During a trip home to visit my mom, fate intervened in the form of an inheritance from my grandmother, who left me 25 acres of Oklahoma property and a darn good reason to reconsider my nomadic existence. When I was given the opportunity to buy the Rock Cafe, a historic 25-seat restaurant on Route 66 in Stroud (just 1 hour west of my hometown), the chance was just too good to pass up. I thought, why not give it a go?

Considered by many to be a national treasure, the Rock was built by Roy Rieves, who began his passion project with an investment of $100 in 1936. Working mostly alone, he hand-built the Rock from the ground up, using giant sandstone rocks excavated during the construction of Route 66 as the façade for the restaurant’s walls. The restaurant officially opened on July 4, 1939. Though Roy owned the restaurant, he didn’t have any interest in running it himself, so he hired a number of local folks to manage and operate the Cafe. Over the years, it became a Greyhound bus depot, the spot where GIs would head off to battle during World War II, and the first place they stopped for a bite when they returned home.

Needless to say, a lot of history went down within those four walls before I got involved in the early 1990s (for more historical information about Stroud and the Rock, see page viii). I took over from owner Ed Smalley, who bought the Rock for sentimental reasons—not only did he work at the Rock when he was a boy, but he also left for war from the Cafe and fell in love with and married a Rock Cafe waitress. Ed couldn’t bear to see the Rock torn down or mishandled, so he bought it and sat on it for a decade, opening it up for special occasions and Route 66 events.

Then I came along. When I took over the restaurant in 1993, I reopened it for 7-days-a-week service. That took a lot of gumption on my part, as I didn’t know the first thing about cooking or running a restaurant, but my hard work and trial-by-error approach paid off. Lucky for me, my customers (not to mention my family) have always let me experiment on them with new dishes. It wasn’t long before the locals and tourists were back. Although throughout the years I’ve made some changes from the original menu—we no longer smoke our barbecue, and we’ve added quiche and spaetzle to the menu—I like to think we’ve never strayed too far from the philosophy of good food, good service, and good prices.

Little did I know that running a restaurant on the Mother Road would introduce me to world famous stars, which is exactly what happened when John Lasseter from Pixar wandered into the Rock while doing research for the animated film Cars. After chatting a while and hearing my life story, he decided to base the character of Sally Carrera on me! What a hoot.

Glitz and glamour aside, the Rock is really more than just a restaurant. It’s a town hall, a community center, and a human refueling station all in one. Whether you’re a superstar musician rolling through town on a tour bus (and we’ve had plenty of them), a tourist far away from home, one of a troop of 300 bikers crisscrossing the country, or just good friends from town, when you walk through the Rock’s door, you’re family. And I hope it’s always like that.