Serving all alike -- Eulinberg's Place

Wooden, hand-built and amateur-painted billboards enticed mid-century truckers, car travelers and locals to stop at Eulinberg's Place.

The signs boldly clarified -- "Colored and White Served Alike" -- in an era when Black travelers had few options for safe and accommodating stops for food and gasoline.

Located on "THE Highway 61" -- the major north/south highway linking Chicago to New Orleans in the days before Interstate 55, Eulinberg's Place was a great place to pick up a thick sandwich of thinly sliced, pit-smoked pork shoulder, a cold Coca-Cola and a bag of chips. The modest concrete block building had a counter with stools and a few tables to accommodate single and group diners. When weather suited, groups gathered at the park-like property for a relaxing day of fellowship. The hickory smoke from the open pit provided an aromatic welcome.

Shannon Eulinberg, third generation of his family to live on Cherry Street in Jackson, learned at an early age the Eulinberg way -- hard work, civic responsibility and equity for all. At Jackson's Lincoln School, he was an honor roll student in first grade. And at age 12, he started his own pork production. According to Jackson news printed in the St. Louis Argus, March 1916: "Mr. Smokey Eulinberg (Shannon's father) purchased a bunch of shoats the other day saying he aims to keep Shannon busy." Young pigs would keep a 12-year-old busy, indeed.

In 1925, he married Bessie Henderson, and they parented four children. Shannon worked at local lumber yards, drove trucks and excavating equipment, and in 1947, took a year-long side gig with Wib Lohman. Shannon built a pit smoker and finessed the alluring barbecue that made Wib's Drive-in in Jackson a sell-out hit. After a year with Wib, Shannon figured he could do the same, on his own, and established his own barbecue shop further north on Highway 61. The barbecue was only one of the many business enterprises owned and operated by Shannon Eulinberg.

A wallet-worn business card is an example of Shannon Eulinberg's many methods of promoting his barbecue restaurant and gas station. Eulinberg's Place also was listed in 1961-64 editions of The Traveler's Green Book, Guide for Travel & Vacations. The Green Book guided Black travelers to safe and accommodating places to eat, buy gasoline, and lodging while traveling.Submitted

A wallet-worn business card is an example of Shannon Eulinberg's many methods of promoting his barbecue restaurant and gas station. Eulinberg's Place also was listed in 1961-64 editions of The Traveler's Green Book, Guide for Travel & Vacations. The Green Book guided Black travelers to safe and accommodating places to eat, buy gasoline, and lodging while traveling.Submitted

Eulinberg roped his grandsons and their friends into work alongside in many of his side-hustle businesses. Irwin Eulinberg, Terry Wade and Steve Lee were named as the stories of Shannon were collected. Shannon would fetch the boys in his pick-up early on Saturdays and summer days. Often he would leave them to run the restaurant, tend the pit fire, clean the cistern, while he made runs to St. Louis with garden vegetables, eggs and fresh meat to sell to city clients. Along the way, Eulinberg was known to stop for a fresh road-killed critter to throw on the pit smoker. Ron Hahs remembers Shannon, delivering to their family farmhouse a finely smoked raccoon! Country folk of the day, living on busy Highway 61, found and defined culinary bounty in different ways.

Bessie also operated a small business. Proprietor of a laundry business, using old-style wringer washers, she line-dried, ironed and neatly folded the bundles for numerous Jackson clients. Some noticed her finished laundry sometimes had a hint of wood smoke, but in this case, not the signature Eulinberg hickory smoke wafting from a barbecue pit, but the wood stove warming her shop,

Shannon was a stout, sturdy man -- 5 foot 6 inches and 210 pounds according to his World War II draft registration. A vehicle accident in the 1950s left him with surgically repaired hips, and pain increased with age. It was another road accident which took Shannon's life in 1973. Eulinberg descendants, friends and neighbors remember with fondness the hard work and kindness of the man.