You can sit with George Thon and just listen to story after story of what it was like to own a popular carry-out restaurant in Munster for 35 years.
As he speaks, you can picture the scene: the hustle and bustle of the speedy carry-out joint, Thon’s Carry-Out. Waiters and waitresses scramble around taking the orders of all the locals: the families stopping in for a quick dinner, the Mayor at the time grabbing a meal and saying Hello to Thon, and the high school football coach celebrating a win with his players.
“I liked it a lot,” Thon said, now looking back on the long hours of cooking, frying, and chopping. “I met a lot of people.”
Thon’s Carry-Out was a family-owned restaurant, managed and run by Thon and his wife Marguerite. The two are from Highland and are now living in the Rittenhouse Village at Portage. The two just celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last September.
Thon was taught the restaurant business from his wife’s cousin, and the rest came from learning as he went, he said.
The restaurant featured meals of chicken, shrimp, all kinds of seafood, and pizzas. The restaurant held fish fry’s every few weeks, in which Thon would invite friends and special guests, one of whom was the CEO of the Munster Community Hospitals, he said.
Thon can still recite all his tips of the trade.
“Throw the fresh fish in, then when two to three start floating, you pull them all out because the rest are done,” he advised, a tip for frying fish. “You don’t ever look at your watch. But for frozen fish, that’s different.”
These fish fry’s were the talk of the town, but only to those with invitations.
“I would have fish parties and they would come: a couple of the coaches in Highland, friends. We had about 12 to 15 people. It was a good time,” Thon said. “So many people wanted to come, but I just couldn’t do so many, but I would put the fish out there and they ate well.”
The pizzas were another specialty of Thon’s, who stood for hours at his chef’s table arranging meals and flipping up dough.
“I can still stretch a pizza pie I bet you. That high,” he said, looking up toward the staircase and banister of the second level of the building. “That’s why my legs went out, too much time behind that pizza table.”
Six days a week, from 5 p.m. to 10 or 11 p.m. Thon was the head chef and cook.
“We had three or four employees and I would usually make all the fish and the pizzas,” he said. “I liked to cook the fish and shrimp. Those are my favorite because they were the easiest.”
His wife Marguerite was a nurse, so she only worked some hours with the restaurant and their three kids helped after school. They had two daughters and one son who now live Indiana and Illinois.
Thon said he worked too much at the restaurant to have many hobbies, but would enjoy engaging in his kids’ activities. But it was his nightly ritual after a long day’s work that he enjoyed and claims to this day is the reason for his good health.
“I came home and poured a glass of wine filled with ice and I never had a cold for years,” he said. “I never got sick and they (his doctor) still can’t believe my heart is as good as it is.”