Uncle Vait’s: A Nice, Quiet Joint on the Corner

The building on the corner of Old Route 66 and Main Street has been serving food in one form or another since 1947. Today it is home to Uncle Vait's Pizza and is home to the new Route 66 Lexington sign and part of the Mother Road photo opportunities for the 100th anniversary. The cuisine and names above the door have changed several times but 905 West Main Street is still in business.

Lexington has a long culinary history. City records show eateries operating along Main Street as far back as the 1850s, and by the early twentieth century the town supported a rotating cast of cafés, lunch counters, bakeries, and taverns. Many came and went within a decade. A few lasted longer. And in the restaurant business, a good location can be the difference between going out of business and keeping the lights on.

That was the logic behind the Mesa Café. When Route 66 was rerouted onto a bypass around Lexington in the late 1940s, new businesses followed the traffic. The neon Lexington sign was freshly lit, commissioned in August 1946. Opportunity was calling, and Lexington was in the middle of a boom. Enter Hazel Boulware. 

Before opening the Mesa Cafe, Hazel worked as a cook at the Snack Bar on Main Street, run by Mr. & Mrs. Elmo Poshard in the building that sat next to Peoples Bank (today Personal Touch Sewing & Boutique). Hazel took his culinary experience west a few blocks and opened the Mesa Café in 1951.  He bought the lot on the corner of Main Street and Route 66 to build his new restaurant. The Collins residence, located on the lot, was moved when the lot was sold, and a fresh new cafe was built to welcome the steady stream of motorists, truckers, and travelers that Route 66 carried through central Illinois. And business was good. Soon after opening, the property was operating 24 hours a day as Woody’s Skelly Station and Mesa Cafe. Ownership changed hands several times over the following decades, running through the 1960s and 1970s as Mesa Cafe before calling it quits around the same time Interstate 55 opened Exit 178 west of town. Most traffic through Lexington disappeared overnight.  The restaurant’s equipment went to auction in 1979.

Seldom Home: The Truck Incident of 1977

The single most-reported event in the cafe's history was the runaway-truck incident that occurred on the morning of Tuesday, August 2, 1977. The Pantagraph reported it the next day on page 3.

The morning had been ordinary: Brenda Peden was at the grill frying eggs and bacon for early travelers; Joyce Losh was waiting tables; seven people were in the cafe at 6 a.m. The article describes the cafe as "a kind of catchall for tired, long-distance travelers".

A truck cab marked "SELDOM HOME" was making its way north, driven by a man named Royer with his wife Donna in the passenger seat (eyewitnesses said they saw Royer in the passenger seat when the truck stopped; Royer claimed a "mixup happened during the accident"). The truck climbed the grassy hill in front of the cafe at high speed and ploughed through five parked cars before stopping just short of the cafe's window. The cars belonged to:

Chester Morris, 62, of La Puente, California (who was driving from California to Indiana to visit his dying brother); Larry Hatfield, 31, of Roxana (a St. Louis suburb); and an Albers, a Johnson, and a Johansen.

Inside the cafe, Mrs. Peden saw the truck approaching and  "quickly moved to the back of the cafe and prepared to run out the back door." Other patrons jumped from their seats. The lights flickered when Royer struck the utility pole. The truck's collision with the traffic signal shorted out all the signals at the intersection, which then caused a separate cascading accident on Main Street as drivers crossed with no lights.

No one was injured inside the cafe. Mrs. Peden's quoted remark on Chester Morris, the California driver: "The man headed to see his brother looked like he was going to cry." Understandably so. 

That morning was a chaotic one on the Red Carpet Corridor. A few miles north in Chenoa, a car of men were pulled over at gunpoint and arrested in a case of mistaken identity. The police were looking for an escaped prisoner from the DeWitt County jail, who was not in the vehicle.

The Filling Station Years

The property sat empty for a few years before Jari Riisberg and her husband purchased it in 1982. The Riisberg site also included the former Woody’s Skelly Station next door, and the Riisbergs incorporated both structures into their new adventure on the corner. The old Skelly Station was remodeled as a dwelling for the Riisbergs,  and the old Mesa Cafe was operated as The Filling Station. The restaurant became a consistent presence on Route 66 for nearly three decades.  It marked its 25th anniversary in 2007. In 2011, the Riisbergs relocated to Kentucky, and the restaurant closed.

The Tobin Years

Kelly and Dawn Tobin (of Tobin’s Pizza in Bloomington-Normal) purchased the property in 2017 and opened Kelly's on 66. Tobin kept the original buildings, opened up the area under the old canopy for outdoor dining, and dialed up the Americana Route 66 aesthetic. Kelly’s decked the space out with Route 66 decor, Americana antiques, novelties, and a real life motorcycle on a pole above the patio. Kelly's built a following among locals and road-trippers alike before Tobin sold the property in 2021, with the original pizza recipe, to boot.

The Uncle Vait’s Era

The current owner is Abdulvait Jasoski, known to his customers as Uncle Vait. He brings more than 20 years of restaurant experience to the operation.When he took over, he kept Kelly’s Route 66 decorations intact, including the motorcycle and the Route 66 shield.

Uncle Vait's continues to operate as an old-school pizza place and diner inside the renovated former gas station and café on Route 66.The restaurant still serves a full menu from early-morning breakfast through dinner, with pizza as the centerpiece.

In the restaurant business, location is everything. Some places are just meant to serve food, despite changing ownership and traffic patterns. Uncle Vait's is the fourth distinct culinary operation to run out of this location since 1947. The building's history tracks closely with Route 66, rising and falling as the flow of people ebbed and flowed, still drawing travellers touring the Mother Road who stop for photo ops and very good pizza. 

The restaurant sitting at the corner of Route 66 and Main Street interacted differently with the two roads it crossed: drawing together both the travellers from Route 66 and the localsfrom Main Street under every name it has carried. 

Pantagraph reporter Rick Baker signed off his article on the chaotic morning of August 2nd, 1977, with a passing note about the restaurant on the corner that still holds true today: “It’s really a kind of a nice, quiet little joint.”