My Mom was a waitress at Pixie Kitchen for many years. My Gramma was head of the back kitchen, my sister started as a bus girl and later became a waitress, my brother was a busboy and met his now wife of 41 years there (she was a busgirl.) I started in the back kitchen as a prep cook and later became salad girl.
My father restored antique cars and one of the model T's he did was on display at Pixie Land.
Mr. Parks and his wife started Pixie kitchen in the 50's and it was the small little shack that was at the center and they built around it. It grew and grew a wing here a wing there.
I still have a menu. You could get a sea food meal like prawns or fried oyster, etc for $1.99 and for years you could ask for another serving of your meat (prawns, oysters, razor clams, etc) for free. By the early 70's it would cost a dollar for a second helping.
They had a great salad bar (one of the first). The stiff dark clam dip was to die for! The salad bar also had their famous cod fish balls, that were mainly cod and mashed potatoes rolled into balls and battered and deep fried. There was squares of blue cheese, wheat thins, pickled herring, big fat french bread, toasted on a grill (I still have a scar) and, of course, all the usual salad bar stuff.
By the mid 70's, the restaurant was so popular with it's funny mirrors and pixies on parade in the center of it all and the pixie gift shop were you could buy about anything in pixie fashion, that Pixieland seemed like a good venture. Unfortunately (for Mr. Parks, but fortunate for us kids growing up there) the Oregon coast wasn't quite the boom it is today and Pixieland fizzled. We teens had some great rock dances there in the buildings out back though.
Alas, the gas shortage came and so did the fast food boom. Mr. Parks was getting on in years and sold the restaurant to Harry Smith, who started as a bus boy w/ my brother, then was a cook, then head cook, then manager.
Around the time the last wing was added, they became a buffet and things went down from there. I'm not quite sure why it was finally closed. I only know what my mom and gramma told me. I do know they turned the whole area out in Otis (where Pixieland was) into a part of the experimental forest that follows the old hwy up to Neskowin, and they tore out every piece of concrete and asphalt and returned it to its natural habitat.
It was such a great place to grow up and Pixie Kitchen was a big part of my whole family. I found a Pixie Kitchen baseball cap at a garage sale in Monmouth a few months ago for a quarter.
