TREMONT, Ill. (AP) - When fire ripped through the interior of the Yokel Inn in Tremont Feb. 21, it took with it some of the last memories of its longtime owner, Art Lang.
For his wife, Ginny, the fire was nothing new. A 1982 blaze similarly destroyed the restaurant where she worked with her family every day since 1965.
This time, however, she’d have to rebuild without the love and support of her husband, who died from pancreatic cancer in October. Art Lang was 90 years old.
“What do you do?” Ginny ruminated from a plastic chair in the Yokel’s parking lot Wednesday. “You take whatever they hand you, you try to handle it. Sometimes I get aggravated, sometimes I don’t.”
From the road, the damage is almost undetectable. The Yokel’s exterior bore almost no major damage, save a few cosmetic burns. Meanwhile, a consistent rotation of friends and family pop into the parking lot to offer kind words and condolences to Ginny, their conversation offering temporary relief in what are undoubtedly painful times.
“Hey there. ’scuse me, you know where I can get a beer around here?” one jokes from his truck to the Lang family matriarch.
“You tell me. Definitely not here,” Ginny jokes back.
From an outsider’s view, it’s business as usual at the Yokel.
Inside is a different story. All that was spared by the fire, the cause of which is still undetermined, are a few now-black saltshakers, a bottle or two of Bombay gin and, to Ginny’s adoration, a photo of Art with two of her grandchildren that she’d previously assumed destroyed.
She smiles as she wipes ash from the picture of her late husband.
After marrying Art in 1965, Ginny closed her beauty shop in Pekin and moved to Tremont. She still remembers the days when the Yokel served $1 chicken baskets and $6 sirloins. Country Western nights were her favorite - “that’s my music” - and she still maintained an apartment in the basement until February.
Her youngest son, to whom Ginny loving refers to as “Little” Art, has similar memories of growing up there.
“It definitely taught us to have thick skin,” he said. “I had a ball growing up around it. I have a lot of people skills from having to put up with people all those years.”
As a child, older customers would try to bribe him into yelling curse words from atop the bar.
“I made a lot of money,” he said.
It was “Little” Art who took over at the Yokel when his father first became sick last year. “Big” Art, as he was known by family, fought as hard as he could to keep the Yokel open, but after a yearlong battle with cancer that robbed him of more than 100 pounds, he no longer had the strength.
“He was a very stubborn old man,” Ginny said. “He fought that cancer as hard as he could.”
That stubbornness - or as some might call it, “resilience” - seems to typify “Little” Art and his mother. Despite the countless damage to their family’s restaurant, they never seem to stop laughing. Their spirits are high, their optimism unwavering.
Talking to friends and family, Art stops to pick up old water bottles and beer cans in the Yokel’s parking lot - a somewhat odd practice, given the charred, dust-filled building that sits only a few feet away. But if rebuilding his father’s restaurant begins with tossing spare trash found in the parking lot, he’s ready to start.
So too is Ginny. The plan, they said, is to have the Yokel reopened by September. Art was hoping to finish by August, but said September is more realistic.
As for his mother, she said she’ll be happy just to see it restored one last time.
“I just hope I can put it back before I leave this world. At 82, you never know. You could be gone tomorrow.”
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Source: Pekin Daily Times, https://bit.ly/1WrzuLF
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Information from: Pekin Daily Times, https://www.pekintimes.com
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