Feature article
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‘Hamburger Lady’ made of strong stock
By Fred Sauceman
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| Teresa Holden gives customer Roosevelt Carden some of her real-life philosophy, to go with his hamburger steak |
Lon and Teresa’s Grill in Hampton, Tennessee, is about warm-bunned hamburgers and hamburger steak slabs, scratch biscuits and beef stew. But it’s more than a diner. It’s the conscience of a community. It’s Appalachia in microcosm.
The story of Lon and Teresa’s Grill is about persistence over adversity, refusal to give up, even in the face of flooding and death. Owner Teresa Holden is made of strong stock.
In 1984, when she and her husband Lon were about to open their brand-new restaurant, the Doe River dumped about eight inches of mud into the building. The Holdens never considered scrapping the plans for their new business. The river ran wild again in 1998. Another mud bath, but still no thought of giving up. When Lon died about a year later, Teresa kept on.
“Hard work is good for you,” she says.
Teresa spends over 12 hours a day, seven days a week, at her restaurant, serving breakfast around 5:30 in the morning and staying open until 6:30 in the evening, without complaint.
“Ain’t that sun pretty today?” she asks, as the winter weather breaks.
Teresa is steely and resolute and determined. But she laughs a lot, too. She walks over to Roosevelt Carden’s table, after his bear and turkey hunting coffee klatch has disbanded, and grabs a French fry off his hamburger steak plate.
“I’ll knock a nickel off your bill,” she jokes. Then she takes me aside and whispers that Roosevelt’s wife is not well and that he needs a good laugh.
If it’s happening in Hampton, Teresa likely knows about it. She’s the kind of quiet, compassionate woman people love to confide in.
Like its owner, her restaurant doesn’t call much attention to itself. From the road, you can hardly tell where Teresa’s place stops and the Perfect Features Beauty Salon begins. She tells me her restaurant has never been written about by a newspaper before.
Walk inside and Teresa’s values become apparent. There’s a picture of The Last Supper posted right inside the front door. Behind the counter and along the paneled wall leading to the kitchen, the stages of her four daughters’ lives are chronicled in photographs. A jigsaw puzzle proclaims, “The Best Hamburger Around.”
Miniature ceramic dogs crowd the shelves. A retriever sporting bunny ears sits on the counter, and there’s a cross-stitch Boston Bull Terrier nearby. But Teresa says she’s too busy to own a real dog.
Roosevelt Carden walks me over to that Last Supper scene.
“See the sixth person from the left?” he asks. “Somebody in here the other day said that was a girl. He ain’t never read the Bible, has he?”
Teresa’s a believer in adding a little something extra to her hamburgers, a frugal holdover from the Great Depression when meat had to be stretched, but more importantly to Teresa, it’s a way to soften and flavor the beef. She’s proud of her technique.
“I don’t tell anybody what I put in those hamburgers,” she says. “If I did, everybody’d be doing it.”
She makes out the hamburgers fresh every day, sometimes twice a day, when traffic on highway 321/67 is especially heavy, with folks on their way to Watauga Lake.
Teresa grills her hamburger buns, on both sides.
“I want a warm bun on a hamburger,” she says. “I never figured a hamburger was good on a cold bun.”
Lon and Teresa’s Grill is just a short piece after you turn off Highway 19E. The building’s cinderblock and flesh-colored. The only sign is weathered and Pepsi-sponsored. On the drive there, you can feel the rise of Roan Mountain, Northeast Tennessee’s highest point.
It’s an area of wondrous beauty, but the dangers of the Doe River are always in the background.
The river outside her door is a perpetual reminder of the kinds of hardships Teresa has overcome to keep this little biscuit and burger business alive. But like the bulldog mascot of Hampton High School, Teresa holds on. The rough spots in her life — a lost husband the latest destructive deluge — only make her more determined to persevere.
She knows she can’t close. She has a community to feed. Her people come in camouflage, Sunday finery and overalls, most of them from within a few miles — Valley Forge, Siam, Elk Mills, Butler, Gap Creek, Simerly Creek, Tiger Creek, Little Milligan. All of them drawn to this unassuming structure, to the tables of this humble mountain woman, to partake of the spirit and sustenance of the hamburger lady of Hampton.
Thanks to my student John Fields for introducing me to Lon and Teresa’s Grill.
Lon and Teresa’s Grill
LOCATION: Highway 321/67, Hampton, Tennessee
PHONE: 423-725-3892
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Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Tastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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