how long it lasted, but they sure had a lot of laughs out of it. “One time he bought a big red fry machine that sat near the front door. Something of a vending machine for hot fried food, it produced French fries, chicken nuggets, sausage and hash browns, and mini apple pies. “Fry 'em fast. Eat'em fresh,” it said on the front,” Dixie laughs. “It took up so much room. He paid a lot for it, and even our salesman in Paducah that he bought it from kind of tried to talk him out of it, but you know Johnny. He always wanted to work in a carnival. He loved it. We didn't use it long. I guess it ended up in the back room.' “When Johnny told us that he was getting a deli case, we thought he was kidding,” says Joan Pugh. “I said, 'Where in the world are you going to put it? There's no more room in here for anything.' He said, 'You just watch me.' So we got a deli case and we all learned to make deli sandwiches, and the miners were working the mines east of town at that time, and they just lined up.” Dixie Simmons worked only part time at the bakery and then only when their children, Mike and Amy, were older. Although she was a stay-at-home mom, her kids weren't always stay-at-home kids. They loved being at the store with their dad. “When Mike was really little, he often stayed up at the store with Johnny,” she remembers. “He used to fall asleep on the floor behind the front counter with a roll of paper towels under his head for a pillow. Amy loved the store as much as her dad did, and I think she would have worked there forever and never even gone on to school if we had let her.” Dixie managed the store herself for less than a year after Johnny's death, and then sold it. The Heights Bakery and Deli, as it is now named, is owned by Dawn Browning. It still has a deli, Dixie Cream donuts, cold sodas, bins of penny candy and the regulars who come in every morning to get their coffee and the news of the day. When the new owner was having improvements made to the outside of the building about a year ago, Browning found that she had an even more visible tie to the store's history than she
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knew about. When they uncovered the west side of the building, they found a huge sign, Heights Bakery, on the west wall. She left it uncovered as a link to West Frankfort's past. “Just a few months before John died we were driving to St. Louis,” Dixie said. “We were talking about our kids finding what they wanted to do for the rest of their life. John said, 'You know, I guess I've been luckier than a lot of people. I love the store. There has never been one day that I have gotten up in the morning and wished that I didn't have to go to work that day. I love my job, and I've loved every minute of it.' I'm really glad that he told me that.”
Spring • 2010
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