From QConline

Moke's made memories

By Carol Loretz, Staff writer

ROCK ISLAND -- The ice cream consumed at one Rock Island address could blanket the Quad-Cities in a rainbow of flavors.

At least four shops -- Dari-Delite, Moke's Delite, The Creamery, and Whitey's Ice Cream Store -- have served up the confection at 2516 18th Ave. Workers are expected to finish a new Whitey's there before year's end, store owner Jon Tunberg said.

Moke's Delite was the kind of place where Potsie, Fonzie and other characters from ``Happy Days'' would feel right at home, said Alice Weindruch, who owned the place with her husband, Jacob ``Moke'' Weindruch, in the 1960s and 1970s. It began as a Dari-Delite franchise; then Mr. Weindruch renamed it when he went independent in the early '70s.

``All the high-school kids came and had a good time, and we enjoyed having them,'' Ms. Weindruch said from her Dallas apartment. ``My husband loved sports, so he talked about that with the kids and went to their games.''

Ms. Weindruch and her husband fried hamburgers, built sundaes and did anything else that needed doing.

``The kids we hired wanted to work,'' she said. ``My husband made them toe the line, but he was like a father figure. The kids who worked there were like our own kids. They confided in us and would come to our house for pizza.''

Among those well-regarded employees was Linda Holtzer Cain, who started in 1965 on her 16th birthday and stayed at least a year.

``My mom, Marjorie, was already there, helping Alice in the back, cutting onions and keeping the bins filled,'' Ms. Cain recalled from her home in Morton, Ill. ``Moke's had a long counter. You shoved your way in and got to the front.''

When Rocky's football and basketball stars placed their orders, Ms. Cain stood in awe, talking to the high-school celebrities she normally would not have met. Kids got their food and headed out to the parking lot, where they ate, flirted, and cut loose from the rules of school and home.

``The back door led to the parking lot, where Moke spent a lot of time shooing kids out,'' Ms. Cain said. ``If he didn't, the crowd would grow until there was no room for new customers.''

At the time, she said, hamburgers cost 19 cents, hot dogs and french fries 15 cents, and Cokes were a dime. The money went into an antique cash register that rang up to only $5 or $10, so she had to ring up multiples for the family-sized orders.

``One guy loved chocolate-banana milkshakes,'' Ms. Cain said. ``Others liked Boston shakes, a chocolate shake with soft-serve ice cream down the side.'' Her favorite was a vanilla Coke -- lots of vanilla syrup in the bottom of a glass filled with Coke.

``It was THE place to congregate,'' Ms. Cain said. ``We didn't have video games to entertain us, so we had to find mischief -- and we did. We'd take trips to the Black Angel, to see if you had the nerve to go into the cemetery.

``We weren't bad, but we'd get into egg fights, toilet-papering, and walk the streets with our transistor radios,'' she continued. ``Most of us were fearful of our parents' disdain, but we had a pretty free run.''

Ms. Cain left the Quad-Cities in 1986, when Illinois Bell transferred her to Peoria.

Another employee, Vicki McSparin Jackson, worked there her junior and senior years, then took time off before college.

``Even when I wasn't scheduled to work, I was there every day, practically,'' she recalled from her home in Littleton, Colo. ``I remember sitting on the picnic tables in my cut-off jeans and sweatshirt with the arms cut off.''

Ms. Jackson also remembered wearing white polyester dresses, Moke's official uniform, while the guys wore white shirts and pants.

``Those dresses were just so ugly,'' she said. ``I remember getting into the car, and I just smelled like a french fry.''

When Rocky's basketball team competed in the 1967 regionals, she said, their classmates wore red berets, which were banned while working.

Ms. Jackson said she never could shape the soft-serve cones correctly, so she got to go behind the grille. The pay wasn't much -- 50 cents, then 75 cents, and finally a whole dollar an hour -- but working there allowed her to see all her friends.

``We were supposed to pay for half of whatever we ate, but if Moke wasn't there, we ate for free,'' she admitted. ``I don't remember ever giving food away, though.

``Moke was more bark than bite,'' she continued. ``When you got to know him, you weren't scared of him anymore. We had so much fun working there.''

Pam Elsbury Berenger was just a little kid when her brother, Roger Elsbury, let her accompany him to Moke's.

``Kids couldn't wait to be old enough to hang out there,'' she said. ``All the big kids -- the teenagers -- would be hanging around and dressed so cool. Sometimes they'd even say `Hi' to you, and you'd think, `Wow, they know me!'|''

Ms. Berenger said the whole atmosphere was special. Kids sat on the hoods of cars as their car radios blared Jan and Dean songs, an upbeat background to their lighthearted banter.

``It was so hot -- sweltering,'' Ms. Berenger said. ``I can just hear the snapping of the bug lights.''

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Over the years, the gang at Moke's worked and played together, but also suffered tremendous heartache. They all mourned the death of employee Jan Dismer, who killed herself by breathing exhaust fumes.

``Jan was a very pretty girl, and very smart,'' Ms. Jackson said. ``She was great to work with, and I remember her so well. It was very sad. That's one of the most traumatic things I can remember.''

The Weindruchs left Rock Island in 1979, when Moke's heart problems required a warmer climate. Alice had two sisters in Texas, so they moved there.

Moke, now in his mid-80s, is doing well, his wife said.

When asked about the menu, Ms. Weindruch said her husband would say his Moko-burgers were his favorite. She described them as ``a triple hamburger with a bunch of cheese and chili and enough to give you an ulcer.''

The Weindruch's two sons, Rick and Ron, also worked at the store. Today, Rick is a doctor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, while Ron is a computer businessman in Longwood, Fla.

Like most memories, those associated with Moke's rippled out into the community.

``I'd drive my dad's car to work, park it in the lot, and my friends would pick it up and drive around all night,'' Ms. Jackson said. ``My dad had a '65 Chevy Impala with white bucket seats and black vinyl top. The car was metallic green. My friend Linda and I would roll the windows down and turn the radio up, then cruise 18th Avenue.

``When Steppenwolf's `Born to Be Wild' came on, we thought we were so cool,'' she continued. ``We'd roll into the Clark station and get a quarter's worth of gas and a pack of cigarettes for another quarter. We'd pretend we were smoking.''

After Moke's, Ms. Jackson worked at her cousin's A&W Root Beer stand in Moline.

``I made a lot of hamburgers and french fries, but I've never flipped hamburgers since, and I still can't do an ice-cream cone,'' she said. ``Today, I hate to cook. I do it only when I have to, and I don't eat hamburgers and fries very often.''

Everybody remembered Spike Bloom, a skinny, red-haired kid whose legend included being able to eat a hamburger in three bites. When he started in 1965, he earned 50 cents an hour plus the discount on food.

``Several weeks I owed Moke money based on eating more than I earned,'' Mr. Bloom said. ``I think I was the first employee to break the $1-an-hour rate in 1966.''

Meanwhile, Mr. Bloom said, he was learning how to keep expenses down by making floats look like they contained more ice cream than they really did.

``Moke would have to go outside and chase the high-school kids away a couple times a night, as there was no room for customers to park,'' Mr. Bloom said. ``He'd come looking for you if you were taking too long outside picking up trash, because he knew you were outside BS-ing with friends, or maybe seeing your girlfriend.''

Mr. Bloom also recalled the huge egg fight in 1966 or 1967.

``Guys were driving all over Rock Island, throwing eggs at each other,'' he said. ``Many, many cars went through Moke's that night. I was out there washing egg off the building for a couple days.''

Today, Mr. Bloom lives in Palo Alto, Calif., where he is vice president of sales for a navigation-products company. His paycheck no longer depends on packing down trash by jumping up and down in a dumpster at the end of a weekend.

Mr. Tunberg's family opened a Whitey's in Moke's old place in November of 1982.

``The old store served us well for 20 years, but it was too small from the day we moved in,'' Mr. Tunberg said. ``That building had really gotten tired. When it was demolished, we said, `A lot of calories went down that day.'|''

Besides Whitey's, the new 1,800-square-foot building will house Hungry Hobo, The Medicine Shoppe and a fourth, undetermined tenant.

Mr. Tunberg has his own memories of Moke's from 1972, when he was an Augustana College student.

``My friend Scott Acord and I would go there after Swedish class for butterscotch sundaes,'' he said. ``We would watch `General Hospital' with the two ladies who worked there.''

The Tunbergs consider themselves traditionalists and savor the memories of their childhoods.

``We hate to see things change,'' Mr. Tunberg said, ``but we're looking forward to this project opening soon.