“Beep Beep! Honk! Honk! ” is all you hear throughout the big city of New York throughout the day. For the Dargen family, this is an everyday experience that doesn’t really spark up anything new to them. The Dargen family started out small in the early 1900’s, running a variety of food and beverage businesses all over the United States. They were closed in to one area on the East Coast of the U. S. after the Great Depression had hit because of inflation throughout the rest of the states.
After all of that had taken place and the Great Depression was ending and during the 1960’s the depression was coming to an abrupt stop. At this time, the Dargen’s family business was starting to prosper again and spread out through the United States. While all this was happening. David Dargen had moved to a small town known as Necedah in the state of Wisconsin. There his grandfather had owned a Saloon known as “Old Whippersnappers”. This restaurant had a huge reputation for drunks occupying it. After so many prolonged years, the Saloon was unfortunately shut down due to financial reasons.
When David saw this as an advantage him, his wife, and his 2 kids decided to move there. While all of this was happening, David Dargen decided to create the restaurant into an Italian restaurant to compete with Becerra’s Pizzeria that was in the middle of town. His wife Angela Dargen had accepted the task of managing the restaurant and taking care of the upkeep that was required for this type of establishment. To skip ahead several months, the restaurant had become a huge success and people were starting recognize its popularity.
As David started to see the restaurant prosper and grow, a customer named Delaney Jarvis had come in to eat with a few of her colleagues from the Beauty Salon in town. She was the Daughter of one of the Becerra’s and she had heard about its all time success over the several months. She began to examine the establishment alongside her friends. Angela (David’s Wife) approached her and asked if she’d like something to eat and drink. Delaney observed Angela and spoke with an eerie sound saying “Quite”. Angela started to walk toward one of the best seats in the house and pulled all 3 chairs out.
Delaney ordered a chicken and steak skillet with habanero and banana peppers added to the top. Delaney took one bite of the food and it was if she had remembered back at the Saloon back in 1915. The magnificent features to the food were exhilarating to her and astonishing as well. The restaurant unfortunately got shut down after a good run of about 35 years as the Dargen family relatives took over from generation to generation and carried out the restaurants famous name, until the restaurant was losing business from Necedah advancing and building a Subway and an A & W right in town.
The aftermath of this restaurant still stands in Necedah today as the Red Hen antique shop and the famous Dargen name was never carried out passed them. One of the biggest reasons why this was was because of the low income to the restaurant as well as tampering with the food from the very few cooks that worked there. The restaurant was hiring new employees and couldn’t find business as much as they tried because of the bad reputation that it had built for itself. Many people had come to believe that it was because that the food was bad that the people were quitting and that was why they weren’t getting any employees that wanted a job.
After the restaurant had closed down, the Dargen’s redesigned the building and rejuvenated the restaurant and attempted to make a small knick-knack shop with small house appliances while one half was continuing business, another half of the building was separated and used as a small home for people that would rent it out. Before the restaurant started to collapse, it reached the top 50 restaurants in the U. S. and brought people from all ends of the country to eat there. After the restaurant started to decline and lose employees, the knick-knack shop wasn’t a success, as people would drive by constantly asking, “where’s Old Whippersnappers?
No-one could answer that, the shop was opened for about a year after they started to slowly close down and become a ghost town. This was just before necedah burnt down for the first time. If you go around the building today, near the Bank of Necedah going through downtown Necedah was the Old Whippersnapper’s parking lot where everyone parked before entering this magnificent restaurant. The Dargen family really wasn’t all special, it consisted of David Dargen (the father), Angela Dargen (the mother) who were both the owners of Old Whippersnappers, Penny Dargen, and Matthew Dargen.
They all had lived in a separate room that was apart of the restaurant but upstairs. This was difficult for the Dargen family considering that the kids normally had school during the week and it wasn’t exactly quiet in the restaurant on the weekends, or at any time actually. While the restaurant was at its peak, David and Angela would constantly be stressed with work, that they would really never had time for their kids. Matthew and Penny were always getting in fights and causing mischief at school.
