Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409140063
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG ERBSTOESSER SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Hot Dog Queen, a quick-service breakfast and lunch eatery, closed quietly last week. The Church Avenue restaurant was around the corner from the Roanoke City Market and across the street from the city's historic firehouse.
The Hot Dog Queen's demise leaves the Roanoke Weiner Stand, two blocks away on Campbell Avenue and long known locally as the "Hot Dog King," as the venerable survivor with its 78-year history in downtown.
Weiner Stand manager Gus Chacknes said that because of his hot dog business's long standing in Roanoke, he did not consider the nearby Queen any real competition.
But the Hot Dog Queen, a small diner with a half-dozen tables and an equally small menu, was the dream of Albert Montgomery - something for him to do when he retired in four to five years.
"I always wanted to mess with something like that," the 58-year-old commercial truck driver said in an interview this week.
Instead of luring a bustling breakfast or lunchtime trade, the neon sign with its gold-yellow painted crown remains unplugged in the darkened restaurant. The yellow awning still protects the interior from the hot afternoon sun.
A menu featuring 89-cent all-meat hot dogs and a few other sandwiches for lunch, and limited breakfast fare of eggs and sausage, now serve only as reminders of what was there. Padlocks on the door with a welcome sign that says "Closed" tell the hungry to keep walking.
Montgomery; his wife, Shirley; and daughter, Debbie Woods, took over the breakfast and lunch business in January with high hopes. But they were forced to close it nine months later after illness and family tragedies took their toll.
Montgomery said Woods put up a handwritten note notifying customers that the shop would close:
``Sorry to inform our good customers. ... Due to health problems, we will not be able to stay open.
``We have enjoyed our friends. And thank everybody for your concern and strength to keep going. Hope to see everybody again soon. ... ''
Montgomery has driven trucks for several companies over the years, driving both locally as well as over-the-road along the East Coast. Among his Roanoke employers were Associated Transport and Richardson-Wayland Electric Corp.
The plan was to have his daughter in charge of the restaurant while Montgomery continued to drive toward retirement.
"It would give me something to piddle with later," he said from his Salem home.
But two strokes in March left him incapacitated and unable either to drive or to work at his restaurant.
His wife and daughter tried to run the business themselves. But that, too, did not pan out.
Shirley Montgomery already held a full-time job with The Kroger Co. as a cashier, office worker and trainer at one of its supermarkets.
And while Woods had worked at the restaurant for several years before her father took over the business, she found herself looking for other employment to support her family, her father said.
The family also was hit with other tragedies: the deaths of a granddaughter in February and Shirley Montgomery's mother in August.
In the end, they chose to close rather than continue the struggle or prolong the agony.
"I get seizures real bad now," Montgomery said, and running the business and holding her Kroger job became too much for his wife.
"It could have been a success," the recovering Montgomery said. "We just never did have a chance to run it. I don't like to give up, but you have to decide."
There's some doubt about the future of the store.
The Trompeter family estate owns the building that contained the hot dog stand. It also owns two other buildings at Church and Market Street which house the Capital Restaurant, a vacant storefront and Vanucci's Italian Cuisine restaurant.
The executor of the estate, Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Philip Trompeter, has expressed interest in renovating the corner properties, but said there are no immediate plans. Trompeter was uncertain whether a new tenant would take over the closed hot dog stand.
by CNB