Originally built in 1964 by the Hawes Mercer family, the Dinner Bell was a fine dining restaurant located on Highway 60 East that many local families frequented for dinner, and after church on Sundays. The restaurant was owned and operated by the family until 1968, when it took on a new operator. The Dinner Bell has had several operators over the years, with Bill Willyard running it for the longest period of time — nearly 20 years. The restaurant even experienced a location change on the property in 1983 due to the need to accommodate both the restaurant and fuel stop.
After 50 years, the restaurant is once again family-operated, but by someone who feels like family to the Mercers.
Jeri Lynn “Lucy” Burk began working at the Dinner Bell in the Hawesway 60 Travel Plaza in 2008. Burk waited tables until the restaurant closed temporarily. During that time, Burk attended beauty college and stripped tobacco on the side to make extra money. Her brother-in-law then took over the business and has run it for the last five years.
Burk returned to the restaurant and said she has found a home there over the past 11 years.
“I came back like I was never gone,” Burk said. “This place — this is my passion I guess — I do love this place.”
Burk has been so committed to the restaurant that she said she worked up until the Thursday she went into labor with her, now nine-year-old, son Braden, and was back to work on the following Monday. She said, from taking naps in a toddler bed behind a partition to getting ready for school, her son has practically grown up at the restaurant.
It’s become so much a part of her, in fact, that she has become the newest operator. With her dad on the grill and her mom by her side, Burk now runs Lucy’s Diner.
Holding true to the diner reputation, Lucy’s menu boasts “trucker portions” of “good home-cookin'” at a reasonable price.
Because the restaurant is located inside the Hawesway 60 Travel Plaza, the building also houses an area for laundry, showers and offices to be used by trucking dispatchers. Somehow, Burk maintains it all and still manages to run the restaurant.
“I work really hard and I’ve stood in here many days alone, but I’ve never wanted to say that I quit — I just want to be done for the day,” Burk said. “To me, this is one of the most underestimated jobs — it’s probably one of the harder jobs that there is.”
Although she said she couldn’t do it without the help of her parents, who run the second shift at the restaurant, Burk said running a family business isn’t always easy.
“Running a family business and being the boss of your mom and dad is very hard,” she said. “I tell everybody I’ve got broad shoulders because I’m learning every day. But, without my mom and dad I would never be where I am today. They’ve played a big, important role.”
While she never really thought of food as her passion growing up, Burk said she learned from her father at a young age that food could bring comfort to others.
“When we were growing up, my dad loved everybody,” Burk said. “The way that my dad expressed loving everybody and being a people person was through food. Because he cooked for everybody and he cooks here now. He doesn’t cook because he has to — it’s because he loves to cook. There’s a difference between cooking for a paycheck and cooking because that’s what you love to do.”
Burk said, while she can cook, no one compares to her dad in the kitchen. She said one of his most popular dishes is his liver and onions and “that’s because my dad knows how to cook it.”
As far as best-tasting, Burk said that was a difficult decision.
“That’s hard to say because it’s all homecooked — we don’t serve anything out of a can,” she said, adding that diners often remark that there is “too much food on a plate.”
One visitor said of the restaurant that it was “one of the few old-time truck stops that are left,” and “this is the place for comfort food.”
With truckers passing through daily from all over the United States, not to mention local patrons, it is important to Burk that a wider variety of food be available. Because several items are only offered on certain days, Burk has decided to put in a buffet in just a few weeks.
“I want to be able to put out a lot at one time because some people only get to come here one time a week,” she said. “That way they can have some of the things that we have on the other days.”
The buffet will be open from 11 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday with a salad bar that will run through supper. The restaurant will continue to stay open Saturday until noon for breakfast and lunch.
As Burk considers the future success of Lucy’s Diner, she also finds support in its original founders who still live on the adjacent farmland and visit often. Mr. Lindy Mercer comes over to the restaurant for coffee each day and looks forward to visiting with regulars at the round table in the corner. He shares stories of how he used to grow corn where the restaurant now stands as Abbie, his wife of 70 years, jokes that they had to build the restaurant because “he wouldn’t eat anything else.”
The Hawes Mercer family still finds joy in sharing the memories of Carolyn running the cash register while Abbie helped out in the kitchen and “Hawes” washed dishes. That joy of sharing stories with others over a warm meal or a hot cup of coffee to passersby or nearby neighbors has carried over into Lucy’s Diner.
“It’s about making somebody happy,” Burk said about serving others. “We get to talk to everybody. Everybody comes in here like we’re family.”
Lucy’s Diner is located inside of the Hawesway 60 Travel Plaza at 6057 US Highway 60 East. To learn more about the history of Hawesway, read Part 2 of this story in the Sunday edition of the Owensboro Times.
