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  Carrie Rengers  

Jack's new owners to keep with tradition

Finally, some good news to report for all the Jack's North Hi Carry Out fans who have been e-mailing and calling about its fate.

The restaurant, which has been closed since a February 2007 fire, should reopen by the end of next month.

Joe and Barbara Moore purchased Jack's this week, but they almost didn't get the restaurant.

That's because last week, auctioneer Bud Palmer bought it first.

The Moores struck a deal with Palmer, who pocketed some nice change to let them have it.

Marlin Penner of NAI John T. Arnold Associates handled the transaction.

Neither of the Moores went to North High School, but they used to live at 19th and Garland when they were first married.

"When we were poor, we would go over and get a hamburger," Joe Moore says. "That's when rent was $165 a month, and we were wondering how we were going to pay."

Moore says he's "an old car guy" and plans to decorate Jack's with '50s auto memorabilia along with North High mementos.

The Moores plan extensive renovations to the space.

"I know it's going to be work, but it's going to be fun, too," Joe Moore says.

And he plans to keep with tradition as much as possible.

"I'm not going to fix anything that isn't broke."

Kid friendly

If you've been by Bradley Fair lately, you may have noticed some remodeling going on in the former space of Restoration Hardware, which closed in the spring.

Pei Wei Asian Diner has eyed the shopping center previously, but it doesn't look like the restaurant is close to choosing an east-side site yet.

The new tenant won't be offering anything to eat at all, in fact.

Instead, the shop is something that likely will please a lot of parents who want an easy-in, easy-out shopping experience.

Check out the full story in this space next week.

That's Mrs. Roberts

If you think you're sick of this political season, try being Pat Roberts.

Not Sen. Pat Roberts, but the Pat Roberts who's living the quiet life of a retiree in Wichita. At least, that is, until the User-Friendly Phone Book came out recently.

"I've been getting Senator Pat Roberts' phone calls," Mrs. Roberts says.

"I first thought, well, OK, they're just not looking at the book right. They're just in a hurry."

But the calls have been coming for a month.

Finally on Tuesday, a caller who phoned her by mistake helped Mrs. Roberts figure it out.

In the business listing for Sen. Roberts in the User-Friendly Phone Book, it lists his Wichita office number followed by Mrs. Roberts' home phone number.

"There are a lot of people (who see me) in that whatever-it's-called-phone-book thing that came out," Mrs. Roberts says. "Mercy."

It's causing some inconvenience.

"It can be a mess," Mrs. Roberts says. "Because if I'm outside or something, I run in and answer the phone, and it's for the other Pat Roberts."

She hasn't dealt with the phone book company yet because she recently had a wisdom tooth pulled and isn't quite up to it.

No one with User-Friendly Phone Book returned a call to comment.

While Mrs. Roberts is handling the erroneous calls in as friendly a way as she can, she says she doesn't intend to put up with it much past the November elections.

"No," she says. "I intend to raise a little hell then."

Freebie

This has been a big week for former Wichitan Gary Bender -- one of his finest, he says.

The longtime broadcaster, who's the current play-by-play announcer for the Phoenix Suns, was inducted into the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame on Sunday.

During the week, he reconnected with a lot of his former Phi Delt brothers at Wichita State University, where he gave a talk Tuesday as part of the Alumni Association's Rise & Shine series.

He also scored a free pizza.

Here's how it happened.

Bender can't eat a Pizza Hut pizza without mentioning that he could have hit Pizza Hut gold.

He likes to tell the story -- as he did Tuesday -- of how the "Carney boys," who were in classes ahead of him, gathered seven WSU seniors and gave them a pitch about joining their new venture.

He says brothers Frank and Dan talked of how "they found this little pie, and they brought this little pie back to Wichita, and their mother... she transformed it into a bigger pie, and they named that pie 'pizza.' "

Six of those seniors went with the company.

"I said, 'Well, I want to be a sportscaster,' and they gave me this funny look," Bender says.

"I never wavered."

Even when the stock split.

"It happened soon," Bender says. "I was making very little money, just scrambling like the dickens....

"And now, I've since seen all these guys retired, living in big mansions."

When Bender finished his talk, a man from the audience walked up and handed him something.

Bender didn't recognize the man until he introduced himself. It was Frank Carney, who now is a Papa John's Pizza franchisee, offering him a coupon for a free pizza.

"I was dumbstruck," Bender says. "I didn't know he was in the audience. I had no idea."

Everyone had a good laugh, especially Frank, who says Bender's recollection of how Pizza Hut came into existence might be a tad fuzzy. But he's used to that.

"If 10 people would tell you the Pizza Hut story, no two would be alike," Carney says.

In the end, Bender is happy with his career path and wouldn't change it if he could.

"Honest, I wouldn't," he says. "I just have found that this is my thing. It is what I was gifted to do."

Not that he thinks he's perfect. As he told the WSU audience:

"I've never done the game the way I wanted to do it. Never," he said of his sportscasts. "Someday, I'm going to take that headset off, put them down and say, 'I nailed it.' "

But that's not his specialty.

"The thing I do best is not screw it up. And that's big."

You don't say

"They already understand that when Grandpa has a good harvest, they are going to have a good harvest at Christmas."

--Jason Henderson of the Federal Reserve Bank, speaking at the Wichita Area Economic Outlook Conference about the agriculture economy and how it affects his 5-year-old twin daughters

Got a hot tip or quirky story? Call Carrie Rengers at 316-268-6340 or e-mail crengers@wichitaeagle.com.