The Snack Shack
By Dr. Jim Foster
“Dusty” Roads opened the Snack Shack in the Spring of 1948. Just before that, Ralph Branscomb had a potato chip factory in the building. Eddie Ertel, Laura Ruth Dickerson, Marjorie Doyle, and I worked there that first summer. We made our own ice cream and stored excess inventory across the street at Ted Barkelew’s Locker (Dusty’s Father -in-law). We served every kind of ice cream concoction we could dream up. We served a few quick sandwiches, like ham salad and pimento cheese. Dusty got an FM radio and we put a speaker outside (only way you could get Cardinal ball games after 6:00 P.M.) Cars would line both sides of the street to listen to ball games. Dusty hired Alfred Cadwell as a car hop and he kept us busy inside. The Snack Shack was only in existence for probably less than ten years. Had (I think) 3 different owners in that period. In that time frame, it was the center of activity for all the teenagers and some adults also. A year or two after it opened, the back room was made into a dance floor with a juke box. Lots of girls taught their boyfriends how to dance there. Great memories. After Dusty Roads, Mr. & Mrs. Tom Philliber ran it. They sold it to a family by the name of Marsh. I think Marsh’s were the last to run it.” Tom Crawford, Shelbina, Missouri October 22nd, 2015
When the one-room Prairie School house, located 3 ½ miles northwest of Shelbina, Missouri closed in 1953, my father was the last one through the front door as students began their new studies in the town of Shelbina. The days of the one room schools in Shelby County, Missouri were now ending and for my father it was the beginning of his new school memories at the Shelbina High School. It also meant relying on others for transportation from the family farm to town and back for school functions.
My father can easily recall one Saturday night in January when he was a seventh-grade student who had watched the winning shot being made by one of the players Shelbina Indians men’s basketball team to the dismay of the visiting team that came from the west into Shelby County to seek a victory in this annual high school tournament. The Indians victory was quickly celebrated and that star player who made the winning basket left the school to find that the visiting team was waiting for him and gave him a savage beating.
After the game, the car that my father traveled in was parked in front of the Snack Shack along the south side of West Walnut Street in Shelbina. The wooden building was located where the west lumber bay is now located today at Simpson Building Supply. The older male driver told my father to sit and wait as he would be back soon. The thoughts of those hamburgers, Lay-brand potato chips and a cold bottle of Coke to wash them down with were now out of reach as the Snack Shack was closed for the evening.
During this time in the 1950s, Highway 36 did not bypass Shelbina to the north as it does today. The original two-lane version was an important part of the business district of Shelbina that the visiting team was forced to travel west to get home. They made the journey through the tiny town of Lentner and then on to Clarence where the bus driver stopped at the popular Hardy’s restaurant where the team sat and enjoyed a meal that may have helped to offset their loss. They had no idea that several pairs of eyes were watching them through the windows waiting to give them a parting gift.
On the Monday morning following the big game, an assembly was called by the Shelbina School Superintendent who told his audience of students and school employees of a call that he received from the superintendent of the school whose visiting team received a beating at the Hardy’s restaurant parking lot and that whoever was responsible shouldn’t have spanked the bus driver as they had done in settling the score with the team. The bulk of the audience had no idea what had happened with one exception…….
Thank you to Tom Crawford and Curtis Foster for their memories of our history that includes the year of 1957 when that FM radio played, “Let’s rock, Everybody’s let’s rock!” and the kids were dancin to the tune of Mr. Elvis Presley singin “Jail House Rock.”
