Goodbye! Thank you Kindly

From November of 2007

I used to publish the Sardinia Standard, a broadsheet that came out of Southern Erie County. In November of 2007 Earl's restaurant, a WNY icon for over 50 years closed.  After a lot of convincing and after I published this article we got Earl to reopen early the next year. He remained in business until early this year (January 2012).  This is an article that I wrote and published in the Sardinia Standard in November 2007

Goodbye!  Thank you Kindly

Earl’s Drive in Restaurant-Sardinia Landmark for 52 Years Closes

In November of this year, Earl Northrup announced to his staff and employees at Earl’s Drive in Restaurant, that he was closing up shop.

Earl’s has been one of the iconic places in America

Late in November Earl Northrup closed up shop.  But before he locked that door for the last time, he sat down with the Sardinia Standard and gave a brief interview.

Jay: "Why are you closing?"

Earl: "It has come time in my life when a sense of change has occurred, a sense of direction, and with the loss of my wife, who has been my partner, my business partner since we were 13-14 years old, its just time for me to move on."

I have made a lot of friends and through the years, a lot of loving relationships, people that come fro miles and miles to this place, and I have in turn I have been able to give some comfort food, down on the farm style we like to call it. I have fully enjoyed this all through the years and who knows what will come next, but its time to close. But I am not going to toss in the towel."

Jay:  "Why did you start a restaurant in the first place?"

Earl: "Shortly after my wife and I were married, I took on a job down in East Aurora delivering milk. I loved that job, meeting and getting new customers. I loved it.

I was delivering milk to a little place outside of Wales Center, and they had a little hot dog stand. It was a very exciting place and I liked it. It was next to a summer camp.  I learned that the hot dog stand cost the owner about $50. That excited me, and when I realized I could start my own business for about $50 I knew what I was going to do.  And so I did.

First my wife Marilyn and I opened up a little hot dog stand on Rt. 16. That was in the mid 50’s.  We really liked it and we had a chance to grow a little. So we built this place and opened in 1956.

Preston Rice and his father and brothers helped me build this place."

Jay:  "What is the story behind the country music, the old timey music, the Grande Old Oprey music that has so characterized this restaurant and your life?

Earl: "I had been an admirer of early music, this old time early music from when I was very young. When I was just 6-7 years old. I lived on a farm and in the winter when the snow was so deep, and it was so cold, and after you got the chores done, we would go into the house, pop popcorn and eat apples. Everybody had a cellar full of apples back in those days, and we would just eat and listen to music on the radio for as long as we could.

Radio has a lot of mystery back then,  not like TV that came later where you got pictures and things. Radio had just had mystery and it caught my imagination.

And so I learned to love this old music.

Later I went to a lot of cemeteries and historical archives and did research on some of the people I had listened to. And I became a real fan of music and the radio. I learned how they sold their goods on the radio, and they sold a lot of stuff back then. They sold crates of chicks, tombstones, razor blades, you name it. I bought a crate of baby chicks from a radio program and remember picking it up at the old Arcade Railroad station."

Jay: "Who did you listen to?"

Earl.  "Well, back then there were quite a few.  Hank Williams was a big star, Hank Snow, Bill Monroe, Patsy Cline, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Grandpa Jones. And the list goes on and on."

Jay: "I remember seeing Little Jimmy Dickens here a few years back."

Earl: "yes little Jim was here and a bunch of others. Grandpa Jones from Hee-Haw, and Louisiana Governor Jimmie Davis, who made the song “You are my Sunshine” famous. We had a lot of music here at one time. A lot of it is on our Juke-Box."

Jay: "Tell me why you call Earl’s “The Home of the Fruit Jar Drinkers”

Earl: "Well that goes back to country music as well. In the early days, in the late 20’s there were different old time mountain music groups with names like “The Fruit Jar Drinkers”, “the Skillet Lickers”, “The Possum Hunters” and “The Gully Jumpers”.  These were musical groups and because of early radio they got to be on the radio and I heard them back then.  Later they made records, some of the early recordings. And so I thought it would be good to use one of the names."

Jay: "What’s going to happen next with you and with this place?"

Earl: "Well I am always looking listening and watching. This might be a little teaser, but where my travels are going to take me, I can’t tell you, because I don’t know.  But I am not just going to close up and go away.  I am not built that way."

Jay: "Is there one last word or message that you want to get out to your customers and neighbors that have been with you for so long?"

Earl: "There is one word and phrase that I always have used, and my friends and customers know it, and it doesn’t matter if I am making you lunch, or selling something, or you and I talking, this is one particular thing that is in my mind I think, and this I think is an Earls original trademark.

I never leave anything said or done with out a “thanks kindly”.

Thanks Kindly.  It’s been with me for a million years and I hope that people remember those words forever.  Thanks Kindly folks. Thanks Kindly".

And thank you, Earl. Generations of people have grown up with your place, your food, and your kindness.  We feel a part of your family just as we hope that you feel that you are a part of ours.  Thanks Kindly Earl. You and Marilyn made Sardinia a better place to live and you have made us better people! That will be long remembered.

Inside the restaurant with some of the "founders"

Earl played Santa Claus at the Town's annual Christmas Party for many years. Here is is with Tanner Christ.

One of my Favorite photo's of Earl, in his iconic best, at the Sardinia'Volunteer Fire Departments Annual Fourth of July Carnival at the Town Park, July 4, 2009