Iconic Burger Bar's grill goes cold

BRISTOL, Va. – The iconic Bristol restaurant better known as a possible stop on a country music legend’s last road trip served its final meal Wednesday to a couple who share its name.

At 1:15 p.m., Burger Bar owner Sean Hyler carried two Pee-Wee Deluxes, a Move It on Over and a side salad with honey mustard dressing to the newly married Brynn and Spence Burger – and their friend Dean McCall, who have eaten lunch at the restaurant almost every day for the past three years.

“Nostalgic as it is, this is awful,” Brynn Burger said, reflecting on the restaurant’s closing as she bit into her Pee-Wee Deluxe, a mini-cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato. “I don’t know if I want to be a part of this moment.”

McCall had the other Pee-Wee Deluxe and the salad, while Spence Burger had the Move It On Over, a cheeseburger served with barbecue sauce and bacon.

That sandwich shares its name with a song that made country music star Hank Williams famous, climbing into the country Top Five shortly after its 1947
release.

And Williams, in turn, has inadvertently made the Burger Bar famous. Legend has it that Williams was traveling from Montgomery, Ala., to Canton, Ohio, in a blue Cadillac when his chauffeur, Charles Carr, stopped by the Piedmont Avenue eatery on Dec. 31, 1952, to grab a quick bite after filling his tank at a nearby gas station.

On his way inside the restaurant, Carr asked Williams if he wanted anything to eat. Williams, who had two morphine and B-12 shots earlier that day in Knoxville, Tenn., to treat some hiccups, said “No.”

The two men continued their trip until Carr noticed that something seemed wrong with his passenger and stopped at a hospital in Oak Hill, W.Va., where Williams was pronounced dead on Jan. 1, 1953.

“Supposedly, that’s the last time he spoke,” Hyler said of Williams’ decision not to eat at the restaurant. Hyler, who’s owned the restaurant and leased the building for seven years, said the legend has attracted scores of people from all over the country to the restaurant’s 18 seats.

But he also said its one of several conflicting tales of Williams’ last days and, “depending on who you ask, it could be anyplace,” that the country music singer and his chauffeur stopped on that faithful night.

Even Carr is not certain of where he stopped for dinner on his passenger’s last night. In a 1999 phone interview, Williams’ driver told the Bristol Herald Courier that he might very well have been in Bluefield, W.Va., another twin-cities community on the drive between Knoxville and Oak Hill.

“It probably was Bluefield,” Carr said in an interview he had with feature writer Joe Tennis almost a decade ago. “For 40 years I said it was Bristol and that’s where I thought it was.”

But while the Burger Bar’s claim to fame might be up for debate, the fact that it has gathered a loyal following from diners like McCall and the Burgers is not.

Brynn Burger said she, her husband and McCall have always ordered the same meal, and every time they sit down for lunch, McCall tries to steal their pickles.

“I feel like a part of me just died,” Brynn Burger said when Hyler locked the door to his restaurant and scraped grease off his grill one last time. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

When Brynn and Spence got married two months ago, the couple decided they would name the basement of their house “the Burger Bar” and took a few of Hyler’s menus home for the new digs.

Hyler said he was going to miss his loyal customers most of all, and started to tear up as he watched some of them leave while he stood under a dry-erase board claiming the restaurant has been a “Bristol icon since 1948.”

The decision to close the restaurant was “more of a necessity than a choice,” he said, largely due to the down economy.

He said people haven’t been eating out as much and that while the Burger Bar continues to make money, it just hasn’t been enough to justify keeping the restaurant open one more year.

Hyler said he thought about closing the restaurant this time last year, but decided to push on one more year. About three weeks ago, he decided he would not be doing the same through 2010 and that it was time to close the restaurant.

He told his loyal customers the same day. Many of them were shocked by the news, including Sue Henard and Geri Osborne, who order either a Philly Cheese steak with no bread or a cheeseburger with no bread whenever they have lunch.

“When you’ve got the potatoes you don’t need the bread,” Henard said when questioned about her order. Both she and Osborne work out of an office on West State Street and have eaten lunch at the Burger Bar for the past seven years, she said.

“We’re going to miss your cooking,” Henard shouted toward Hyler and his three employees after she paid for her meal and walked out the door.

Hyler shouted back: “And we’re gonna miss you guys.”

gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518