Pig Hip updates

I’ve started this new thread about the Pig Hip Museum fire and its aftermath for the stories that keep coming in. I also updated the previous thread about the Pig Hip clear into early Wednesday morning.

Today, Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times has some interesting musings about the Pig Hip in his Travel Dispatches blog.

Ernie and his wife Frances — a former Pig Hip waitress — were running errands when the fire broke out and they’re okay. Their spirit is strong and when I called to Broadwell on Tuesday morning they were surrounded by family and friends of Route 66. You can still see Ernie’s pig mailbox from I-55 and that’s a a good sign. The Pig Hip will be back in some form.

Route 66 is a ribbon of small communities and when the groups band together there isn’t much they cannot accomplish. That’s the essence of Route 66. I’m tired of dealing with outsourced phone operators. Route 66 is insourced!

The whole article is excellent.

Also, Peoria Journal-Star columnist Phil Luciano talks about the secret sauce that Ernie Edwards used in his Pig Hip sandwiches. And, Luciano says, Ernie also served baloney:

He’d tell customers that the hog’s left hip made for a tender cut, as a pig always scratched with its right hoof, making that side of the animal tough (not true).

He’d try to sell an old wagon in front of the business, telling newcomers that it had hauled Abe Lincoln’s casket off the funeral train (definitely not true).

Or, he’d regale patrons with the tale of the day a then-unknown Harlan Sanders sauntered in and offered to sell a chicken franchise to Edwards – who turned the tables and invited Sanders to buy a Pig Hip franchise (maybe true?).

The whole thing is worth reading, also.