Tomah, Wis., well served by ‘Mr. Ed’s’ supper club

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The Indian princess sign dates back to the beginning of the TeePee in 1960. | Dave Hoekstra~Sun-Times

IF YOU GO

MR. ED’S TEE PEE: The supper club is at 812 Superior Ave. in Tomah, Wis., about a four-hour drive from Chicago. Amtrak’s Empire Builder stops at the Tomah train station, which is seven blocks from the supper club. The Tee Pee’s hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily; (608) 372-0888.

DON’T MISS: The Tee Pee’s banquet hall will host “A Tribute to Elvis and Patsy” on July 16. (Garry and Elaine Wesley covering Elvis Presley and Patsy Cline.) The $30 tickets include dinner and the show. Cocktails at 5 p.m. followed by a 6 p.m. dinner and 7 p.m. show.

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Updated: October 29, 2011 12:35AM

TOMAH, Wis. — Mr. Ed’s Tee Pee Supper Club owner Allan “Ed” Thompson remembers sharing a lonely Thanksgiving dinner — made up of leftovers from the neighbors — with his German shepherd, Ace.

It was 1992. Times were beyond tough. The deal he’d cut to lease his beloved supper club had fallen through. He had to evict his tenants.

“I was in financial straits,” Thompson said during a recent conversation over walleye pike at the Tee Pee. “I was dusted. I was down in the cloth.”

But like the fighter this former boxer is, Thompson managed to get back on his feet.

“I told Ace that would be the last Thanksgiving dinner we would eat alone,” Thompson said.

By the fall of 1993, he and his sister/business partner, Juliann, had straightened out their debt and salvaged the supper club that’s become a central Wisconsin institution.

“I was so grateful to the people of Tomah, I wanted to give a free Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.

In something out of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” 300 Tomah residents came to the Tee Pee for the free holiday dinner. That number grew to 1,200 last Thanksgiving.

Community is a staple of any Wisconsin supper club. And Thompson is feeding off the energy of Tomah (pop. 8,400) as he faces the biggest challenge of his life.

Thompson, 66, is battling pancreatic cancer, which doctors initially thought was just a blockage.

“I said I didn’t have time for surgery,” Thompson recalled. “I had to march in a parade. Little did I know I had already walked my last parade.”

He was given six months to live. That was in September.

Thompson comes from a family of fighters. This one-time prison guard and nightclub boxer is the brother of Tommy Thompson, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and four-term Wisconsin governor.

Ed also dabbled in politics, serving as mayor of Tomah in 2000-02 and 2008-10. In 2002, he ran for governor as a Libertarian, garnering 11 percent of the vote. He made an unsuccessful bid for state Senate last year.

Thompson never wanted to sell the supper club, but his illness has limited his options.

“I have no choice,” he said.

Thompson is a realist — and a warrior. The city of Tomah gets its name from the majestic Menominee Indian Chief Tomah (1752-1818).

“The high school team was the Tomah Indians,” Thompson said. “In 1960, a group of men opened a restaurant here and named it the Tee Pee. It boomed.”

The Thompsons are the fourth owners of the supper club, which started in 1890 as a livery stable. The space then became the Tomah Theater, with a dark make-out balcony. The theater closed in 1958 and was turned into a supper club. The Thompsons bought it out of bankruptcy in 1990.

Thompson had been married for 18 years to his high school sweetheart. They have been divorced for 23 years. He never remarried. They have four children and eight grand children.

Before opening Mr. Ed’s Tee Pee, Thompson owned Mr. Ed’s Bar, a shot-and-beer joint in Elroy, 26 miles south of Tomah.

“I didn’t have any experience in a supper club,” Thompson said.

But Thompson did have some experience cooking — for 1,000 inmates at the federal prison in Oxford, Wis., in the mid-’80s.

The inmates didn’t eat as well as customers at the Tee Pee.

The supper club is known for its steak and ribs. U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has said the Tee Pee has the best prime rib in America. The meat is slow roasted for 24 hours and basted with a garlic salt seasoning. And don’t miss the potato cheese soup appetizer.

Leave your diet at home. You are in Wisconsin.

The Tee Pee is the biggest restaurant in town, seating about 100 people in the dimly lit main dining room, accented by a long bar. Another 100 people can sit in the adjacent “carpeting room,” generally used for meetings.

Thompson added the cherry pine log cabin exterior when the banquet hall opened on New Year’s Eve, 1997.

Perched on the roof of the banquet hall is a vintage Native American princess cooking over a campfire. The roadside art is made of tin and neon.

“That’s been here since 1960,” Thompson said. “We never changed it. That’s a big part of the Tee Pee.”

In May, Thompson gave an emotional speech at a Coalition of Wisconsin Aging Groups conference in Madison, Wis., where he received their Humanitarian of the Year award.

“In my talk, I asked, ‘How can we continue to be so self-orientated and go down this trail until you face your own demise?’” he said. “I know that in a short time I won’t be here. And when I meet the god that lives in all of us, is he going to ask if you are a Catholic or a Hindu or a Muslim? Or is he going to ask, ‘What have you done for your fellow man? What really have you done?’”

Food for thought.