From root beer & ice cream, local drive-in evolved into a major Dexter institution

Mike McCoy photo Leon and Gwen McGarrity opened the Daisy Queen in 1949 on Highway 60 in the middle of a popcorn field. The name was changed to Dexter Queen a year later. They sold the business in 1980 and retired. They are shown on the deck of their home in Dexter. [Click to enlarge]

In 1949 Leon McGarrity and his wife, Gwen, opened a small ice cream, fountain drink business on Highway 60 in Dexter. That was before the new highway and before there was much on that end of Dexter at all. In fact, the land south of the highway was nothing more than a field of popcorn owned by James William. McGarrity bought a small portion of that land to set up business. He called it Daisy Queen. He and his wife served soft ice cream, soft drinks and the real draw was a "root beer barrel."

"We served the root beer in an iced cold mug," says Gwen, "which was something that nobody had before."

circa 1960

Down the road, east of Daisy Queen, was the financial center for the radio preacher. All his collections flowed into the business. His connections to the area, as McGarrity recalls, was that he had family in Dexter. The employees would walk down to McGarrity's business for root beer and ice cream, and one day suggested that they serve some food because there wasn't a place for them to grab a bite to eat in that area.

So McGarrity bought a used grill and a hot dog warmer, and expanded big time into the food business. Now you could get a hamburger or hot dog with your root beer. The people down the road helped the McGarritys succeed. They often arrived, placed big orders and returned to their own mail-out business.

About that time complications arose over the name Daisy Queen. Another very familiar establishment felt that the named infringed on their own name. After several threatening legal communications, the McGarritys decided to change the name to the Dexter Queen.

The original "Daisy" Queen [Click to enlarge]

In 1950 McGarrity decided to build a small, brick barbecue pit at the rear of the business. He had learned to smoke meat from his uncle, who just happened to have a recipe for a mustard-based sauce that he covered the pork shoulders with before cooking. The recipe wasn't his uncle's. His uncle a few years earlier had bought an eating establishment from an Indian in Dexter. The place was called the Wagon Wheel and the Indian passed on the sauce recipe to McGarrity's uncle. His uncle later would close that establishment.

McGarrity started out small. He smoked some shoulder "as needed" during those early years.

"It didn't take long for the tail to start wagging the dog," McGarrity says of the popularity of the barbecue at Dexter Queen.

He and Gwen worked 16-hour days. They added French fries and cole slaw a year later. In those days they made their fries from potatoes and the cole slaw was made from scratch.

"We bought potatoes by the 100-pound bag," Gwen McGarrity says, "It was quite a chore to peel all those potatoes."

Obviously, the size of the barbecue pit grew as the business did. The meat was slow-cooked over coals made by hickory wood. That continued to be the practice until the late 1970s. Because of the intense labor involved, McGarrity finally went to a modern smoker that utilized gas for cooking while the meat rotated on a spit.

"It got so busy that we couldn't keep up," McGarrity says.

A lot of changes took place over the 32 years that the McGarritys operated the business. It was a constant battle for McGarrity to keep his place from becoming another high school hangout.

"I was rough on the teenagers," he concedes, "But I wanted a family oriented business."

Highway 60 by the 1960s was a teen Mecca. Teenagers burned up the road between the Dairy Queen on Business Highway 60 near Chrisman Tire Company and The Pig on the north side of the highway west of One Mile Road. The advent of the 1970s saw the teens shift to the A&W at the corner of One Mile Road and Business 60.

McGarrity compared the teenagers making the circle in those days to Indians "circling the Conestoga wagons."

As time went by, the potatoes were replaced with crinkle cut frozen fries, because it was easier. But the barbecue was by then famous, and residents who had long since moved away came back to Dexter Queen when they were came for a visit.

The McGarritys watched three generations pass through the service windows at Dexter Queen and had countless employees during their run as business owners. The only change they made in the building was to add a covered area in front of the windows. They sold the business in 1980.

Leon McGarrity was born in Calhoun County, Miss. in 1920. When he was three years old, his family moved to the Burdette Plantation outside Blytheville. His father was overseer of the cotton plantation.

"We had to get away from the boll weevils," McGarrity says.

He graduated from Luxora High School. His father moved to Steele to run a cotton gin. Leon moved to Steele and became a cotton buyer for this father. McGarrity got his first crack at running a business when he bought a night club in Steele in 1942. It was at the club that he first met Gwen. She managed a Ben Franklin store in Portageville, and would come to the night club at Steele with a group of her friends. She met Leon there.

"We just kind of hit it off," Leon says.

They dated for a year, before being married in 1943. Leon went off to work in Memphis where he worked for Continental Bread Company.

He worked there for awhile before his health took a turn for the worse. His sister and her husband lived in Dexter, and it was this strange twist of fate that brought the McGarritys to the area. His health began to improve and he began looking for a way to earn a living.

On August 1, 1949, they opened Daisy Queen, subsequently to be known as Dexter Queen.

"Happiness is a barbecue and malt from Dexter Queen," was the advertising slogan that launched untold thousands of pounds of pork shoulder into the diets of Bootheel residents.

McGarrity didn't say whether he ponied up for one of those prayer cloths that were so critical in getting his business off the ground. Yet, the barbecue business cetainly proved prosperous for the couple over the years.