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The Great American Saloon Series
The Farmer’s Inn
A haunted landmark gets a new lease on life.
“Of all the bewildering things about a new country,” wrote the novelist Willa Cather, “the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.” Willa, a Nebraska import, and I are kindred spirits in that respect. Growing up on the prairie there were precious few landmarks by which to orient one’s self: a leaning weathered barn here, a long-defunct grain elevator there. When I was a youth, one of the more familiar landmarks was the Farmer’s Inn, a solitary structure looming above the flatlands at the junction of IL Route 158 and Triple Lakes Road. The two-story red brick building looks the same as when it marked the half-way point to grandmother’s house in south St. Louis. That is to say, it looks the same as the day it was built in 1896.
Incredibly, because for the past decade the Inn has undergone an identity crisis, of sorts. After sitting idle for years, its upper floor littered with pigeon droppings and its muddy cellar under four feet of water, the Inn was resurrected briefly as a chic, “upscale restaurant in a country setting.” The tony eatery lasted less than a year, done in by mediocre reviews and local indifference. It was probably one of the worst business decisions since Decca Records turned down the Beatles. If there was an upside, it was that the owner, a real estate guru from St. Louis, refinished the oak floors, replaced the antiquated plumbing and electrical systems, and remodeled the bar and dining rooms.
Soon after, a pair of hip urban foodies specializing in local, seasonal produce, redubbed the restaurant “The Farmer’s Inn & Prairie Kitchen” and tried to make a go of it, only to fail a few months later.
Most recently, the Inn suffered the humiliation of serving as yet another rural Mexican chophouse. I was rankled — if not riled and roiled — every time we drove past the new sign advertising “Mariachi’s Mexican Restaurant and Cantina.” Nothing against the hard-traveling, hard-working Mexicans who settle here in hopes of a more lucrative life, but one thing this area does not need is another taco and margarita joint.
THE FARMER’S INN WAS built as a stopover for thirsty farmers as they traveled between the small agrarian communities of St. Clair and Monroe counties. In 1910, the good folks at Anheuser-Busch Brewery, no doubt as an incentive to sell their and only their brew, presented the owners with the gorgeous 16-foot bar delivered via horse (sadly not Clydesdale) and wagon. With the exception of a small crack in the mirror behind the bar, the remnant of a bar stool tossed in anger that managed to get past the protective arms of the proprietor, the bar area is unchanged from a century ago.
During prohibition, the Inn did duty as a general store. After the Drys had gotten their comeuppance, another local man, Otto Rodemich, re-opened the Inn as a restaurant and bar. (Otto’s stern Teutonic visage looks out at the diner from the cover of the current menu.) Old Otto, I’m guessing at his wife’s insistence, opened a dance hall on the second floor, which soon became the place to be on Friday nights during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The Inn changed hands twice more before becoming little more than a pigeon coop in the nineties.
These days, there are woefully few farmers to be seen at the Farmer’s Inn. Most of the nearby hayfields have been sold off piecemeal to big time developers from far off West St. Louis County, and the rich soil has been smothered with fescue and asphalt. Where corn and beans once ripened there grow dreary suburban McMansions linking neighboring villages. The garrulous inhabitants of these cookie cutter homes now park themselves on the stools once occupied by stoic dairy and pig farmers. Talk of crops and the weather has given way to the inane braggadocio of sports fans and overindulgent parents.
The Inn’s latest owner, Todd Shylanski, a computer programmer in mid-life mode, is a converted traditionalist and a localist, so the Inn utilizes a good deal of produce fresh from the few nearby family farms. Todd’s wife Kelley has decorated the walls with the jerseys of local high school sports teams and faded family photographs. Over draft beers and St. Louis-style pizza Todd tells us that he is dead certain the Inn is haunted, doubtless by the ghosts of its former inhabitants, some of whom can be heard mounting the rickety staircase, noodling on an upstairs piano, or fleetingly glimpsed gliding between rooms.
I can’t say as I blame them. If I had my druthers I wouldn’t leave the Farmer’s Inn either.
About the Author
Christopher Orlet writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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Kitty | 5.24.12 @ 6:23AM
What is St. Louis-style pizza?
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.24.12 @ 7:40AM
My thought as I read it as well.
JP| 5.24.12 @ 10:03AM
I suppose its pizza drenched in Bush Lite.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.24.12 @ 11:27AM
Bush Lite. Is that the name of a beer? I thought it was Bud Lite. I don't drink my beer with the pizza; instead, I down a six-pack before I dig in to the tasty, cheesy treat.
But beer and my BPH don't hit it off to well if you know what I mean.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.24.12 @ 11:49AM
This is yet another example of a fake Albert Constantine Jr. post.
Among the many errors, the real ACJ would have correctly spelled the beer brand as Busch Light, and not have used "to" when "too" is the correct word.
Your lack of skill is beginning to be revealed.
SUBVET| 5.24.12 @ 11:58AM
Hey AL..........Bush Lite is someone who weighes less than 100 lbs.
*k*| 5.24.12 @ 3:18PM
Stop obsessing, Albert. Stop it right now. You're going to end up in the looney bin if you keeep this up. Let it go!
Albert Constantine Jr.| 5.24.12 @ 3:32PM
While I appreciate the concern, I could wind up in the looney bin regardless (or not).
I don't know that it rises to the level of obsession, or if it is more accurately described as something that amuses me.
Now, if I was actually posting all of the AC Jr. posts today, and replying to myself, you might have a case.
Meanwhile, I'll decide when to let it go. If it disturbs you, I recommend that you either skip over what I write, stay away for awhile, or contact the editor with your complaint.
Nonetheless, thank you for your obvious concern.
Mark Shepler| 5.26.12 @ 5:43PM
Well Al, just in case you are nursing an obsession:
"...regardless (or not)." is redundant. Sort of like "whether or not...", etc.
Anything else I can do to help?
Cheers.
Mark| 5.24.12 @ 8:54AM
I'm from St. Louis. It's a thin crusted pizza with the cheese being something called Provel, by definition a mixture of cheddar, swiss and provalone, and popular here. Wikipedia describes it such: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provel_cheese
Personally, I prefer mozzarella instead, and in St. Louis you can always request it instead and hope that you'll get it.
Alan Brooks| 5.24.12 @ 9:44PM
Thirsty, people drink beer because they are thirsty?
Alan Brooks| 5.24.12 @ 9:50PM
"THE FARMER'S INN WAS built as a stopover for thirsty farmers"
Well, come to think of it, dehydration IS a terrible thing.
Appleby| 5.24.12 @ 6:57AM
Over the Canadian Long Weekend, I visited "Tom's Diner" in Lockport NY, which has been in that location for eons. Inside the dining room, one wall contains a mural showing what the street outside looked like when the diner opened -- Endicott Johnson Shoes, J.J. Newberry, and all. It was quite a trip down Memory Lane and a reminder that the World As I Knew It has changed more than once since I was a little girl.
Pepe LaPue| 5.24.12 @ 10:11AM
What a delightful trip down memory lane Much more interesting than Ben Stein's monologues of late.
cicero| 5.24.12 @ 11:34AM
The problem is that the restaraunt trade has changed over the years. Government regulation has made starting your own eatery a nightmare. At best, only 20% of new restaraunts make it past the 2 year mark. The advent of the franchise, where the parent controls the food, and everything is frozen and portioned, has put the lone wolf at a serious disadvantage. Couple that with the insane liquor laws imposed by the Feds on the states (.08 blood alcohol level, and zero tolerance in most venues), make the places you remember as a kid impossible. The more big govt intrudes, and tries to make the wolrd safe from every eventuality, the less flavor our world has.
Petronius| 5.24.12 @ 11:56AM
There are few archetypes remaining in this world of crumbling values. While some of the structures still stand, the founders and proprietors who created these places and molded them into institutions left a call for continuity for us to hear. Keep listening Chris.
The one establishment I would have back again would be Edmunds which dominated the corner of Gravois and Compton with it's distinct rounded stained glass facade and menus shaped like an enormous fish. The specialty of the house was rainbow trout, no longer found on any bill of fare due to the risk involved serving anything with such small fine bones to diners who have never seen much less used fish knives. Edmunds was shuttered 50 years ago. Eisele's and the Bavarian Inn died in the 80's. Hodaks remains alone in it's longevity at Gravois and McNair.
Dustoff| 5.24.12 @ 11:58AM
O-please. not another haunted place.
They pulled the same game with the Queen Mary in Ca when people stopped going there.
It's bad enough the Si Fi channel has it's form of Ghost hunters that is so dang fake, not this too.
KyMouse| 5.24.12 @ 4:25PM
"Ghost Hunters" has come to Louisville a couple of times to investigate the former Waverly Hills TB hospital (which I remember hearing a lot about in my youth). The people who own it gladly embellish a tale that has hung around for years --
-- first, people said that a staff member had committed suicide there, a long time ago. Then it became a nurse who hanged herself. Then a pretty young nurse. Then a pretty young nurse who was pregnant but unmarried. Then a pretty young nurse whose unborn baby was fathered by a doctor on the staff.
The fact that there is absolutely no record of that death never deters anyone. Well, they WOULDN'T have made a report about it, would they...?
So how do we KNOW, then, that it was a pretty young nurse etc. etc. ad nauseum.
KyMouse| 5.24.12 @ 4:55PM
Oh, and the nurse's name was Mary Hillenburg...sweet, virginal Mary.....and the doctor was married. Of course.
Ron| 5.24.12 @ 12:54PM
Ah, what town does not have one of these? In my hometown, it was called "The Dew Drop In" (yes, a play on "Do") that my father frequented during his drunken days when I would tag along and have a soda while he would drink himself into oblivion...the same musty beer smell was still there when I saw it again as an adult, the bar peanuts, even some of the neon and beer thematic displays were on the walls...Good or bad, thank you for the nostalgic trip, Christopher.
Tim the Enchanter| 5.24.12 @ 2:08PM
Now, how did I know that this inn was going to be somewhere near St. Louis? Wild guess, I suppose.
Eric Rasmusen| 5.24.12 @ 2:20PM
Nice article, but something like this needs a map and some more pictures.
POST American| 5.24.12 @ 11:30PM
"--The American soul has never yet melted."
-D H Lawrence
essays
---And so it was designed.
having been USURPED by the forces
of private INTER--national USURY
almost a century ago ---and all the
subversions of culture that have gone with
it ----have taken their toll.
Franchise slums ---prefabs ---turnpike
nullity ---the dispose--Abel habitats
---the voided, formelessness ----all
carefully designed ---by the forces of
USURY feuled, capstone CON--troll.
We now live in a Pavlovian-B F Skinner
inspired EUGENICS sex and KILL grid.
"Remember, B.F. Skinner himself
kept his own daughter in a cage to study
her ---and GOT AWAY WITH IT!"
Both of these monsters, and their
'X--spare--iments' on the usual X--spares
---inmates, the insane, the unfit ---and
orphans ---were underwritten and
massively promoted by the likes of
Eleanor Roosevelt and the deadly sinister
foundations.
And so now even the structure
and design of the very enviornment
we're given to inhabit ---is subverting
the very nature of the human.
And, mind you, we're not even including the
full spectrum, pornographic surveillance
issues, or the toxins in the plastics and
weaponized GMO food halocaust.
"I do NOT like the EUGENIST.
I do NOT wish to touch his hand."
-Robert Ingersoll
1889
-----------------BUT funding, support, promotion
and implementation seem to be NO problem at all.
In 2012 ---THINK Princeton's Dr Peter Singer,
or third generation Rockefeller EUGENIST
---BILL ---Gates.
We do NOT wish to touch their hands.
IN FACT, we'd like to be more pro-active,
we'd like to see them removed from public
life, their project dismantled, and themselves
put away ----FOR LIFE.
---------HUAC is NOW Nuremberg.
sweeterjna| 5.25.12 @ 4:23AM
Louis County, and the rich soil has been smothered with fescue and asphalt. Where corn and beans once ripened there grow dreary suburban McMansions linking neighboring villages. The garrulous inhabitants of these cookie cutter homes http://www.vendreshox.com/nike-shox-tl3-c-13.html now park themselves on the stools once occupied by stoic dairy and pig farmers. Talk of crops and the weather has given way to the inane braggadocio of sports fans and overindulgent parents.
RJ| 5.25.12 @ 8:35AM
Trash article, worth little of anyone's time! This guy should go to business school or carry Rommey's golf clubs for a few years!
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