Pokin Around: Taylor’s Drive-In owner says she hasn’t decided if she’ll reopen

I spoke with Darlene Collins on Tuesday, January 7th, and I can’t say I have much new to report about Taylor’s Drive-In.

We last spoke a year ago after she closed the business, which had been open since 1947.

I ask her about her health.

“I’m hanging in there,” she tells me.

She is a year older now at 84 and in recent months she has returned to driving a bit, she says.

She still owns the Taylor’s building at 139 Memorial Plaza. It is cat corner from the back of the Shrine Mosque.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” she says. “It’s like I said, I’m just hanging in limbo. I don’t know what I want to do. I’m not in a big hurry. It’s been paid for several years and I just haven’t made any decisions.”

Age and illness have taken a toll.

Darlene suffered a heart attack on December 18, 2023. The last time the steak burger-and-fries joint was open was five days later on December 23.

Earlier in 2023, she underwent chemotherapy and radiation therapy for cancer.

What the good book teaches

Darlene has owned the business since 1978, when it was still a car hop. She bought it with her husband Jack, who died in 2012. They had fled to Springfield to escape the Iowa winters.

Early Taylor’s stayed open until 10 p.m. Before the company closed a year ago, the hours were 11.00 to 14.00 Tuesday to Friday.

In 2019, Darlene called me because a large donation box—which no one claimed—caught fire and firefighters had to put it out. The result was a mess in her parking lot that could easily provide the kiss of financial death – the false impression of an abandoned property. Darlene was looking for someone to help clean up.

I wrote a story and sure enough a Good Samaritan responded to her distress call. He arrived in a 1997 Toyota pickup with 484,000 miles on it.

Gene Baker told me then, “I was born and raised here in Springfield and been here 91 years. The good book teaches you to take care of widows and orphans. And this lady is a widow.”

A diorama: everything looks the same, but no people

I ask Darlene if she is trying to sell the property. She is not.

I ask if she wants to try opening it again. She doesn’t know.

She hasn’t been back to Taylor since she left over a year ago, she says. Her son occasionally drops by to check on things.

I looked on Monday.

I looked through the glass windows. Taylor’s is like a diorama. Like historical exhibits in museums with mastodons and early humans. A depiction of how things once were.

The tables are covered with condiments, napkin holders, fake flowers, small American flags.

Menus are in place, along with the written account of the restaurant’s history – preserved in plastic – which I read every time I went there.

In the back stall, I can almost see Darlene at the register. Cash only/no plastic.

Landmarks come in all sizes

People have been going to Taylor’s for decades, since the days when young swans crossed Springfield in stagecoaches.

Grandparents took their grandchildren.

The restaurant was once owned by Bob Taylor, basketball coach at the then-St. Agnes High School. (Now Springfield Catholic High School.) Taylor coached St. Agnes to a 30-1 record and a state championship in 1959. He died at age 82 in 1996.

Countless wonderful photos have been taken of Taylor’s over its 78 years, including those by Springfield Daily Citizen colleagues Shannon Cay and Jackie Rehwald.

I went there with my iPhone, thinking that all I could add to this daunting portfolio was to capture what Taylors look like in the changing “now.”

But once in a while you get lucky. I didn’t know that when I took the picture, but I did when I cropped it. Landmarks come in all sizes.

This is Pokin Around column no. 240.