Living the Dream
For 35 years, the Big Burger and Coca Cola Museum was that nebulous wonder of Monahans—and that’s just the way its founders, Elaine and Dan Wetzig, wanted it.
Jenesse Wetzig Oyerbides says: On October 19th, Dan Wetzig lost his battle and went to be with the Lord. I am so proud to say that he was my Father. He touched so many lives with his Heart of Gold. His Coca-Cola Collection has been donated to the Million Barrel Museum in Monahans, TX, where it rightfully belongs, since most of the citizens of Monahans had donated items. It is so touching to know that his memory will live on though this collection. (November 4th, 2009 at 7:35am)
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One day, Dan came across some old Coca Cola pictures and posters from his time at the bottling company, and hung them up on the Big Burger’s wood-paneled walls. By this time Dan’s customers were loyal. Many ate there once a day; some, twice. Dan would chat with them, in his slow, clear Texan drawl, about their families and their jobs. He knew the names and ages of your sons, and how your boss liked his burger. Donna Till remembers how he’d make special avocado burgers for her step-father, Jess, and call it the “Jess Burger.” Bryan Heflin, Bret’s twin who also worked at the Big Burger, used to leave high school midday to work the lunch rush and get a free meal from Dan before running back to class. So when customers saw the Coke merchandise go up, the response was automatic: They brought in Coke stuff, too.
There were sunglasses, pencil sharpeners, flashlights, and dominos. Eventually a corner of the restaurant was devoted to Christmas Coca Cola, while another wall of shelves played ambassador to bottles from Israel, England, Iraq, and all over Africa. Elaine loves the music boxes most, most notably a telephone that plays the Coke theme song as a polar bear skates around the phone. And there are antiques: bottles from the 1800s; a bottle cap opener from when men, and not machines, sealed the caps on tightly. A neatly-plaited blonde with Coke-red lips entreaties you to “Take Time Out For Coca Cola” on a calendar holder; bids for this have crawled upward of $500.
But Dan never sold because everything in the museum is a gift—things that customers, that the people of Monahans wanted him to have, whether they found it in their attics or on vacation in Egypt. “They’ve always treated everyone with respect and love, and that’s what everyone gave back to them,” Till said. Dan had become the Mr. Dunagan of the Big Burger. His favorite item in the museum is a laminated and framed yellow-brown newspaper clipping from 1962: A newspaper ad Mr. Dunagan took out celebrating 35 years of bottling in Monahans. The two-page spread features a photo of every employee from the plant in 1962, including Dan.
Every wall is shelves, and every shelf is crammed to the brim, like a single-minded, over-stuffed refrigerator. A museum, Dan was its curator. But then he got sick. With the shoulder pains and the drooping eyelid, it was not the way legends should fade. Elaine, in her oversized, pink-tinted glasses, remembers how he couldn’t form words, couldn’t get enough spit to whistle at the dogs. And then Dan couldn’t smile.
Now the electricity and the air conditioning have been cut off at the Big Burger, the doors locked. The Christmas polar bears stare into the dark dining room, mutely asking each other what they did wrong. Everything sits exactly where it was left on March 23, when Dan stopped breathing.
How about this for a legend: On June 11, a day so hot that anyone who ordered a medium-cooked burger would find it medium-well by the time they bit in, a line began to form in Hill Park. It was a burger benefit—$7 for a burger, chips and drink, as well as live music—but the line didn’t lead to the grill, or to Sam Bass’s buried treasure, for that matter. It led to Dan Wetzig, who sat grinning in the shade, Elaine by his side.
Dan’s doing well now. He’s used to lines; Medlin Hospital had to gently remind Elaine that only two visitors were allowed in his room at a time. With the respirator down his throat and tubes in his nose, he’d write notes requesting a glass of water, making everyone laugh. He’s still sleeping in a hospital bed, but one that’s set up in his living room, where he entertains guests and keeps an eye on Alex, 16, and Anna, 12, the children he and Elaine adopted from their youngest daughter. He’s walking steadier and making his own breakfast, and he’s secure enough to be left alone so that Elaine can go grocery shopping (although it takes her more than an hour to do 20 minutes of shopping, she says, because everyone stops her to ask about Dan). Nurses come twice a week to clean and bandage the port inserted into his chest, just below the collar bone. The disease is incurable, but with medication, Dan can control it.
Dan’s only been back to the Big Burger twice, in part because he can’t drive. Dan gets emotional. He went with Elaine to clean off his desk. It was hard. But Dan is all silver lining. “After I got this disease, I realized it was a blessing for me. I know for a fact that it was God’s will to do this because it has made me the happiest person in the world,” he said. “We had not been able to do the things with our kids that we wanted to because we were working all the time. My wife and I are able to be with our kids, and go to their school activities, and we’re going to be able to go to my son’s football games. And we get to eat supper together as a family.” Dan’s voice breaks. “We’re going to have a family life now, and that makes me so happy.”
The Coca Cola trinkets will go to the Million Barrel Museum in Monahans. The Chamber of Commerce, along with Bryan Heflin, Till, and other friends—including Kitty Dunagan, the 95-year-old widow of Conrad—organized the benefit in Hill Park in honor of Dan. Close to one thousand people showed up. Fewer than seven thousand people live in Monahans. The Wetzigs couldn’t even find a parking spot. “You never know how many people you really touch, and in what ways it touches them,” Elaine says quietly. “And of course we feel the same way. I’ve never had so much love and personal attention.”
“We were overwhelmed,” Bryan said. “We ended up cooking for twice as many people as we thought we were going to. Everyone was so excited to come out and visit Dan, see how he was doing.” When they ran out of patties, competitor Super Burger shut down for the day and brought all of its supplies over. By ten o’clock that night, they raised $12,000 for the Wetzigs.
“They’re both wonderful people, and I hope someone buys the Big Burger and does it justice like Dan and Elaine did,” Till said. In the meantime, the Big Burger is up for sale, and the faux-homeless church children of Monahans will have to find another place, and another bottom-toothed smile, for a free lunch.
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