the hotel butler
There isn’t a small town in Oklahoma, or in the US, that doesn’t have some kind of history, and Pryor, Oklahoma is no exception. Tonight I want to tell you about a small hotel that once stood on the north side of Main Street in Pryor, Oklahoma. But before I do, I need to introduce you to a couple of people and tell you about another place.
Two years have passed since I joined Will Rogers Toastmasters. I still remember that night, and when I walked through that door, one of the first people I met was a young man named Ray Huang. Ray is a professional with short dark hair, always with a smile on his face and very talkative. He sat right there.
I was thinking it was my second or third meeting when I sat down next to her and struck up a conversation. And at some point in our conversation, Ray told me that he was from Taiwan and I told him that I was from Pryor, Oklahoma. When he heard me mention those two words, Pryor, Oklahoma, he said, “What’s that place everyone’s talking about, that restaurant? It’s on that main street that goes by!”
I let my mind wander through a whole list of restaurants in Pryor, mostly fast food joints, and the only one that came to mind was Thomas’s Restaurant. And when I mentioned that name, Ray was like, “Yeah, that’s it! I’ve always wanted to go there and have lunch!”
Well, I’m sorry to say that restaurant caught fire just a few weeks after our conversation and burned to the ground. Some of those who lived there, who seemed to know about it, said, “They’ll never save that building. There’s too much grease in there. It’s in every corner, nook and cranny, every crack!”
And I guess they were right, because fire trucks were set up on the street, blocking Highway 69 for a mile in both directions. They poured water on that fire for two hours straight… and they never put it out.
Afterward, all that was left was a corner of an exterior wall halfway up, and the rest were simply the charred remains of what was once a fifty-five-year-old Oklahoma landmark.
But I’m happy to say that they rebuilt that restaurant and opened its doors just a few months ago. And if you don’t know, the restaurant was and is an early fifties-style diner, with a long U-shaped bar extending from the door. There is a row of stools on either side of the bar and a row of booths positioned along each of the two exterior walls, separated from the stools by a few tables and chairs. Before the fire there were no tables or chairs, just a narrow hallway with a dining room in the back to catch the overflow crowd.
I was there about two weeks ago, on a Friday morning for breakfast, and sat at the bar next to a man named John Wilkerson. Mr. Wilkerson was seated on the north side of the bar, about halfway to the left as he entered the building.
Because of his shaved head, Mr. Wilkerson might not look like him to the average person, but he is a professional man. He was dressed in a nice coat and tie with matching pants and before I sat down I noticed a wool hat hanging from a single hook on a coat rack attached to one of the booths behind him.
I complimented him on his outfit and he said I was colorblind; that he would not distinguish one color from the next; that his wife took care of all that, and she always took her clothes out every night before she went to bed.
Mr. Wilkerson went on to say that he has lived in Pryor his entire life and that his parents came to Oklahoma from Brush Creek, Tennessee. Some time after his family moved to Oklahoma, he said the Oklahoma governor appointed his father as superintendent of the Whitaker Children’s Home in Pryor. “And that’s where I was born and we lived there until I was three years old,” Mr. Wilkerson continued.
Mr. Wilkerson is now seventy-eight years old and continues his father’s businesses and interests, multiplying them many times over what his father left him when he passed away several years before.
“I’ve enjoyed living all these years in Pryor, Oklahoma, working with the people and visiting.” he continued. But what I have enjoyed most is walking down that main street with my father to the Butler Hotel, where we had lunch together. The Butler Hotel was located on the north side of Graham, in the middle of the first block east of Highway 69.”
“Of course the 1942 tornado destroyed everything,” continued Mr. Wilkerson, “but before that, I remember a big screen door at the entrance and inside was the hotel lobby. There was a comfortable chair, a couple of divans and a sofa spaced out on a mostly white tile floor.There was also some black tile in there and the tile floor stretched from the front door to the back of the dining room.
At the back of the lobby was a counter where you could rent a room for the night or pay for a meal. Part of the counter was a glass box with some candy inside, some licorice sticks, pacifiers, and other hard candy, and to the left of the counter were some steps that led up to the second floor where there were several rooms for rent. To the right of the counter was a hallway that led to the dining room.
There was another thing out front that caught my interest,” John said, “and it was a tall, skinny metal pole with a perch on top, and there sat a big, old, green and yellow parrot.
Those times we were there, Mr. Wilkerson said his dad would always stop at the counter and talk to the person on duty for a minute and then we’d go back to the dining room.
In the dining room there were several small square tables covered with white tablecloths. In each place there were several cutlery and a folded white cloth napkin. In the middle of the table were salt and pepper shakers, a sugar dispenser, and above the tables were one or more ceiling fans. My dad and I would sit at one of those tables and order a plate of food and while the food was being prepared I would get up from my chair and go out to the patio.
At the rear of the dining room, facing the patio, were a pair of swinging doors, not exactly like bar doors, but like screen doors. Mr. Wilkerson said he would make his way through those two doors to where there was a goldfish pond built into the concrete floor. There he would lie on his stomach with his chin in his hands and watch several goldfish swimming in the pool.
Soon his dad was yelling at him, “John, your food is getting cold,” and Mr. Wilkerson said he was getting up and joining his dad at the table. Then, once they finished their meal, Mr. Wilkerson said that he and his dad would put their napkins back on the table and head back to the hall.
At that point, Mr. Wilkerson put down his fork next to his plate, a plate of half-eaten eggs and bacon, French fries, a small bowl of gravy, and a cracker. And with a distant look that he remembered in his eyes, he turned to me. “Ben, I’ve always loved eating there with my dad,” he said, “but what I remember most about the Butler Hotel is that parrot.”
“Some time after we had paid for our meal and Dad had left two cents for those who worked in the kitchen and dining room and had bought me a black cherry from the candy box, sometime before we walked out the front door. I walk back to the street and as we walk across that white tile floor towards the exit somewhere I hear that big old parrot squawk a couple of times like it’s clearing its throat on the sidewalk that parrot always said. .. Thank you!
