The Pancake Hut restaurant in Carthage, Missouri, will hold a homecoming celebration on Friday of its recently restored Chicago Band Box animated music box.
According to the Joplin Globe, the restaurant at 301 S. Garrison Ave. (aka Route 66) will hold the celebration from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. that day. The Pancake Hut is next door to the iconic Boots Court motel.
More about the restaurant owner Wanda Baugh’s artifact from the early 1950s:
A curtain is closed when the machine is off. When activated, the curtain opens and seven band members, wearing blue jackets, play their instruments, while a puppet singer in a white tuxedo bobs his head in front of an NBC microphone.
Baugh said the Band Box looked better than she ever remembered it when Brad Frank, a restorer from Los Angeles, delivered it to the restaurant on Friday, Sept. 30. […]
Baugh said she’s been keeping the Band Box under wraps while she tries to have a musical system installed in the restaurant to play while the puppets in the box move.
The newspaper also talked to Frank about his restoration, including removing years of cooking grease and dust from it:
“That was probably the single biggest problem was to get the cooking grease off the wood so you could actually paint it and the paint would actually stick to it,” Frank said in a telephone interview on Monday. “It was basically 100% disassembled down to a bare cabinet. The bender board on the top that has the marquee that says Chicago Coins was replaced along with some other pieces. The cabinet was all sanded down and the bad areas were filled with automotive Bondo and sanded and painted.” […]
Frank repainted the puppets after they were delivered and each one has its unique expression and personality.
He rewired the electrical system and reinstalled the mechanisms that move in the Band Box.
Frank said the Chicago Coin Company manufactured up to 5,000 Band Boxes between 1950 and 1952. He said fewer than 500 remain, and he said the Pancake Hut’s Band Box is a rare, first-production model.
The Pancake Hut still has an online donation box, if you wish to contribute.
The Pancake Hut’s Chicago Band Box was shipped earlier this summer to California for restoration by Frank.
According to Route 66 Times, the restaurant’s Band-Box once sat at Red’s Cafe near the corner of Garrison Avenue (aka Route 66) and Central, just steps from the Boots Court. The Band-Box has been in the Pancake Hut since 1979.
(Wanda Baugh of the Pancake Hut with her restored Chicago Band Box via Facebook)