Saturday was bittersweet at the shuttered Red Rooster, as residents visited the historic eatery for the last time. On the menu: everything.
By Per Peterson
Kathy Hohler worked at the Red Rooster for a total of 35 years for two different owners. On Saturday, she likely paid the iconic, shuttered restaurant her final visit.
The newly-formed, five-member Tracy Development Corporation opened the restaurant’s doors to the public for the last time Saturday for a liquidation sale and the public responded. A line outside the restaurant formed 15 minutes before the beginning of the sale, and among those people was Hohler, who said she misses her customers.
“The customers — I loved the customers,” she said. “Everybody who would come in here was so nice. And I think they all liked me because I was good to them. I loved my job. I loved it. The people that came in here is what I’ll miss the most.”
Hohler said even though she had some idea a couple years ago that the Rooster might be closing, she was sad upon learning it was official.
“I was sad, very sad, for a long time,” she said. “We kind of had an inkling that it was going downhill, but no one said anything until the morning I was ready to come to work. It was very, very hard on me, especially missing all the customers.”
Hohler walked away from Saturday’s sale with a sign she discovered in a bathroom.
For more on this article, see this week’s Headlight-Herald.