Ask Joan: Quick and voluminous answers edition
Last week, I posed a question that I thought we might be able to get a quick answer to. It was quick – and also voluminous. Something like 30 people contacted me so far about the name of a former bar in Shiloh (and we’ll get to which one in today’s post!)
I admit: I’m not sure what this level of response says about us as a drinking population in York County.
I did also get several quick answers to another question from last week, which I’ll also share today.
What’s inside
1. Seeking name of downtown restaurant
2. So why is it Butter Road?
3. … and that aforementioned Shiloh Bar
1. I’m thinking of a restaurant around the square in the 1950s/’60s, possibly across from Bear’s Dept. Store. I remember it had blue booths and I think a white rose on the menu possibly. I remember eating there often… always had a lemon Coke with my meal.
– Deb Baugher
We’ve talked before about a number of downtown York cafeterias and eateries, including one in Bear’s itself, but I can’t say for sure that we’ve ever specifically mentioned either blue booths or a white rose on the menu, so I’d love some confirmation on which this might be!
My best guess is this could have been the Golden Glow, but I’m not willing to say for sure and I think others who remember it will be able to shed more light!
2. In the category of “second-most-popular question from last week,” I heard several responses in answer to a question from family friend Ken Stoppard about how Butter Road in the Dover area got its name.
Some mentioned potential businesses in the area, but the one that, shall we say, rose to the top (you’ll get why that’s funny in a minute) was one I’d never have guessed!
Joe Brillhart writes, “Birthed in 1941 by log cabin living parents out the Bull Road near to where it intersects with Butter Road, my Momma dished a lot of local lore on not just place names. The oral tradition on Butter Road was that any cow owner who took a fresh milk can down that road in the back of his old ’20s/’30s springless jalopy, would have it turn to butter by the time he got to the end, that road was so rough with potholes. So there you have it!”
And reader Paul Quickel agreed. “I grew up about a mile south of Butter Road on my parents’ farm,” he wrote. “My father lived on the farm since the 1920s and told this story. Butter Road was named because the road was so rough when it was a dirt road that the farmers said their milk’s cream turned to butter on the way to market in Dover.”
There we have it indeed – and let’s not talk about rough roads in York County nowadays; we could just call them all Butter Road, right?
3. It started with a comment from brother-in-law extraordinaire Mike Smith and continued with notes and stories from about 30 other people.
The answer, as it turns out, to Bambino Flores‘ question from last week, what was the former bar in Shiloh, was The Rogue’s Den. Located where the Shiloh Family Restaurant now sits, this bar apparently hosted many Ask Joan readers when it was open in the 1970s and early 1980s!
Carl Young said his band, Sky, played there many times in the 1970s. Pat McCleary noted that the bar was run by the now-deceased P. Billy Webb, and another reader said the bar was known for its wet T-shirt contests.
And from Janet Keller, I heard several neat stories about the Rogue’s Den and that area of Route 74 in Shiloh! She writes, “I had to ask my husband, Dave, and my brother, Wayne, to answer this question, because I knew they would know. This bar was there circa 1970-80 if I recall correctly. We were married in 1973 and had four children by the 1980s and I didn’t do the bar scene, but the men would get together and the wives would get together and prepare some finger food for them later in the evening when they would return. All of us lived in West York/Weigelstown area, so it was the closest bar, since Dover was a dry township with the exception of a beer distributor on the Y at Route 74 and Harmony Grove Road. The building is now a hair/nail salon. My uncle owner/operated the distributorship in the ’70s-’80s also.”
“Anyway,” Janet continues about Rogue’s Den, it “became the gathering place for the PCC (Precision Components Corporation, now Precision Custom Components) members of the Management Club. They would have their monthly meeting, and then head to Rogue’s Den for the ‘after-meeting’.”
She concluded with another cool juxtaposition; the bar, where the Shiloh Family Restaurant is now, is very close to her son Thomas Keller‘s business, Valiant Tattoos. Thomas and Janet’s nephew Wayne King Jr., a tattoo artist there, and others at Valiant, have been at that location since 2011, and were in business at other locations along Route 74 for 10 years before that. “He would love to hear his father and friends tell his about the history of each of the buildings and their experiences at the various businesses while they were in their ‘younger years’,” Janet said of her son.
While that Rogue’s Den answer was the overwhelming response, I did hear one other possibility, from Renay Wolf of Shiloh, who recalled a bar called the 2+9 in the same area, around the same time or maybe a little later. She writes, “According to the story I had heard about how the bar got its name was the couple who owned it had nine kids. So they came up with the 2+9.”
Does anyone recall that establishment, and was it just a later iteration of the Rogue’s Den, or something (and somewhere) else? Would love to continue hearing about that!
Have questions or memories to share? Ask (or Tell) Joan using the form at right. I’ll attempt to answer or share them in a future “Ask Joan” column on this blog. I get a large volume, but I will feature three each week and answer as many as possible!
