Restaurant owner Bill Krekel is known around central Illinois for his hamburgers. Since 1953 he’s been serving up “Krekelburgers,” as people call them, at hamburger stands in Decatur, Springfield, and Mount Zion. Bill Madlock, formerly of the Chicago Cubs, grew up in Decatur and swears by Krekelburgers. So does country singer Crystal Gayle, who stopped off for a sandwich on her way to the Nashville North nightclub in nearby Taylorville. Krekel says that years ago he sent the first American hamburgers to Russia, when a group of exchange students attending Eisenhower High School in Decatur took home a dozen Krekelburgers in a cooler.
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But despite his famous hamburgers, most people in Decatur know Krekel as the Chicken Man. For 30 years now he’s been driving around in Cadillacs with big red-and-white fiberglass chicken heads on the roof and black-and-white fiberglass tail feathers on the trunk lids. Krekel’s friend Paul White, a Kentucky sculptor who specializes in fiberglass animals, designed the first chicken car in 1972. (One afternoon, when Krekel and his wife Nancy were driving it back to Decatur from their vacation home in the Lake of the Ozarks, they overheard a trucker on their CB radio declaring, “Lady, you’re going to see the most gorgeous cock on the interstate.” The woman shot back, “That’s not a cock, that’s a rooster.”) Krekel decided to order one for each of his four Decatur hamburger stands. Of course, he had to add chicken sandwiches to his menus, but the cars were worth it. One had a pair of speakers under the hood, and with the press of a button it would start clucking.
Krekel still has two of the chicken cars, both made from 1993 Cadillac Broughams, and a new one is on the way. “A chicken does not work on any other car but a Cadillac,” Krekel insists. “I’ve tried them on a Buick. But Cadillacs are gorgeous, and the rear end is wider.” The chicken car is nine feet high at the peak of the chicken’s head, which is fastened to a stainless steel plate and riveted and glued to the roof. A button inside the car makes the chicken’s red eyes light up. The sides of the car are custom painted with red and white stripes and black speckled dots.
Karin Poling remembers those days: a 20-year veteran of Krekel’s, she hires, fires, and does prep work at the Krekel’s on Main Street. “Krekel is a lot more mellow now,” Poling says. “When I was first hired on, he was tough. He used to make me cry five or six times a day. That’s just how he was. He is old school. His theory was to yell at me to straighten everyone else out; like if the ice cream cone was too big. Or if I put too many pickles on a sandwich. It’s two pickles for a single, two for a double, three for a triple. If you put too many on, that was too much money out the window.” Yet the stores have survived because they’re still affordable: a hamburger is $1, a cheeseburger $1.90. “People can still feed their families here,” says Bourne.
