Nick Gallas Remembers -Early 60s to 67

 

I am so excited that they are going to save the barrel. I am so happy.

When the Center for the Arts was opening, Peggy Boyce suggested they use it for the box office and nobody would hear of it. That would have been really neat, but nobody was interested. They thought that was tacky.  

I think they had the dates wrong. I know that my parents, George and Jo Ann Gallas, ha had it into the 60s, like 64, 65, 66. The article in the Commercial Record had it that it was built in 1946. I think it was later than that. My parents had a golf driving range on the corner across from West Shore in that big field there, right next to where the barrel is. I can remember as a little tiny girl we watched the barrel be built from our driving range. They came and the put the bands around it and then they bent the wood over these bands and I can remember watching it be built, but it had to be after 1946, I don't think it was that early. My mother and I sat there and watched them and we were so amazed at the way they bent the wood, they had put like a frame and then they bent the wood up. And at that time it was varnished it wasn't painted like it is now. It looked like a real barrel.  We always felt a special kinship for the barrel because we watched it be born.

And my parents had it a couple years, I was trying to think… I know that in 65 they had it. The Commercial Record article said it was operated into the 50s, and I'm thinking it was into the mid to late 60s. I know after my parents Woody Wilson bought it. So they had it a few years after that. Their daughter Suzie Capillo has a cottage on Park street, she lives somewhere in Illinois. Her parents bought it after my parents had it.  Before my parents the McVoys had it.

I remember as a little child stopping for foot longs and it was the biggest treat. I don't know if my parents bought it from the McVoys. My parents didn't have it too many years, I think it was in 1965 that I was a car hop. Dick Snyder, a  pharmacist at the drug store with Jim Christensen, his foster daughter Margie Lenheer, she was also a car hop while I was there.

Marcia Tucker, she lives on the lake shore, she was like the manager. I think she worked there the entire time my parents had it. And I think that she got to be like an assistant manager. She was at the barrel a lot. She would know the dates that she worked there.

One funny story…. my mother was 5 feet tall, and they used a freezer, kind of like a coffin, to put the mugs in,  the root beer mugs so that they would be frosted. One night there was one mug left and my  mother reached in to get the mug out and she fell in. She screamed and my father looked over to see her legs sticking out of the freezer and her head down in and she can't get out. So that was a funny story we always laughed about.

I remember that before my parents owned it, stopping at the barrel was the biggest treat in the world as a child. Oh my goodness, to get a foot long was like the best thing and it was just such a tragedy when it closed.  I see it sitting there ready to fall down and, oh my goodness, it just breaks my heart.

We used to come from Kentucky to Saugatuck every  summer,  and I got  a Christmas card from a girl who lived across the street from me there. She said "What about the barrel, is it still there, I remember so much helping out there." They, I guess,  came to visit us in Saugatuck, she was a few years younger than me and I guess she came and was a car hop too. She mentioned the barrel this year, out of the blue, so I know it's just beloved by everybody.

Nicki Gallas, Jan 2011