The Chuck Wagon Chronicles

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

Although my mother wanted nothing from life but marriage, children, and a home, circumstances beyond her control destroyed that white picket fence dream. She had to adapt, and do what she had not done in two decades—work outside the home.

Her initial two jobs—in the late 1960s and early 1970s—were in restaurants. The first was at the Flight Line Cafeteria, an eatery in a large hanger near the main tarmac of Hill Air Force Base. At the time, we lived on the military installation in Northern Utah. 

Mom’s meager Flight Line earnings helped our family finances. The only fringe benefits were some fleeting but sincere friendships. These provided camaraderie, useful intelligence about my father’s apparent emerging infidelity, and support during the subsequent domestic crisis.

When my parents divorced, my mother found a different job, one that might sustain—rather than just assist—a family. With no college and little job experience, she found work at an Ogden K-Mart strip mall, in a quaint little buffet restaurant called Andy’s Chuck Wagon. 

Andy’s was a classic American buffet…once through the line but all you could eat off of a loaded-up plate. The smorgasbord included three dozen tasty food items such as a salad bar, side dish potatoes or vegetables, carved roast beef or ham, scones, soft drinks, and a dish of soft serve ice cream for dessert. 

Besides delicious food, the restaurant served up a coterie of unusual characters too. 

The hard working/living chain-smoking principal cook perfectly prepared the succulent buffet line dishes, despite her apparent frequent personal struggles which I do not know much about, and probably did not understand very well back then. 

Several male assistants—a mix of school age up-and-comers and blue collar down-and-outers—were the chef’s motley back-of-the-house supporting cast.

The wait staff—almost all young females—consisted primarily (but not exclusively) of Latter-day Saint college age girls hoping to earn a few bucks while searching for their future celestial marriage partners. 

My mother—first as cashier and later as dining room manager—supervised everything beyond the kitchen’s swinging doors. As she did, she met a wide variety of people she may not have otherwise encountered. 

As a preteen and then a teen, I was along for the ride, and met these interesting people too. I did not know any of them very long, but I remember some quite well.

One was the restaurant owner, James “Bud” Shepherd. Bud worked as a Union Pacific railroad engineer for 20 years before opening Andy’s Chuck Wagon in 1967. He prospered in both roles, eventually retiring to a beautiful mountain resort home near Breckinridge, Colorado.

Mom and Bud became good friends. They were about the same age, growing up during and just after the Great Depression and World War II. Apart from economic standing, they had much in common and talked the same talk. 

By trusting her with their business, Bud and his wife Joan helped restore some of the self-confidence my mother lost during her unexpected and unpleasant divorce. Mom repaid the favor by doing the job extremely well and becoming a local quasi-celebrity. Lots of people knew the “Lady from Andy’s.”

I called Bud “Mister Shepherd” to his face, but really remember him as “Buick Bud.” He owned a beautiful blue Buick. My mother drove it once in a while too, for business or when her compact car was in the shop. When she did drive the Buick, I’d sit in the plush leather back seat and imagine I was in a chauffeured limousine. 

Bud also trusted Mom enough to let us visit her at the restaurant after hours, while she counted up the day’s receipts and closed up the place. As long as I did not make a mess, the empty cavernous restaurant was my playground. 

I’d squeeze by banquet room dividers, dodge chairs, and hide beneath tables while engaged in imaginary adventures. Sometimes I’d reorganize the mints and chocolate bars in the glass display case by the cash register, convinced my new arrangement showed marketing acumen well beyond my tender age.

Two of Bud Shepherd’s best customers owned a restaurant in their hometown too. Willard and Cora Dillree operated the Kozy Kafe and Motel in nearby Echo, a small town nestled between two canyons and at the junction of two interstate highways. 

Echo witnessed much more than its fair share of Utah history. Indians and trappers trekked through in the early 1800s. The doomed Donner party passed by in August 1846, followed later by Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers. For a time in 1860, the Pony Express rode though, replaced a decade later by the iron horse Union Pacific railroad.

Mom got acquainted with the Dillrees during their regular visits to Andy’s Chuck Wagon. They went there seeking an occasional respite from their own rest stop diner food, but also invited Mom to visit the Echo eating establishment. One weekend, we took them up on the offer.

The Dillrees bought the Kozy Kafe in 1947 and then rebuilt it in 1956. Open 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it served comfort food to hungry and road-weary travelers. Willard ran the restaurant/motel and Cora—an excellent cook—helped supervise the kitchen. 

Doing our visit, we ate lunch in the aptly-named cozy restaurant, and then sampled Cora’s wonderful homemade pie. Afterwards, the Dillrees invited us over to their residence, a double-wide mobile home just a few yards away from the cafe. 

Their home was spotless. We sat in their living room, surrounded by photos of their twenty or so grandchildren and a lovely large wall portrait of the Salt Lake City Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Before long, the adult chatter started to bore me.

I perked up, however, when the Dillrees mentioned their sons’ unusual nicknames—Fat and Smokey—and described how one son ran a local mink and fox fur farm. I’d never heard of such a thing! I wanted to visit, but never did get to see, these unusual and exotic “farm animals.”

On a sad day in September 1977, mother told us Willard had died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 69. (Sadly, his son Fat died the same way about 20 years later, during on-location filming at the cafe for the Roma Downey television show “Touched by an Angel.”)

At Willard’s viewing, a stricken Cora never left his coffin-side. She told us Willard had sensed his end was near, and during several days beforehand ensured all was in order at their work and home. I was amazed—how could one see sudden death coming down the road?

I sure did not see it on the day Mom introduced me to two white haired old ladies—Blanche and Pearl—dressed in their Sunday best and eating lunch together at Andy’s Chuck Wagon. They were very nice women, but what I noticed, of course, was their odd couple appearance. Blanche was short and stout; Pearl was tall and thin. 

I saw them at the restaurant a few other times afterwards. One time they waved me over to say hello and asked about school. It was my last conversation with both together. Within weeks, Blanche had died and Pearl had a stroke.

Mom told me Pearl Kerns had lived a unique life. Before retirement, she worked many years in an office for the U.S. Navy. Apparently, she never married—unusual for Utah—and instead cared for both her parents until they died a few years before I met her. 

She lived alone, and returned to that empty home after her stroke hospitalization, confined to bed most of the time. Once a week, for several weeks, Mom loaded me into the car to check in on Pearl and bring her meals.

Pearl’s house, which she and her mother purchased after her father died, was long and linear—four or five rooms lined up one after the other. Whenever we visited, it was unbearably hot…she kept the heat on high year round. 

I was perplexed how someone could be bedridden and still live alone. The self-reliant Pearl pulled it off. 

She kept a wheelchair near her bed and rigged up a rope to guide and steady her during trips to/from the bathroom or kitchen. Others probably brought her meals too, but she did not seem to eat much. She just liked being home again.

Pearl did not sleep very well, so she listened all night to the Herb Jepko Nitecap Show. Jepko, from Utah’s KSL radio, was the first talk show host to do a nationally syndicated, satellite-delivered program. It seems Pearl was not the only isolated insomniac who needed gentle nocturnal company.

None of these friendships described above lasted very long. Mom’s unexpected divorce may have rendered threadbare her faith in the fabric of personal connections. Perhaps this made her more skilled at starting friendships than at sustaining them.

Mom worked well with Bud Shepherd, but did not enjoy the same camaraderie with his successor. After several years working at Andy’s Chuck Wagon, she moved on to try other jobs with evenings and Sundays off.

We rarely saw Cora Dillree after Willard’s funeral. She may not have gone to the Ogden restaurant much anymore, Her son Fat took over the family business. Cora survived until 2004, outliving three of her sons as well as her family’s ownership of the Kozy Cafe. 

Pearl Kerns died in 1982, still home alone and debilitated by her stroke. We lost touch with her when Mom moved across town for another job, and I went away to college.

A brief friendship is not always short on meaning. Even transitory encounters at life’s crossroads can be memorable, notwithstanding the many differences in direction or destination for those found there.

On rugged and untamed nineteenth century trails, the iconic chuck wagon of the old American West brought diverse people together for a few moments of rest and fellowship before they discovered their individual destinies. 

A century later, my mother’s own chuck wagon did the very same thing. 

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.