and took his license as collateral until
he could send us the money. Course, I didn’t remember him, but I guess it happened.
We never turned anybody down.”
C.J. recalls “the saddest one.”
“A family came through in a sleeper cab–Mom and Dad and two little ones in
the back. They came in and said something was wrong with their baby. They had
fed him in St. Louis and there was something wrong. We went out and found the
baby. Somewhere after St. Louis he had died in the back of that truck. We called
the coroner to take the poor thing. The people had to get back in their truck
and leave without him. We never saw them again.”
C.J. and Chuck look at each other quietly. “It was sad,” Chuck finally says.
“We’ve seen so much here. It’s been a great journey for us. It’s been a good
life. We’ve been blessed to work with so many good people and to know so many
good people through this business.”
Over the years that business was an unqualified success. The Dixie even set
up outposts in Effingham and Tuscola. But times change. On July 31, the Dixie
passed into corporate hands, and the Beelers’ personal touch–and the legacy
of their many loyal employees and customers–will fade. C.J. and Chuck are taking
over the Quick Pic convenience store next to the McDonald’s across the street
from the Dixie, and their pioneering ideas of what a truck stop could be will
be absorbed into a corporate franchise manual. Even the name Dixie Truckers
Home will become a trademarked commodity. Its new owners can stamp the name
cookie-cutter fashion on any business along the laser-straight Interstate 55.
But the true Dixie will take its place in history alongside the fabled Route
66. The true Dixie was all about people, and it served those people well for
more than 75 years. At times it seemed all of life rolled down that road, and
a large share of it stopped in to refuel and get a bite to eat. The people who
stopped were often not even hungry. They were simply tired of going. They came
in for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. Some just needed a place to take
a little rest.
Dixie Chili Recipe
10 lbs ground beef
2 cans diced tomatoes-#10 can
2 cans red beans-#10 can
1/2 cup chili powder
1/4 cup sugar
2 tbs cumin
1 tbs salt
2 tsp black pepper
2 cans tomato juice
1 can V-8 juice
1 lb onion-diced
2 tbs granulated garlic
Brown the ground beef and the onions. Add the diced tomatoes and red beans.
Add the spices. Add the tomato juice and the V-8 juice. Place in six one-gallon
jars; refrigerate.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.
