He’s been a small-town boy all his life, but Ernie Edwards is no square. Between 1937 and 1991 he ran the most happening joint in Broadwell, Illinois, pop. 200: the Pig Hip restaurant on Route 66, where he served his famous Pig Hip sandwich, told corny jokes, ran illegal slot machines, and even performed quickie marriages.
Edwards’s family came to central Illinois in 1932, in the depths of the Depression. His father, Ernie Sr., was employed by the state making shoes for handicapped children. Ernie Jr. was born in Murphysboro in 1917, and lived with his family in a succession of small Illinois towns–Granite City, Salem, Jerseyville, Lincoln–before making his own home in Broadwell in 1937. He was just 20 years old when he opened the Pig Hip, and his only previous experience in food service had been operating a popcorn machine at county fairs and the Illinois State Fair. “I introduced yellow popcorn at the state fair,” he says.
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Edwards says running the slots took some fancy juggling. “When the senate was in session, we always put our slot machines in the basement,” he says. “As soon as they were over, we’d put them back in. One night a state trooper from Chicago was here. He was looking around and called back to his office. He said, ‘I know I’m at the Pig Hip…but I don’t know where the Pig Hip is at.’ After he left, a laundry truck came to pick up the machines. They took the machines out to Coonhound’s barn, where we stored them for a couple of days.”
To raise funds for the new Pig Hip, Edwards is selling miniature made-in-China porcelain figurines of Route 66 roadside attractions–the Nature Ark Alligator Farm in Catoosa, Oklahoma; the Coral Court in Saint Louis; and of course the Pig Hip–for $15 each. “The other day a couple came in and bought one of my little houses,” Edwards says. “I had a shirt with a pocket on it and the fella stuck something in my pocket. He said, ‘Now don’t check that pocket until I leave.’ I had forgotten about it. Later that night, I looked in my pocket and there was a $50 bill. So this afternoon my wife and I went to the greenhouse and bought $64 worth of flowers for the front of the restaurant. We love flowers.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Yvette Marie Dostatni.
