Starting at seven o’clock in the morning on Thursday June 19, 2014, the next stage in the recovery of Wes’s Burger Shack and More began. Cleanup has officially started. I stopped by and helped all that I could today before I had to leave to go to work and had the chance to take a few pictures.  If you have ever met Wes Teeter then you know how proud he was of his restaurant.  As I walked through the dark building, seeing it for the first time without every table and booth filled with fellow Wes’s Burgers lovers, my heart was heavy.  This man’s dream had eerily been put on pause by this fire, but it won’t be on pause for long knowing Wes.

Taking the fire in stride, his response when I offered my condolences was a quick retort that it was all part of the business and his main concern was for those that worked for him.  Luckily Subway has offered every Wes’s Burger Shack and More employee a job for however long they need it. 

I mentioned that I knew he had to move his business once before and was curious why he chose the Downtown Temple location and not somewhere else.  He then reflected with a story that I would like to share—in my opinion, it defines the type of man that he is.  He said that he grew up in Downtown Temple, right off Main Street and that this was his home and he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

He told me that when he was 8 years old his family was Downtown for the Sesquicentennial Celebration and he can remember a guy selling wind up birds in the street outside of the current restaurant’s location and that three of them had made their way up onto the awning that is still on the front of the building.  A much younger and in his own words skinnier Wes Teeter climbed up to retrieve them for the man.  Perched on top of a building that he now owns, he collected the toys and returned them to the man.  Turning down an offer from the guy of one of the birds, he had just done it to help someone.

Now that the next stage of this project has begun, it is our chance to help him.  Like Wes’s Burgers on Facebook for updates on the restaurant or mine.  I’ll do my best to keep everyone updated as well.  Friends of the business have also set up an account to help with the rebuilding of the restaurant that you can find more information on here.

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