The Fryeburg Fair fixture keeps crowds happy
FRYEBURG – In 1948 Emily Stacy of Wilton was laid off from the woolen mill where she worked.
She bought an old school bus and hitched a wagon to it. The wagon’s sides and rear gate could be dropped to form a counter. She carried stools to set around the makeshift counter and began serving meals at county fairs.
“Her parents did all the cooking and she served,” said her great niece Starr Jones, who along with her husband, Lonny, now own Emily’s, a restaurant that only opens seasonally at the Fryeburg, Oxford, Windsor and Topsham fairs.
“She went to where the horsemen and cattlemen were because she knew they needed hearty meals,” Starr said.
Starr said Emily was about 42 years old when she began the business and as she got older it became too hard towing a vehicle and serving meals.
“She told the fairs she was going to have to stop coming,” Starr said. “When the fair officials heard this, they offered her a building.”
Starr said either officials from the Topsham Fair or Fryeburg Fair were the first to build a permanent site for her in 1990.
The next year officials from the Windsor Fair erected a building and Oxford Fair officials followed suit a year after that.
Starr and Lonny took over the business about 15 years ago, and Emily was always their partner until she died last year at age 95.
“The last year she worked here she was 87,” Starr said from Emily’s kitchen in Fryeburg. “I can still see her, sitting right here, peeling vegetables.
“We still have the same menu,” Starr said. “Nothing has changed. Emily used to say, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.'”
Lonny is the first to arrive at the restaurant at 4 a.m. He readies for the 6 a.m. opening at which a standard American breakfast of eggs, meat, home fries and toast is offered along with pancakes.
Starr said she arrives “a bit later” and then closes at 8 p.m.
The restaurant has several hot and cold sandwich selections, but is known for its turkey, pot roast and liver and onion dinners.
Starr said she and Lonny arrive at the four fairs a week before they begin to prepare and stay a week after they close to clean.
All the equipment in the restaurant belongs to the them, and the premises are not used by anyone else during the year.
“The fairs are like a big family reunion,” Starr said.
jsmedley@sunjournal.com
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