“Stopping For Lunch”

Not many miles from our humble abode is Newell’s Truckstop, a Newton, Kansas waystation built in 1940. Originally a single brick building on old highway 81, the founders relocated in 1981 to exit 31 on I-135. Featuring a motel, café, travel store, and service garage, it was generating ten million dollars a year by 1996.

But just as no good deed ever goes unpunished, no great business ever goes as planned.

The family sold it to Pilot/Flying J in 2021, the café quickly became a ghost of its former self, and the travel store switched inventories from truck parts and work clothes to plastic spoons and stuffed animals. We’ve seen this process repeat itself over and over across the fruited plain these past twenty years. 

 But it got me to thinking. Oh, I know, that’s a problem most days, but the subject is lunch and receipts are the evidence. You can stop at the Dixie, located in Mclean, Illinois, and still get a hefty breakfast without a second mortgage. Located alongside I-55 at exit 145, The Dixie has been leaving the light on since 1928. 

Founded by J.P. Walters and John Geske along the original Route 66, they wanted truckers to know it was a safe place to get a great meal. Even after 66 bit the dust, the restaurant and truckstop became a working museum dedicated to the American trucker. Considered the oldest truckstop in the U.S., it was purchased in 2012 by the Road Ranger chain. While that diminished its historical significance, the Dixie Café still serves drivers every day.

 In Breezewood, Pennsylvania at the intersection of I-70 and I-76, there’s a TA truckstop with terrible parking, endless walking, and difficult egress, but the café still has pretty good food. There’s plenty of fast-food joints within a block or two, but you’d be on a walker before you get to your order.

It’s where I got my lights punched out, avoiding a potentially worse beating, but just know I could sympathize with the Snowman before he met up with Bandit. Then I drove my load of auto parts to Wisconsin without my glasses. Even God wouldn’t exhale until I was sitting in the exam chair of a Madison optometrist. 

Truckstop cafes in Bakersfield, Fargo, and Bloomsbury went downhill after Conoco and British Petroleum bought them out, but those in the province of Ontario, Ringold, Georgia, and Bloomington, Illinois actually got better. While I can acknowledge that the restaurant business is flakier than real estate rentals, there’s no logical explanation for a parking lot filled with a hundred trucks and a café sitting empty. 

Well, maybe there is an explanation, because a growing number of drivers rely on junk—I mean, fast—food and most OTR rigs have fridges and microwaves. In addition, there’s a growing number of drivers going months without human interaction. It’s the same gaunt look of isolated gamers. Maybe they’re one and the same!

 Back in Newton, Kansas, the iconic Newell’s truckstop has gone through more plastic surgery than the Kardashian clan. There’s nowhere to park this time of night, no place to eat, and nothing to do, but the coffee bar has six flavors of cappuccino. What more could you ask? Well, I’d look for a cup of plain ol’ coffee, but in the spirit of PFJ’s everywhere, that urn is empty!