Word: hustead
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...whole improbable enterprise was started in the depths of the Depression by a 28-year-old Nebraska pharmacist named Ted Hustead. He had a $3,000 stake, a wife, a child of four, and the brass of a born capitalist. Now 78, with wire-rimmed trifocals, thin white hair and a deeply lined face, Ted looks like a kindly drugstore man out of Norman Rockwell. In earlier pictures, he looked more serious and resolute. "We weren't trying to make it rich," he recalls. "We were trying to make a living...
...heavy iron skillets, lightweight canteens and water-purifying tablets; ranchers buy lousefly killer, sheep-branding liquid and cow vaccine. God knows who buys hundreds upon hundreds of Wall Drug gimcracks, from spoon holders to ashtrays. "People want a little something they can take back to Grandma," says Bill Hustead, 54, Ted's son. A Madison, Wis., woman on her way to Wyoming is agape, like most newcomers: "This blows me away. Who'd think there would be something like this, ten miles from a herd of bison...
Customers usually gravitate past the wooden Annie Oakley on the bench, the walls laden with Western and Hustead-family memorabilia, to one of the four scattered rooms of the café (seating for 550; breakfast starts at 6 a.m.). The special is a hot beef sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy ($2.98), but the menu also offers more exotic fare: a buffalo burger-yep, ground bison-for $1.55 and a selection of California wines. This last was Bill Hustead's idea: "I thought it would give the place a little class. I thought people chewing on a fishwich...
...Bill Hustead likes to point out that customers return, not just the big-spending families from the cities but also the four locals over at the corner table, all elderly ranchers wearing string ties and straw hats, who have been sipping nickel coffee and talking weather all afternoon. Despite its chintzy tourist baubles, Wall Drug has a homeliness that makes customers spend with a smile. Perhaps a young Connecticut man, heading west with his new bride (but passing up the FREE COFFEE AND DONUTS TO HONEYMOONERS), puts it best: "They don't try to make a lot of money...
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