Okay, it’s Saturday night and I thought we’d head over to Pekin for a Saturday night dinner with two special guest stars and then we’d hang out at the bar after dinner. We’re headed to the Maquet’s Rail House and it’s off to Pekin we go!

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Saturday Night Dinner

Here we are at Maquet’s Rail House in Pekin. This place opened in 2014 and in 2019 they expanded, adding another room and a full kitchen. Let’s go in and take a look at this place!

The dining room is over here and we’ll go have our Saturday night dinner before we hit the bar in here.

Check out the “Times” sign. That’s the old sign from the Pekin Daily Times and that brings back memories for me because that’s the first newspaper I ever got paid to write for. Click on this link to see a post I wrote about the Pekin Daily Times back in 2014.

Okay, let’s sit down and start the dinner portion of this Saturday evening.

Here’s our two special guest stars for the evening, my friends, Amber and Joe!

They’re looking fabulous, as always and it’s aways fun to hang out with them for the evening!

We started off with an appetizer order of the Haystack Onion Rings and they were a crispy and tasty treat! This is the small order, I can’t imagine what the large order looks like!

There’s Amber and Joe enjoying the appetizer and Joe seems to be staring at something on the ceiling.

Here’s our main courses for our Saturday night dinner: Amber got the Fish and Chips, Joe got the Pork Chop Sandwich with a Bourbon Glaze and Curly Fries and I got the Chinese Chicken Salad.

The food was delicious! The Chinese Chicken Salad had large chunks of tasty grilled chicken, almonds, red cabbage and chow mein noodles. It was so good!

There’s Amber and Joe enjoying their dinner and I need to find out what Joe was staring at on the ceiling! I’m wondering if it was a spider!

Okay, it’s time to hit the bar!

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Bar Number 191: Maquet’s Rail House, Saturday, August 15, 2026

They have an impressive bar in this room which is located opposite of the dining room.

There’s Amber and Joe at the bar, still looking fabulous on this Saturday evening in Pekin, Illinois!

Haley was the pretty and friendly bartender on duty and here she is serving me up an ice cold can of Budweiser.

Haley said she’s been following along on the bar crawl and I always love to hear that! It was wonderful to meet and chat with her at the bar!

There’s a nice piece of wooden art behind the bar featuring the Maquet’s Rail House logo.

There’s the beers on tap behind the bar and the cooler back there is very well stocked with assorted beverages.

Here’s a shot from the other side of the bar and in my travels I ran into Seth and Beth at the bar. I met Seth a long time ago and it was nice to catch up with him and meet his pretty wife, Beth! And you have to love the rhyming names of Seth and Beth! Great to see both of them!

Tables line the brick wall opposite the bar and there’s gaming machines in the front corner for all of you gamblers out there.

Here’s a final shot of the wonderful bar in the Maquet’s Rail House!

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A Pekin Daily Times Memory

As I mentioned earlier, that Pekin Daily Times sign brought back a lot of memories because that was the first publication that ever paid me to write stories back in the ’90’s.

Well, when we sat down at the bar and I noticed a coaster advertising the Marigold Festival in Pekin and that took me back to a moment in time in the year of 1991. The month was September and I had stopped into the Pekin Daily Times newsroom to pick up a check for a story I had written a week before. I was talking to the two editors, Kevin Kaufman and Kent Davy. Kent was the managing editor and Kevin, I believe, had the title of associate editor.

Anyway, Kent told me they had to cover the Marigold Festival that weekend. I had heard of Pekin’s Marigold Festival but I wan’t quite sure what it was all about. Kent explained that it was a three day festival all about the Marigold flower, how Pekin was known as the Marigold Capital of the world and he said there was food and stuff for sale and there would be live music.

I immediately spat out the following words, “Can I go and cover it like it’s Woodstock?”

Kevin laughed and said, “Oh no, another Wombacher idea from Mars! I gotta go,” and he walked away.

Kent was smiling and he asked what I was talking about.

“It’s a three day festival with flowers, live music and people selling stuff. This is like Pekin’s Woodstock and I’d really like to go and then write a kooky story about it,” I excitedly answered.

“I don’t know,” Kent replied. “You know I can’t guarantee that something like this would run. But if you want to go and write this up, you can.”

“Cool! Thanks, Kent!” I replied back.

“Just remember, it might not run,” Kent added cautously.

“I don’t care, none of this means anything anyway,” I shot back.

Kent laughed and said, “What did you just say?”

“I said, ‘none of this means anything anyway,’” I repeated.

Kent laughed and said, “Have fun at the festival and I’ll need the story on Monday.”

So I went, had some fun, wrote the story and was pretty sure it probably wouldn’t run. I had references to taking acid in the article and a line about hoping to see naked women swimming in a pond and other lines that weren’t really quite right for the Pekin Daily Times average reader back then.

On Monday, I dutifully took my floppy disc with the story on it and walked into the Pekin Daily Times newsroom and went over to Kent’s desk where he was sitting.

“Here’s the story,” I said while handing him the floppy disc.

“Great,” he said, “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll read it right now.”

“Yeah,” I answered, “go ahead.”

And then began the nerve-wracking moments of watching Kent read my article. There’s nothing more nerve-shattering than watching your editor read your story. He smiled a few times while he was reading it, so that gave me hope.

When he finished, he turned to me with a smile and said, “This is really good. You did a great job with this!”

“Thanks, Kent,” I replied, “so it’s going to run?”

“Oh yeah,” he replied, “Be proud, nothing like this has ever run in The Pekin Daily Times. And I’m going to put it in Friday’s edition so a lot of people will see it and it might piss some people off. But I don’t care and do you know why?” he asked while grinning at me.

“No,” I said while laughing along with Kent.

“Because none of this means anything anyway,” he shot back.

“Kent,” I said in a serious voice, “that’s probably the most profound thing I’ve ever heard you say!”

Then we both laughed and it was one of those moments in life you just don’t ever forget. I’m grateful for this memory and below is the story. It’s a favorite of mine.