THE HONBECK SPECIAL
This Sandwich By Honbeck
More Than White Bread, Meat, Butcher Paper -- It Is a Legend

By Sherry Greminger
Daily Journal, Assistant Managing Editor

A sandwich. A simple ham and cheese on white bread. Or maybe oberle sausage and cheese. Wrapped in butcher paper.

Often times the bread would stick to the roof of your mouth. Lettuce and tomato would spill out the sides.

Just a simple sandwich. No, a legend. A Honbeck Special.

Throughout the 25 odd years the late Roy Honbeck operated Honbeck Grocery at the corner of St. Joe and Lewis St., he dispensed plenty of sandwiches, conversation and advice from his counter.

For hundreds of working people in St. Francois and surrounding counties the little store was the focal point of the noon hour.

A sign outside the store proclaimed it was "Home of the Honbeck Special."

Honbeck got into the sandwich business catering to truck drivers who used to drive along St. Joe Street when it was Highway 67. Next came the hunters stock-piling for their trips. Then the wives and mothers began discovering the sandwiches and taking them home.

Honbeck said in an interview in 1981 that he never advertised. He said people would come from all over to buy a sandwich. They would even, he said, drive out of their way.

"That Honbeck Special has made history. People come in and ask if this is where they buy those sandwiches. I tell them, 'You're at the right spot'."

Honbeck said one guy, a truck driver from Alabama, heard about the sandwich from a bus driver.

Honbeck theorized he could forecast the economy from the lunch trade at his store. When times were good more people bought Honbeck Specials.

"I could tell by the sandwiches I made. When there was construction going on around here, at 12 o'clock they'd be lined up out the door. Sometimes a guy would come in and buy lunch for a dozen men. When the interest rates went up, that business dropped off by half," he said.

Just buying the sandwich wasn't the only thing, it was the company. It wasn't unusual to find two or three customers sitting around the store eating their lunch or just discussing the day's news.

Honbeck did nothing to discourage this. "Like I told a lady one time. She came in here and told me I would make more money if I took out all those seats and put in shelves in their place. I said, 'Lady, that's the reason they come in here. I make more money off those seats than I ever would from shelves,'" Honbeck said.

Roy Honbeck is gone now. Honbeck's Store has been bought and sold several times over the past few years. The Honbeck Special is gone.

But on a hot day at noon, just when the stomach begins its daily protest, many men and women recall that brown paper bag filled with a cold soda, a bag of chips and a Honbeck Special and let out a nostalgic sigh for a time and a sandwich gone by.

Published by THE DAILY JOURNAL, Flat River, St. Francois Co. MO, Fri. April 24, 1992 in a supplement "Myths...Legends...Tall Tales of St. Francois County and the Ozarks."

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