Bear Butte Lake Swimming

Our Jr. High in the 50's.

The Armory where we held all our basketball games, community dances etc. 

Back of the high school in 50's...  boys used to put animals up those
stairs, and into the band room...far end.

Wigg's Lunch remembered decades after closing

Gathering recalls teen hang out

By T.J. Tranchell, MCTT staff | Tuesday, March 01, 2011

STURGIS—It’s Gunner’s Lounge now, but for teens in the 1940s and ‘50s, it was Wigg’s Lunch.

About 60 people gathered at the Sturgis Public Library Friday, Feb. 18 to share stories of the Main Street hang out of their youth.

“The minute someone started talking about Wigg’s Lunch, those us who moved here after 1959 said, ‘What’s Wigg’s?’” Dodi Lee said.

Lee organized the reunion as part of the History at High Noon series sponsored by the Sturgis Area Arts Council.

The group—the largest for a History at High Noon that Lee can recall—had former employees and patrons sharing memories as well as the daughter-in-law and grandchildren of May and Harry “Wiggs” Garlick. While the opening date was still up for debate, Wigg’s closed in 1956.

“I didn’t realize Wigg’s was so popular,” Dora Jean Garlick, daughter-in-law of Wigg’s founders May and Harry, said. “Well, I did realize it, but not that it was popular so many years later.”

Everyone remember May Garlick to be a hard worker, but the boys of the day had some different memories that the girls.

Dana Caldwell said he remembered that May would expel boys for misbehaving and that the terms of an expulsion, be it two days or two weeks, were set in stone.

“When she said straighten up, it was a good idea to do so,” Caldwell said.

Under May Garlick’s rules, there wasn’t as much misbehaving as one might think.

“Wigg’s was kind of an institution,” Bob Mechling said. “You didn’t pull anything over May’s eyes.”

Wigg’s was a first job, a first legal beer and a first date for many Sturgis teens during the era.

While Bob Mechling tells of meeting his wife there, Ruth Mechling remembers that it was at Wigg’s that she received her engagement ring.

Bob Peregrine, who graduated in 1954, said he was raised at Wigg’s Lunch and remembers getting a nickname.

“Squeak (Dwayne Garlick, May and Harry’s son and Dora Jean’s husband) was the best nicknamer,” Peregrine said. “I was blessed to be nicknamed by Squeak.”

The nickname Peregrine earned was “Streak” after a football game in which he ran an end-around play only to be caught from behind

Trends tend to cycle around years later as Peregrine revealed. He told of how the boys of his day would wear their pants hung low and without a belt, leading to more than one de-pantsing outside Wigg’s. He does miss one popular activity that had its share of the spotlight at Wigg’s.

“It’s a dying art with kids these days, but do you remember how we’d all sing in there?” Peregrine said.

As pictures of Wigg’s floated among the crowd, Caldwell circulated a copy of a menu he found on Ann Dennis’s website. The website has scans of the Sturgis high school yearbooks from the era and old phone books. But the prize artifact came from Kay Snyder who worked as a waitress at Wigg’s in the summers of 1952, ’53 and ’55.

“I saved my W-2s,” Snyder said. She has the three forms (and a fourth from working the summer of 1954 at Wonderland Cave). Snyder made 25 cents and hour, plus tips. Meal sand snacks were included.

“The girls working there were all friends,” Snyder said. “One of the best things I remember was the pies. That’s were I learned to like cherry pie.”

During those years, Sturgis residents had to contend with dog racing crowds as well as the motorcycle rally.

“We wouldn’t close until certain people May knew would be coming in came in,” Snyder said. She remembers running home in the early hours when the motorcycles were in town.

Remembering those days gone by is what the History at High Noon events are all about. There were more memories, some about the “hot hamburger” and Wigg’s competitor Lohmann’s. All these years later, the memories are all good ones.

“Wigg’s is in our heritage,” Mimi Shewey said.