I Own The Barrel in Olney, Illinois

The Olney, Ill Barrel Today

The brother of Joe Decker, the man who built our Saugatuck Barrel, built two matching ones in Olney and Westport, Illinois and operated them for a number of years. The one in Olney, still exists, and has been moved to the property of Mike Doll. Mr. Doll Tells his story below:

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Glenn  Decker and C. D. (Carl)  Decker built the root beer barrel in Olney, Illinois in 1948. And then their father was still alive when they built it. Mr. Decker started out with the barrel and then he built a restaurant in the same lot-- it was a drive-in type restaurant. When he closed that down he turned it into a trailer park and after a number of years he contacted my father, Leo Doll, about demolishing it. And my father went and looked at it and decided he could move it. So he jacked it up and he put it on a low boy and at 5:30- 6 o'clock  in the morning he drove it right down Main Street. We live on the east side of town and the barrel was on the west  side of town so he had to come right down Main Street, but he did it early in the morning before there was any traffic. My father owned some acreage with a cabin on it that an old MD named Dr King had bought back in the 40s. Dr. King used to wake up in the middle of the night and be lonely and get the operator onto the phone to talk to him.  No one lived in the cabin when my dad moved the barrel there, and he made kind of a park out of the property and moved the barrel up there.

We've tried to maintain it over the years. My father passed away when he was 67, so he didn't get to enjoy it too long, but I've tried to keep it going. It's just kind of a private picnic area, and we use it for storage.

I know a little about the building of it, I was told the two brothers and their father built it and they did this particular barrel all by hand. They used the type of planes you see in antique shops that make a tongue and groove board. The bought tongue and grooved boards, but then they took those hand planes and tapered the boards to where they were narrower on each end. I think it's roughly 12 to 14 feet tall. They built it then like a barrel and they put some stainless steel bands around it, and it's still standing.

There was another one that they built a little later over on the Illinois side of the Wabash River near Vincennes, Indiana and they used a router when they built that one. Machined to make the tongue and groove narrow and they didn't do that one by hand. I've not been by that one recently, but they built a building up around that one where it didn't stand out as much because of the building. I'm not sure if it's still standing or not. It about 30 miles away from the original one, I feel like the one I have was the original one. With mine I had to rebuild the inside with wood because the bottom of it had deteriorated and then it kept leaning and I had a lot of electrical lines come and go into it and I wanted to maintain it, I put a post up behind it, an "I" beam post, and pulled it over and put a cable around the top and anchored it to the post, and it's setting more or less behind it so you don't notice it. Then the roof was getting in terrible shape. It drained in the middle, they made the roof slope to the middle and mine is in a woods area so the drain was always plugging up and finally the wood totally deteriorated so I think 6 or so years ago, I just removed the roof and put a flat roof that drained all the way to the back. It originally drained in the middle and had a pipe that came down and went over the side and went out of the thing, and I made it more like a conventional roof and made it drain out the back.

I'm going to say it was probably in the late 50s or early 60s when we moved it and I think it was built either in the late 40s to early 50s. A friend of mine who is 5 to 6 years older than I am talked about going out there and buying a root beer and talking to the curb hops, the girls that served it back when he was in high school. I graduated from high school in 55, and I think he graduated from high school in 1950 so that's what makes me think it was built in the late 40s. The same fellow that I know that I said went there in high school,  he was a good friend of the original owner and he opened a bar here and they wanted to have draft beer and they ended up getting the glass mugs from the barrel and they used them in their bar to serve beer.  I didn't get any of the mugs, or also the metal trays that you roll up the window and set on the door. I wish I had thought to get some at the time.

The two they had down here they called them Wally's Root Beer Barrel, because Carl Decker's wife was named Wally. When my father moved it, it was no longer being used and it was sitting in the corner of a trailer park. My father had moved some small buildings and homes and small houses, so he just jacked it up and slid it on a low boy and moved it out. At the time I didn't live here, but I built a new home here in 73-74, so today I live basically across the driveway from the barrel. We are back off the highway about 5-600 feet and there's still the little white cabin that Dr. King used in the 40s.

Chocoholic Mystery Writer JoAnna Carl "Remembers"

Eve K. Sandstrom, writing under the pen name JoAnna Carl, is the author of a wonderful series of "Chocoholic Mysteries" many of which use the Saugatuck-Douglas area for inspiration. Two of these books mention the Root Beer Barrel. Former owner Bonnie Verwys  went through "The Chocolate Frog" and marked almost 40 pages where the Barrel is mentioned. Her works may be found at: http://www.joannacarl.com/

Here are her "memories" of the barrel.

 

Dear Chris,

I wish I could be more helpful! Frankly, my first visit to southwestern Michigan was in 1960, and I have no recollection at all of the Root Beer Barrel as a working establishment. One of the blogs says it was in operation until the mid-1970s, so this amazes me. My only excuse is that the Sandstrom cottage is at Pier Cove, and our usual route to Douglas didn't pass the barrel. Plus we had young children. Our visits in those days were never more than for a week or ten days, and activities centered on the beach. A trip to Saugatuck meant shopping for groceries or washing clothes.

Now that my husband and I are retired -- sort of -- we have explored Saugatuck and Douglas more extensively. So I had seen the Root Beer Barrel many times in recent years. When I created Warner Pier and began to write about my imaginary resort town, I  thought of it.  I remembered a similar Root Beer Barrel from my childhood, and I regarded it as a universal landmark of small town America.

Now the odd thing is that I can't track down where I saw this landmark as a
child. It's a real mystery!

Trying to remember, I e-mailed Mary Jo, my childhood best friend, and she says she remembers drinking lots of root beer at the A&W Root Beer stand in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where we went to elementary school, but she can't remember that it had a structure in the shape of a barrel.

My family moved a lot. Did I see one in Oklahoma City? In Tulsa? In Wichita Falls, Texas? In Great Bend, Kansas? In Norman, Oklahoma, where I went to college? In some other town I  merely drove through? I'm stumped.

All I know is that when I first saw the Saugatuck-Douglas Root Beer Barrel, even though it wasn't in operation, I immediately knew what it was. And when I needed a readily identifiable landmark for Lee and Joe to use in The Chocolate Cat Caper, it popped to mind. I do regret having a windstorm blow it into a pile of boards in The Chocolate Frog Frame-Up. Although that disaster fit my plot (Joe is accused of wantonly destroying a historic landmark) I miss the fictional barrel, and I wish it were still part of the setting of the Chocoholic books.

Thanks so much for contacting me. And I'm awed by someone who went through Frog Frame-Up and marked every reference to the Root Beer Barrel! What dedication!

All the best,

Eve K. Sandstrom/JoAnna Carl

Melinda (McVoy) Tempe- 1954 to about 1961

 

Earle and Mary McVoy, c 1953

I'm sure that my sister Bonnie mentioned that my father knew he was seriously ill and decided that he needed a way to help the family get along after he was gone. So that's how my parents ended up buying the root beer barrel. I worked there both as a car hop and inside drawing root beers, washing dishes, etc. but usually not  making the hot dogs- that was someone "higher up", often my brother Michael.   I remember it as a terrific place for me to work during the summer even though the wages were not that great, especially when working inside. The girls always wanted to be outside because they had a chance of getting good tips. The hours were flexible and the social aspect was terrific because we were on the main street to the Oval.

Everything depended on the weather. If the weather was good, then the traffic to and from the Oval would be good, and then business would be good. It was kind of like being on the highway- you always knew who was going to the beach, when they went, and when they came home. That was kind of fun for a teenager.

We had a good quality root beer. It had to be Mason's Root Beer. Inside we had a small barrel with a spigot on it, and that's where the Mason Root Beer syrup was mixed for the carbonation -- we had two big carbonation tanks-one in use & the other  for replacement. Mason's was delicious; I think I've had it recently, so they must still be in business.  (Note from Wikipedia: "Mason's Root Beer was first manufactured in 1947 by Mason & Mason, Inc. of Chicago, Illinois. During its early years, Mason's Root Beer and flavors line were widely distributed in the Midwest as well as some Southern states." It's not currently (2011) produced.)   I don't recall where they shipped the syrup from. My mother was the boss and she had a lot of responsibility- ordering supplies, setting work schedules, keeping records, etc.   I do remember we got the hot dogs from Herrud's. It was a meat packing business in Grand Rapids, which may have been taken over by Swift, possibly? The foot long hot dogs were always top quality- they had to be Herrud's.(Note: The former Herrud later became Thorn Apple's Grand Rapids Division, which manufactured smoked sausages, hot dogs, and luncheon meats.)

I think we must have employed quite a few local girls there. It seemed to be THE summer job.

Also we served Barbeque sandwiches, and they came from Allegan-the Johnson Sandwich Co. They were very good, steamed in their own little oven, and you'd pop them in, 35 cents.  10 cents for the root beer which had to be in a frosted mug.   I'm sure my sister told you about the two freezers. I got mug washing duty quite often, making sure they were clean and disinfected so we met the health department standards, and then they went in the freezers.  Space was very tight inside; you couldn't have any more than three people or you'd be stumbling over each other. Usually there would be one person making the hot dogs & sandwiches (that was often my brother), then there was a cashier getting the order set up, often my mother or I.  And then the third person would take in the dirty trays,  do the washing and stack the mugs in the freezers and also draw the root beer for new orders. The root beer had to settle because of the foam in that particular root beer. So you'd draw the root beer and do something else and then go back and top it off a bit. Oh, yeah, I'm almost ready to go back to work- it sounds like fun again!

The root beer floats were 20 cents I think, foot longs 35 cents, like the barbeque sandwiches. We did sell bags of potato chips. There was a salesman, and I believe his name was Pat Berensten (sp?) from South Haven who delivered supplies like coffee, napkins, paper to wrap the dogs, etc.

I remember that my brother had to put some supports around those staves because with the humidity they were starting to warp. My mother sold the barrel to  Mr. Race in about 1961 or 62, and, in fact, I managed for him. I was doing both inside and outside duty for a summer.

I remember being in Germany, years and years ago, and I recall coming upon a barrel, very similar to this one, only a little smaller,  but that was the first one that I had ever seen like our Barrel. It made quite an impact, and I suspect that this one is quite unique.