42 years later, couple ends the routine: Today is last day for Little Rock's Fourche Dam Dairy Bar

Bill and Billie Jean Huey work together in a well-practiced routine filling lunchtime orders Wednesday at the Fourche Dam Dairy Bar as Donny Kennedy (right) takes more orders at the window.
Bill and Billie Jean Huey work together in a well-practiced routine filling lunchtime orders Wednesday at the Fourche Dam Dairy Bar as Donny Kennedy (right) takes more orders at the window.

It was a little past noon on Wednesday, and the owner of two plates each loaded with a cheeseburger and seasoned French fries was missing.

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Billie Jean Huey hugs customer Eric Rockwell on Wednesday at the Fourche Dam Dairy Bar, which she and her husband, Bill, will close today after 42 years.

Billie Jean Huey, 74, stood on her tiptoes behind the white countertop at Fourche Dam Dairy Bar to scan the 20-by-20-foot dining room. Under her breath, she repeated by heart the orders of each customer -- beginning with a gentleman in the first booth against the back wall and continuing through to the last small orange-and-black-topped table by the front door.

Abruptly, the petite woman with a kind smile roared "cheeseburger-seasoned-fries!"

The room silenced, but nobody stepped forward to claim the bounty.

Huey shrugged, then carried the plates to the kitchen, where her husband, 76-year-old Bill Eugene Huey, was flipping burgers on a stainless steel industrial grill.

The couple -- who celebrate their 55th wedding anniversary today -- frantically worked in unison to serve the dozens of customers snaking out the front door and lining up at both takeout windows along the front of the building.

It's a routine the couple has perfected over the past 42 years since they purchased the small restaurant, and it's a routine that will end at 2:45 p.m. today after the Hueys serve their last lunch to their last customer.

"We didn't plan to close down on our anniversary. It just happened that way," Billie Huey said.

The couple bought the restaurant in 1974. The small, red-brick building nestled in a neighborhood just east of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field was part of a strip shopping center that also housed a grocery store, a barbershop and a beauty salon.

They had the option of buying a liquor store that was next to the property but declined.

"Bill's a deacon in the church, and he couldn't have anything to do with it," Billie said.

Today the restaurant is the only business that remains on the property after a 1997 tornado.

"It got everything in our center but skipped over the dairy bar," Bill said. "The only thing that was left was what we started with. We seem to think the Lord let us stay here for a reason."

A month or so ago, Bill had old gas tanks on the property pulled from the ground, and he decided that it was a good time to retire.

"We're just open from 11 to 1, but I get here at 5:15 in the morning, and Billie comes about 7:30. Then we leave at 2:45, and about every other day I have to go get supplies. I get home about 5," Bill said. "It's a lot of time-consuming things. You don't have time for nothing else except go to service on Sunday."

Vacations and dairy bars haven't mixed very well in the past 4½ decades for the couple. Most of the time, it's just Billie taking orders and running the front while Bill -- in his uniform of white T-shirt, bluejeans, black loafers and a bright-blue apron -- mans the grill.

There was that time that Bill had cataract surgery and they shut down for two weeks, and the four weeks they took off for Bill's hernia surgery. Other than that, time away has been scant.

"I know this is bad," Billie said, her eyes crinkling as she looked sideways at her husband. "But it was nice to have that time off."

As soon as the clock hit 11 a.m. Wednesday, trucks with construction and railroad logos emblazoned on the sides, minivans with car seats buckled in the back, and sedans with briefcases slung over the passenger seats pulled into the restaurant's gravel parking lot.

Customers herald from the small neighborhood surrounding the restaurant and from nearby industry -- the airport, UPS, Prospect Steel.

In a matter of minutes, vehicles bordered the roadway on both sides. As customers walked through the door, some hollered "Hey, Bill" and waved toward the kitchen, while others winked at Billie or asked about her well-being.

The Fourche Dam Dairy Bar's well-known -- and cheap at $2.39 -- cheeseburger wrapped in red-and-white-checked paper is the top seller on the restaurant's 40-item menu.

"It's better than most anywhere," Tom Sutton, the manager of design and construction for Clinton National, said of the cheeseburger. "We're definitely going to miss them. It's close to the airport, and they're nice people. I hate to see them close."

Customers also have other favorites.

"Give me a catfish sandwich."

"Got the barbecue today?"

"Bologna."

The two are known for their back-and-forth, good-natured bickering when it gets hectic.

It takes a lot of work and a "secret system" of getting the orders out, Billie said.

"It's a marriage," she said. "You can nearly do it in your sleep."

Working nearly 20 years at the Timex factory, then a manufacturing plant, Bill Huey said owning the property was a way for the young couple to have something of their own.

Now 42 years, one daughter and three grandchildren later, it's time for the couple to finally get some downtime.

"Oh, no, not at all," Billie said, shaking her head emphatically when asked if she was going to miss the daily bustle.

Bill will heed the call of the ducks in Canada, he said. Their grandson has a lodge there that caters to duck hunters and Bill figures he will need some help occasionally.

A sketchbook to take Billie back to her childhood love of drawing and a new garden to fill her days are in her future.

"I mean, I will miss my customers. I got real attached to them," Billie said. "But I'm ready to have some time to myself."

A Section on 06/30/2016

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