By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

By the end of the day Monday, the former El Charro restaurant at 3202 S. Main St. was a pile of rubble. The rest, including the foundation, will be gone soon.

The restaurant was brought down to begin the long-anticipated redesign of the intersection at 32nd and Main streets.

Though it’s most familiar as El Charro, the restaurant had a colorful history that dates back more than 60 years. Frank Harris, a Joplin resident, remembers it well.

“It was Mack’s Drive-In,” he said. “I had a job there as a carhop when I was about 13. That was in 1946. It was a new restaurant then.”

Harris later would enter into a career in law enforcement that spanned 40 years, including 11 years as assistant chief with the Joplin Police Department.

“It was the first job I ever had, and I worked there for about a year,” he said. “I made $2 a shift.”

When he worked there, Mack’s Drive-In, which was built by “Mac” McIntyre, employed only three people: a cook, a waitress and a carhop.

The drive-in was a popular spot for young cruisers on South Main Street to turn around, and head back into town and stop at the former El Rancho restaurant, which is now home to the McDonald’s Restaurant at 27th and Main streets.

Mack’s Drive-In would become the Paul Cress Restaurant, Fat and Happy’s, and then El Charro. It might have been a liquor store for a while, too. The restaurant was among the last surviving original buildings at the intersection that included Shady’s Bar-B-Q, Ken Reynolds Pharmacy, the Holiday Inn nightclub and the Chatter Box nightclub.

The redesign of the intersection is a partnership project with the Missouri Department of Transportation, according to David Hertzberg, Joplin’s public works director.

“MoDOT has the demolition contract and is the lead agency on the intersection work,” he said. “We are redoing West 32nd Street from Wall to Jackson at the same time as the MoDOT project.”

Chris Calandro, with MoDOT, said the contract for the redesign of the intersection, one of Joplin’s busiest, will be awarded April 25. Work should begin a month or so after that. The construction work should take about a year to complete.

Calandro said the El Charro restaurant was brought down as preparatory work for the redesign so that utility poles could be relocated by Empire District Electric Co. in advance of the work.