When Patty Bartz was in high school, she remembers walking over to the Dari-Burg for lunch. For 20 cents, you had to make a choice, she said — a burger, grilled cheese sandwich or hot dog, plus an additional nickel for a soda or coffee at the Appleton City landmark, owned by Ernest and Eva Reed.
“Sometimes that’s all you had, a quarter,” Patty said.
Patty is now a docent at the Appleton City Museum and History Center, 503 N. Maple St., where the most popular exhibit is the Dari-Burg, which closed 25 years ago. The exhibit has the iconic landmark’s original bar stools, the celadon- green malt machine and the candy case. There’s also the original order carousel with its metal clips, on the counter of the pass-through to the kitchen.
“That’s where Ernest sat and took your order,” Patty recalled. “He would bring it out to you.”
The malt shop counter is also the most popular place for photo op in the museum, Patty said, which is open by appointment on Friday afternoons May through September. Admission is by donation. The museum, which opened ten years ago, is full of exhibits that bring local history to life, including the Roscoe Gun Battle. That’s where outlaw John Younger was pursued on horseback and shot by Pinkerton detectives in 1874. There’s also a painting of one of the old hotels at Monegaw Springs, a popular health spa in the 19th century where the Younger Brothers and the James Gang found refuge.
Patty had another connection to the Younger Brothers — a receipt that Cole Younger signed when he bought a horse from her great-great grandfather. Patty also has an ancestor who was a prisoner of war in the Civil War— and another ancestor who was a wagon master on the Santa Fe Trail, and was once attacked by natives, resulting in an ax wound in his skull, she said.
There are also memorabilia of Appleton City organizations— 4-H awards, Rainbow Girl rosters, Boy Scout uniforms, and photos of the Square Dance Club, schools and churches. Books of information about Appleton City businesses have been compiled by Linda Lampkin, whose father and uncle owned the grain company and whose great-uncle owned the hardware store.
Patty has put together and alphabetized folders of stories that people have brought to the museum, along with artifacts from the town’s past. One treasure trove of Victorian hats and a trunk of Victorian dresses and suits came out of an old house in town, Patty said.
The basement of the museum is used to store items that are rotated out to exhibits. County museums serve as repositories of family history, where people looking for their family’s roots can go and find primary sources of information.
“That’s our service to the community,” Patty said.
The museum volunteers, members of the Appleton City Historical Society and Appleton City Landmarks Restoration, Inc., also maintain a schoolhouse on the grounds, and operate a house museum, the William Clark House, which they have furnished as it looked in the 1940s, Patty said. For more information, go to the Appleton City, MO Museum and Research Center website.
