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Open Daily 7–2 · Supper Thu–Sat 5–9

Leipers Fork · since 1968

Grandma's house, with a griddle.

The Country Boy was never designed. It accrued — one owner, one renovation, one pencil mark on the wall at a time. This is the short version.
A Country Boy 1968 logo mug on the counter of the busy diner, tin ceiling overhead.

Fifty-some years

Five sets of keys.

  1. 1968

    Rosalie & Donley Mealer open the diner

    The building held three businesses at once — the Country Boy, a laundromat everyone called the Wishy Washy, and a beauty shop. The diner outlasted both.

  2. 1981

    The Heithcock family

    Two years at the griddle before handing the keys on.

  3. 1983

    Norma & Rollie McCandless

    Nine years. The meat-and-two habit set in, and the kids' height marks started climbing the wall.

  4. 1992

    Eleanor Gale Hay

    Seventeen years — the longest single stretch in the building's history.

  5. 2009

    The volunteer reopening

    Shannon and Charlie Martin closed for the summer to renovate. Eighty neighbors put in more than five thousand hours: refinished floors, toffee walls, red vinyl chairs. The doors reopened September 5 with the county mayor on hand and the day's proceeds given away.

  6. 2014

    Dark

    The diner closed that September and stayed closed sixteen months. The village noticed.

  7. 2016

    Tom Fanning & Diana Torres bring it back

    Torres had worked here; Fanning used to bike the Natchez Trace and stop in for breakfast. They bought the building and reopened on January 12. “The social gathering place of the community,” Fanning said, “and the community really missed it.”

  8. 2022

    Closed again

    Septic trouble, not a lack of customers.

  9. 2023

    Johnny Weber & Cam Harrington

    Weber bought the building and reopened the diner with the interior deliberately left alone — the height wall, the chairs, the counter. “We want it to be very country,” he said, “just like your grandma's house.”

  10. 2024

    The basement gets a name

    For decades the cellar was where the village waited out tornado warnings. Weber turned it into a cocktail bar and named it for what it had always been. A green lamp went up over the outside door.

In the papers

Fifty years of clippings.

The General Store

Wear a little of the story.

The fisherman has been on the sign since the beginning and on hats, aprons, and tees since 2016. The 1968 mug is the one the coffee comes in.

Preview the General Store

Online store in preview. At the register today.

The Tornado Room lounge: oxblood Chesterfield sofas, a pressed-tin ceiling, and backlit shelves of memorabilia.

The chapter under the floor

The basement was where the village waited out storms.

For decades, when the sirens went, Leipers Fork came down the outside stairs and sat it out under the diner. In 2024 the shelter got a bar, leather couches, and a name that tells the truth about it. A green lamp over the door says when it's open.
Go down to the Tornado Room ↓

Storm warning

TakeShelter

Below this floor

A storm's blowing in.

The screen door slaps twice. The coffee goes still in the cup. Nobody says a word — they set down their forks, push back the red chairs, and walk out the side door into the weather.

The stairs are on the side of the building. Nobody up here will say what's at the bottom.

The Tornado Room's green lamp — lit when the room is open.Thu–Sat 5–midnightStill a shelterThis way down