Clarence’s legacy lives on at JB’s Drive In

From the time he was a kindergartner, Rod Clark said, “to see my dad, I had to come down to JB’s.”

Clarence Clark and his wife, Geneva, worked from early morning until late at night at JB’s Drive In, at 2501 Eighth Ave. in Greeley – every day since they bought it in 1970 from Geneva’s parents, who had founded the place in 1937.

Little Rod would sleep in a booth until they’d close up at 1 or 2 a.m., then they’d go to Fonta’s Pizza downtown. “Then Dad would go home and get about three, three-and-a-half hours of sleep. Then he’d be back up at 5 a.m. and back to JB’s.

“Once I turned 18, I worked with my dad every day,” said Rod Clark, now 53.

While Geneva worked her magic on pies and fried shrimp in the kitchen, Clarence manned the fountain. “He always wanted to be one of the kids working here,” Rod said. “He liked to dance; he’d get out and do his little two-step.”

He never let things get out of hand, though. “All the high school kids used to come here to do their fighting on Friday nights,” Rod recalled. “Dad would get right out in the middle of it to stop it, to protect his business.”

Clarence was equally feisty with his food suppliers. “This is the last time you will ever bring me a box of meat that has that smell,” Rod remembered Clarence telling a local packer. And he meant it; Clarence bought 80 acres in rural Weld County, raised his own cattle, and cut his own meat in a basement room at the drive in.

JB’s opened for the season on Tuesday, Feb. 17 – but without Clarence. Encephalitis had claimed the patriarch at 81 earlier this month. As many as 700 people came to the funeral, Rod said, and 300 were at the gravesite.

It’ll be different now. “We’re going to have to sell the cattle herd and buy from farmers in the area,” Rod said. “There’s four more head out there, and after that, that legacy is gone.”

Rod’s children work in the restaurant, he said, and “hopefully, one of them will step up and keep it going.”

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