Wednesday, August 20, 2008 5:08 PM CDT
Daughters of original Oilfield general store owners help keep landmark a community gem
By ROB STROUD, Staff Writer
rstroud@jg-tc.com
OILFIELD — Mary Ennis was known for the lunchmeat sandwiches she served at the Oilfield general store that she and her husband, Elbert, operated in the 1960s-80s.
“Mother would fix the biggest sandwiches. Thick slices of ham, bologna and cheese,” said Martha Menser, her youngest child.
These big sandwiches would satisfy the appetites of hungry farmers and oil well workers on their lunch breaks.
Hungry customers can now get cheeseburgers, pork fritters, corn dogs and other hot food at the former general store.
Elbert and Mary Ennis’ eldest child, Ruth Ann Beasley, and her husband, Gene, re-opened the building in July 2007 as the Oilfield Restaurant, with Menser’s help. They have also renovated the building, which was constructed in 1866 as the Butternut one-room school house.
“We really took over so we could renovate it and save the building,” Ruth Ann Beasley said. “It’s nice to save the building for the community and the family.”
The restaurant is open 11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Monday through Friday in the small community of Oilfield along Illinois Route 49, between Casey and Westfield. The restaurant also has a presence online at www.oilfieldillinois.com, where Menser has posted a history of the building.
Menser said the building was constructed in 1866 as the Butternut school at what is now Route 49 and E. 1700th Road, the community’s main intersection. She said the Butternut school was later replaced by an Oilfield school and closed.
C.A. and Minerva Newlin hired movers and carpenters in 1924 to relocate the former school building a few yards to the south so they could use it as a general store.
“They took the building apart board by board and numbered the boards,” Menser said of the care that went into reassembling the structure.
Oilfield’s online history reports the general store building needed to be moved again in the early 1960s because it sat too close to Route 49, which the state was preparing to widen.
Menser said the owner at the time, Maxine Redman, offered the store to her father, Elbert Ennis, if he would move it and absorb the cost. Menser’s father moved the building via a flat-bed trailer a few yards south to its present location and re-opened the store in fall 1963.
Elbert and Mary Ennis enlisted their seven children to help with the store. The children also helped with Elbert Ennis’ farmland behind the store as well as his mechanic and electrical business in a nearby garage.
Menser said the Oilfield store was stocked with canned goods and snacks, and gloves and shoe strings for oil rig workers. Visitors to the restaurant can still see the square shelves in the corner that once held nails and screws. The store also offered a self-serve gas pump.
While working in the winters, Menser recalled shivering and wearing her coat to try to stay warm inside the store.
“The only heat we had was from a pot-bellied stove. I carried in loads of coal and wood, and carried out ashes. Boy it was cold here in the winter,” Menser said. The stove is still on display at the restaurant.
Elbert Ennis died in 1982 and his wife kept the store running on her own before closing it in December 1986.
Beasley said the family used the building for storage until she and her husband, Gene, purchased it in 2001-02 as they relocated back to the area from Fort Myers, Fla. Beasley said they knew they wanted to save the building, but only had a vague idea of their plans for the structure.
“Gene wanted to cook hamburgers,” Beasley explained. Her husband worked on the local oil rigs as a young man.
The Beasleys, Menser and her husband, Jerry, added a modern kitchen to the building and a restroom to the back. In the addition, visitors can see wall boards that may date back to the building’s 1866 construction. These boards are displayed behind glass.
Antiques, baseball hats, photos from Gene Beasley’s days as a stock car racer, and a working record player decorate the dining room. There are also pen and ink drawings on cardboard of the building and other Oilfield history by the late Lee Newlin, son of the store’s first owners.
The menu includes cheeseburgers, breaded chicken patties and pork fritters, corn dogs, smoked sausage, hot dogs, French fries, and snacks. Customers can get their drinks out of a cooler and dine indoors or under the covered porch.
Beasley said she is happy to provide a place for Oilfield area residents to congregate and get to know their neighbors. She said their customers include oil workers, farmers, residents from neighboring communities, and the occasional participants in an antique tractor drive or motorcycle charity run.
Mary Ennis, now 94, is also a regular customer at the store where she used to serve up sandwiches.
“It feels really good to have this place open, where our mom and dad started it,” Menser said.
For more information, contact the Oilfield restaurant at 549-1799 or 549-9053. Customers are encouraged to call ahead if they are bringing six or more hungry people. Parking space is available for grain trucks and semi-trucks.
Contact Rob Stroud at rstroud@jg-tc.com or 348-5734.
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Steve Senteney wrote on Aug 10, 2008 9:38 AM:
Perhaps they can become as popular as the restaurant / store at Moonshine. The Moonshine restaurant sometimes sells approximately 500 - 700 hamburgers a day at lunch. Hardest part is finding Moonshine. Around the lunch hour, you just follow the cars, trucks and motorcycles south of Casey and they will lead you to Moonshine. Oilfield is easy to find, it is on a state highway between Westfield and Casey.
It is too bad the article did not include a little bit of history about Oilfield. The most famous person associated with Oilfield is Newton Tarble one of the founders of Snap-On-Tools. Tarble and his foundation have donated millions of dollars to Eastern Illinois University.
I believe "Newt" Tarble lived on a farm near Oilfield. My grandfather, Riley Newlin went to school with him when they lived near each other on farms in the Oilfield / Westfield area. "