There is nothing grumpy about Grumpy Dog.
The lunch spot has been a staple of downtown Wetumpka since 2014 and is a favorite of many including me.
While the food is good, the company of fellow diners is awesome and you might even get a history lesson or two.
My standard order is the special of two Grumpy Dogs with Zapp’s Voodoo chips and a Dr. Pepper. I normally don’t have to say much. Staff will almost always look at me and ask, “Two Grumpys?”
I acknowledge them and they quickly assemble my order with a good hotdog and bun with a slathering of yellow mustard, onions and homemade chili piled on top.
Most often I take a seat in the dining room or under the canopy. Doing so can take you back down memory lane.
I was reminded of that recently as I got in line behind Wetumpka Mayor Jerry Willis. We sat in the dining room and rather than get caught up on city business, I got a history lesson.
I knew Grumpy Dog was originally a service station. The canopy would have covered gas pumps at one point in time. The dining room was a little different.
“Your’re sitting where the grease rack was,” Willis told me.
But there was no more automobile grease, just the right amount to make a really good hotdog with chili. The menu is filled with an extensive variety of hotdogs topped almost anyway one can imagine.
The mayor and I talked for a while. He was sitting where the parts rack once was.
What I didn’t know was that the building has been a few different things over the years.
It’s been a garden center and sandwich shop as well.
Willis recounted getting ferns, flowers and ham sandwich or two from the place. He should know as he operated a barbershop in downtown for years.
I have sat there in and out of Grumpy Dog countless times. I look out over the Hill, Bridge and Company Streets. I think back to when U.S. Highway 231 passed through town.
I ask myself how many travelers got their cars repaired here or got gas to go on to the mountains in the north or to the beach in the south.
It’s a path my father, grandfather and grandmother took many a time going to the family farm.
My dad’s family hails from Jacksonville. My grandfather settled in south Alabama to teach after finishing Alabama Polytechnic Institute in Auburn, what is Auburn University today.
It’s a path less traveled now but thanks to the planning of many, downtown Wetumpka is alive again.
Willis told me there are still many great things in store for Wetumpka.
I hope I get to tell those stories.
Grumpy Dog also caters a lot of meals in the community. I love those events as I never go home hungry.
I also hope to get to eat my two Grumpys, but my waistline is telling me to swap to Grumpy Dogs famous salads.
There is always one on the menu to go along with a trip down memory lane.
Cliff Williams is the news editor of Tallapoosa Publishers Inc.’s Elmore County newspapers. He can be reached at cliff.williams@thewetumpkaherald.com.
