So, yeah, let's start with the real simple.

The secret origin of Hillbilly HotDogs Well, Sonny and I were sitting out underneath a tree.

This old house up here on the hills, Sonny was one of 11 children.

And we were sitting out under the tree and I said, "honey, why don't just plow that land over there and build me a weenie stand?"

And the 12 by 16 building was built with him and his brothers and brothers in law, and I soon learned that in order for them to build, I had to keep a pickup truck right in front of the place and a couple cases of beer, and then they just work till the sun was coming up.

The next day-it was nonstop.

But if you took away the truck or you took away the beer, nobody worked.

Everyone would stand around goin *Drums fingers* "What do we do?!"

219 00:16:09,535 --> 00:16:12,271 This would have been in April of 1999.

We opened, September 6th of 99 and closed three days later and got married.

You know, we had people stop in and say, you know, 'you need to stay here, be here for all the Marshall games because of traffic going back and forth.

So we would stay late.

We would open early.

We just did.

We played a lot of Yahtzee.

It was crazy.

And then we and we opened in September, so we went right into winter.

And so it was very difficult.

You mentioned this, like, as a dream.

So you had wanted this for a while?

No, actually, Sonny did.

Sonny, his parents had a hot dog stand up in Green Bottom just up the road, in the 50s.

And he loved it that his parents did this together.

And, you know, people could dance and, you know, just fun stuff in the 50s.

And he loved that.

And he loves hot dogs.

He'll never go for five miles without stopping for a hot dog.

I don't care who you are.

He was going to eat your hot dog.

I mean, it's who he was.

And so he wanted that.

And I said, okay, I was a single mom, broke as a joke coming up with these crazy things for my kids to eat.

You know, the taco dog, the egg dog, whatever I had, I would scrap it on there and say, oh, this is it.

Tonight we're having gourmet!

Taco dog!

(Child, off-screen)That taco!

Taco?

-Yeah!

Issa hot dog.

And my kids just thought it was phenomenal.

So I said, let me try this with you, Sonny, and if you like it, we'll go from there.

And he did.

And he said, if we can convince people to try something different, we got a winner.

our menu had about... we had the West Virginia dog, the chili dog, taco dog.

my egg dog, and pizza dog, We had five dogs on that menu, and we had a dog that cost $2, which was unheard of in 99.

Our meatpacking guy gave us three months.

They didn't think we'd make it after three months.

Someone said, "you should go to the SBA and see if they'll give you any money."

And I went down, talk to the lady, and she said, "there's no money for you" to Sonny.

And she says, "you, we might be able to do something.

What is it you want to do?"

And I said, "well, we're building a little weenie stand down on Route Two."

"Oh no, no, no, no, nope It'll never work.

Never work.

Out, bye."

And I could feel the rod in my back getting hotter as it's coming up to my neck.

And I'm thinking if I was a 16 year old, 17 or 18 year old kid, and you told me my dream wasn't going to make it, I mean, I don't know how I take it, but I was a 42 year old woman and she was telling me it wasn't going to make it.

To this day, she still comes here and she says to me, "Thank God you didn't listen to me."

So how'd you meet Sonny?

I met him in California.

We had a huge carwash complex, very, very new for the time.

This was in like in 97. you take your car and get your windows tinted, radio, all those different things, done to your car.

And that's where he was, and I just saw him running around, hugging and kissing everybody.

And I kind of tilted my glasses and I went, "what the heck just flew into town?"

So I followed him for two years, before I got to really know him and know he wasn't married and and.... that's how our whole life started.

Yeah, back then we just had the 12 by 16. and then we'd see people with their trays of food, hot food going out to their car or wherever they were going to go sit.

And we were like, oh no, we got to put we got to put something here that people would come in and stay warm or cool.

And so we found this bus.

This is the first bus.

Yeah.

This one still runs.

It's got all its innards.

It can run And that bus over there we got for 200, but it doesn't have any engine.

So that one has to be pulled out.

Everything connected here was done by my husband, everything.

Now you have contractors that come in here- - and if y'all are contractors, you know, you look around, you see some of these weird wires hanging and you're like, what is going on here?

Well, that was Sonny.

Just Sonny and duct tape.

Okay.

The graffiti, there is a lot of it there.

There is- he got in trouble on his school bus, got kicked off for like a month.

And he had to like walk to school, which is in Barbourville.

And so he says, no, I want everyone to sign their name.

So we do.

And the only place we don't let the markers go is our wedding chapel.

Other than that, do it.

Feel good about it.

Just- I just don't like some of the drawings, you know?

Okay.

The wedding chapel.

When did that start?

And tell me all about it.

The wedding chapel started.

Well, we had a storm come through and it took out the trees.

We had the van in the one tree over the wedding chapel and it took it out.

So we had to move the van to the other tree.

And then we just looked at those two stumps of wood and we just say, what can we do?

What should we put there?

People said, you need to sell your stuff that you have sitting out here.

And Sonny goes, "well, okay."

So he built the building and he, put all this stuff in there and then people will walk in and go, "oh, how much do you want for this?"

And he'd say, "well, it's very expensive" cause he couldn't sell it!

He couldn't get rid of anything he already brought.

He couldn't do it.

So I said, this isn't going to work.

I got to get the $800 back that it costs for you to build this building.

So someone wanted to make it a Wedding Chapel.

So we are weddings, weenies and Wi-Fi.

and I'm into the 300's of the weddings.

I have one tomorrow, actually.

Do you do the services or do you have, like a preacher on demand?

I am certified, I'm licensed by the State of West 'by God' Virginia.

You betcha.

Yeah.

Let's talk about The Homewrecker.

The Homewrecker.

HOOOOOOOOO HOOOMMMEEE HOOOMMMEEEWREEE HOOOMMMEEEWREEECKERRR okay.

Again, Sonny wanted something that nobody else had, so we went to our food packing company, and he said, you know, 15 inch all beef, and we want to put all the toppings on it.

And, Buddy Logan looked at us and said, it's a novelty.

No, it's not going to last.

And I turned around and Sonny was walking out the door and I looked at Buddy Logan.

I said, you gave us three months to make the dog for him.

Just do it.

Just make it.

So he came into our- we, at that time, had a Huntington location.

He came into the store and he had a frozen prototype 15in long.

All beef- threw it down the table.

It was frozen and it just kind of bounced.

And my brother was down there and he went, And right there we got the name.

Exactly that, that second.

we had various people come out to try it, to see what they could do time wise, because we knew people would want to.

Yeah, as a challenge.

I don't particularly like that, but people do.

People like challenges.

So.

So one guy, David Frankie... he had the right last name, huh?

He was a student at Marshall.

And he did it in 12 minutes and we knew, okay, we got our set time because it took him everything he had to do 12 minutes.

So now from there, we've gone down to the two minutes and 34 seconds, which was just beat the other day by a young man.

Now, course, last year we were hit with the, you know, SS Logan closed down.

And so it was a whole thing of 'what am I going to do?'

I really didn't know what to do.

And I turned to a very good friend of mine by the name of Guy Fieri and I said, I need help.

I don't know what to do I just, I I'm lost, totally lost unless we start making them.

But then I'm gonna have to have another building to do all that.

And so he said, "I got you."

That's all I said.

"I got you."

And the next thing I know, I had chefs from all over calling me, going "give me specs, give me information, give it- Do you have any left on hand?"

Which we did.

So they had those to look at go from.

and we ended up with Vienna Beef.

And they've done a phenomenal job.

When my husband died he called.

He called me quite a few times just to make sure I was okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So he's gone, yes?

Yes, yes.

I lost him- it'll be four years in July.

And, you know, I didn't think I could even step foot on the property after he left because every part of it... even he and I sitting in here and having to clean up some of people's drawings or what have you... you know, I didn't think I could do it.

I just, you know, but I had family in that came in for his funeral and they wanted to eat.

And so I immediately brought them here and opened the kitchen, started cooking.

And that's when I realized, oh, yeah, you can do this.

Because I feel him.

I feel I'm here.

You know, we were we were crazy in love.

We were married for 23 years, and we renewed our vows 34 times in our 23 years.

Yeah.

Everywhere we went, that man found a preacher.

Everywhere.

First thing, first thing on the agenda.

We're going to get married again, Shar' - I gotta go.

-I gotta go.

I know, I know that feeling.

Well you guys be safe out there.

-That was really good.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Come back and visit me.

-We will, this is our first time.

Well, see?

It's realy nice.

And I don't know what perfume you're wearing but that is nice!

Very nice.

So a lot of first timers- since I've been here there have been at least 2 or 3 people have said this the first time.

Yeah it's crazy and it's really word of mouth.

It really, truly is.

I mean, I think the Food Network, when they came out and filmed us in 2007, put us on the map without question.

And now, I mean, when I say map, I mean the world, because we have friends from Paris that come every year and bring us something, and we always have something again from somebody around the world.

And I have people that come here that don't even speak English, but they'll point to whatever they want.

And yeah, it's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

What comes next?

I don't know, I just don't know.

But I'm open to, you know, I think because my son, his wife, he's got two sons, their little one, the oldest ones six.

And I'm hoping for the next generation I always want to be- as long as I'm on this earth, I want to be around it, beside it, cuddle it.

But I... I'm ready to let the next generation take on.

And my son has been phenomenal.

And he was, you know, really highly trained by Sonny.

So he still has all that from him, which is beautiful, beautiful.