Drive-in restaurants located on Fairfield and Packard Avenue, Anthony and Pontiac, and 7720 Bluffton Road, from the late 1940s through at least the 1960s. Home of the Big Guy hamburger, milkshakes, pork tenderloin sandwiches, and ice cream.
We have scores of Fast-Food restaurant trademarks in our collection. These come from the Happy Humpty drive-in restaurant, located in Fort Wayne from the late 1940s through at least the 1960s. We have examples of their cups, customer review cards, and birthday club sign-up cards. These trademarks expired when the Happy Humpty restaurant become the Lucky Steer sometime in the early 1980s. Did you ever visit the Happy Humpty in Fort Wayne? We'd love to hear your stories in the comments.
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Mystery Solved! These probably adorned the sign for the Happy Humpty Restaurant at Fairfield and Packard in Fort Wayne. (It was a chain, so we can't be certain.)
Mystery signs, circa 1960s - Two egg-shaped cartoon characters eating sandwiches at the Johnson Brothers Sign Company in South Whitley. Does anyone remember a restaurant decorated with these signs? Johnson Brothers made a lot of signs for northeastern Indiana businesses.
Today, we continue our list of the top endangered properties in the Historic 07 District. The purpose of this list is to raise awareness of these incredible properties.
At the corner of Fairfield and Packard sits a unique building, and perhaps an even more unique sign. Built in 1928, the Humpty Dumpty Drive-In building still stands, but it is unfortunately in disrepair. The site was initially the Indian Refining Company. Indian Refining patented the first "wax-free" oil under the Havoline brand. To boost sales and advertise the product, they offered to fuel the first plane to fly coast to coast. As of 1937, the site was owned by the Shewmaker Bros as a gasoline and oil service station. Then, by the mid-1940s, the site was vacant.
Soon after, the station was converted into a restaurant by Guy Scheib. “The restaurant, run by Scheib and his sons, was an overnight success in post-WWII Indiana, and they quickly began expanding, changing the name to Happy Humpty along the way, as the Humpty Dumpty trademark was unavailable.” Scheib went on to open other restaurants, as well. For example, “Lucky Steer was launched in partnership with Royce Shafer. At the peak of operations, there were around 23 company-owned restaurants in the two brand chain.”
At some point, Scheib was no longer involved with the business, and the restaurants closed in the 1980s. Scheib lived in Woodhurst but eventually relocated to Florida, where he passed away in 1999. The split in ownership developed another chain, CJ HighMarks, in Ohio by a former employee and District Manager, John Irmscher. There is still one Lucky Steer in existence today, which was purchased by Dwight Axe and his wife Carmen in 1983. The couple met as teenagers in the restaurant. That last restaurant still serves customers to this day in Wapakoneta, OH.
A January 30, 2024 comment to sharing this post October 14, 2020 by the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana on Facebook expressed interest in restoring this restaurant. Another Message asked how to find the current land owner. The Allen County Recorder's Office website states: The Allen County Recorder’s primary function is to maintain permanent public records of the transactions that convey property from one owner to the next.https://www.allencountyrecorder.us/ Their website is the place to start whether for genealogy research or any reason to find current and previous historical land owners of Allen County, Indiana property. See our Land Records page for more information.
