‘Everybody wants their saloon back’

SPANGLE – Pots of purple petunias still hang from the porch of the Spangle Saloon, 145 N. Main, and the sign hanging from the door invites visitors to “Scramble on in.”

From the outside, the neighborhood watering hole looks like it always has, except for the heavy duty lock securing the front door.

The lock has been on the door since June 2, when a grease fire in the kitchen damaged the saloon.

“This was always the hub,” said Linda Zimmerman, the owner of the tavern for the last 2 1/2 years. She said that the Spangle Saloon was always the place where neighbors in this town of about 240 people met to exchange gossip. During times of trouble, such as last winter’s snowstorm, people would gather to get water or see if anyone in the town needed help.

Lori Stanifer, the bartender and cook on duty the day of the fire, said she came in about 9 a.m. and turned on all of the equipment in the kitchen as she usually does.

She was doing some more prep work when she heard a loud noise. She looked up and the kitchen was on fire.

The fire started on the stove and the suppression system kicked in to put it out. But years ago, someone had drilled a hole in the stove near the wall and the fire moved in through the hole and inside the wall. It burned up the kitchen and a couple of layers of false ceilings of the building that has stood there for about 108 years.

Stanifer was able to get out of the building and call 911 before calling Zimmerman, who works during the day as an assistant in the office of Maxey Law.

Zimmerman bought the saloon after working nights there for several years. She said she worked for a few owners over the years and thought it would be nice to run it herself.

She said it had been a little rundown, but she has worked hard to have consistent hours of operation, expand the menu and fix the place up a little.

“I guess we get to do it again,” she said.

At the time of the fire, the saloon, which employs five people, had started steak nights on Thursdays and had expanded into breakfast in January.

Zimmerman said they were selling 100 to 150 pounds of roasted chicken in a week and some nights sold 70 to 80 steaks.

Now that the kitchen has been destroyed, there are plans in the works to expand it to better accommodate the volume of business.

“We wanted to (before the fire). This isn’t the way we wanted to do it,” Zimmerman said of the remodel.

The building once served as a bank. In fact, the black and white tile at the front entrance still says “State Bank of Spangle.” Zimmerman said she wants to do everything she can to preserve it.

Since the fire, Zimmerman’s partner, Dennis Wederspahn, has been pulling out the furnace and the duct work from the building. He found deposit slips in the attic from 1924, where the bank customer had the option of entering in how much gold, silver and currency he or she wanted to deposit.

The old vault is the saloon’s walk-in cooler, and some of the original hinges from the bank’s era are still on the door jam.

Zimmerman said the residents of the town have been stopping by to see when the saloon will re-open. Since the fire, there is only one other restaurant in Spangle, the Harvester.

A few days ago, Zimmerman and Wederspahn found a note taped to the front door from someone named Sparky asking for the saloon to open as soon as it can.

“Everybody wants their saloon back,” Zimmerman said.

And Zimmerman does, too. She said she loves the people who visit the tavern on a regular basis.

“The people,” she said, “we’ve met all makes and models, I tell you.”

Zimmerman said although she has always known that neighbors help neighbors in Spangle, she was certainly grateful for all of her friends who came to her rescue when she needed it.

She’s been storing a lot of the tavern’s furniture and dishes in the other two sections of the building owned by Mike Cassell. They also have extension cords traveling over to Cassell’s side of the building because the electricity has been turned off.

When it was safe for the two of them to re-enter the building after the fire, Zimmerman and Wederspahn noticed that their freezers were missing. They looked out back for them and figured the food inside would be lost forever, but they weren’t there. They later learned someone had taken them to a different location and plugged them in to save the food.

At the end of the day of the fire, everyone was exhausted. Wederspahn, as a thank-you to their friends, opened up the coolers full of beer and let the neighbors have a couple.

“Thank God nobody’s hurt,” Zimmerman said.

The Fourth of July won’t be the same for the two this year. Although the tavern doesn’t usually have any specific activities during the holiday, Zimmerman said many people flock to Spangle because fireworks are still legal.

“The town fills up fast,” she said. The Fourth of July is usually a day of selling chicken to go and hamburgers to folks planning picnics in the area.

Plans are under way to fix the saloon as soon as possible, and Zimmerman said they hope to re-open sometime in the middle of August.

When they do, Wederspahn has plans for a celebration. The front porch will be sectioned off for a beer garden, and he wants to get a whole pig to roast. They are calling it Pig on the Porch.

They want to have music, and someone has plans to set up a documentary about the renovation.

“We’re going to make it fun,” Zimmerman said.

“We have to,” added Wederspahn.