WANSHIP — A mere million chickens and 50 years later, the Woolstenhulmes are getting out of the chicken dinner business.
Ever since the summer of 1956, when Sherdon and Gwen Woolstenhulme got a loan from a bank in Coalville to purchase a place called the Spring Chicken Inn from Keith Siddoway, the Woolstenhulme family has given 100 percent to running the best little family restaurant in Summit County. From generation to generation, they have manned every shift and paid attention to every detail. Their commitment has been second to nobody, other than the chickens.
But every successful business venture has its run, and the Woolstenhulmes have decided they've had theirs. This coming Thursday, when May yields to June, Tracy and Jill Sargent will be the new owners of the Spring Chicken Inn.
"It's time," said Donald Woolstenhulme, who bought the restaurant from his parents when they retired in 1990 and has run the place with his wife Kathy ever since. "We've always had family to back us up, but lately help is getting hard to come by."
Donald and Kathy's four daughters grew up working at the restaurant, but they all have college degrees now and have moved on.
"I couldn't give them the keys and a sack of money to stay," said Donald, 59, who was 9 when his parents became restaurateurs. This Thursday will be the first morning he'll wake up without a restaurant to worry about in his adult life. "It will be weird," he said.
Life will be similarly weird for dozens of Woolstenhulmes who poured their hearts into turning what was once a glorified bar into Summit County's first destination restaurant.
The Spring Chicken Inn had been around for 27 years when Sherdon and Gwen bought it in '56, "but it was really nothing but a beer dive that had good chicken dinners," remembered Gwen. "My parents wouldn't let me go in there."
Along with eight cooking burners, the Woolstenhulmes inherited the existing clientele, including "three guys who did nothing but drink beer and visit the bathroom," remembered Gwen. "Finally I said, 'That's it, serve 'em two beers and let them take all they want home.' "
The image changed, and when the interstate freeway was built in 1964 and bypassed the restaurant, the image changed even more.
That's the year Sherdon, amid family concerns he might have gone crazy, decided to build a new dining room.
"Turned out to be the best thing that ever happened," said Sherdon, "now the Salt Lake people could get up here."
The Salt Lake people have been making the 35-mile trip religiously ever since. Before nearby Park City flooded the restaurant market, the Spring Chicken Inn served 700 people on Sunday, its busiest day; lately, that number is closer to 500.
The ultimate draw has always been the chicken dinner — a half-chicken with fries and salad that cost $1.35 in 1956 and costs $10.25 today.
The secret, said Gwen, isn't the recipe. "It's the way you cook it," she said. "We've tried to do it at home, and we can't. It's the way you do it at the restaurant."
And that part of the business, the Woolstenhulmes, bless them, are leaving behind.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527