Crossing into South Carolina from the north, you see it from a distance. A bright yellow cylindrical crowned object, high up in the sky. It must be the top of a quirky water tower, you think. But as you inch closer, the hovering UFO-type object, seemingly coming out of nowhere, and in the middle of nowhere, takes shape. A two-hundred-foot tower rises high above the trees, topped by a giant sombrero. And there’s more.
A yellow polka-dotted elephant, an oversized red Weiner dog, and a massive T-Rex are just some of the giant ostentatious animal statues scattered throughout. There is even a steakhouse that’s also shaped like a sombrero. A larger-than-life ninety-seven-foot-tall statue, legs spread in a cowboy stance, wide enough for a car to drive through, sports another giant sombrero. At first glance, the Mexican-themed architecture and the carnival brightness of faded pink, yellow, and lime green colored buildings suggest that you may have arrived in Tijuana rather than South Carolina. But make no mistake, this kitschy roadside stop is as American as apple pie, and quite possibly could only exist here. Welcome to South of the Border.
This sprawling 350-acre complex that the sombrero observation tower calls home is a mixed bag of campy roadside attraction, motel, amusement park, and rest stop, right out of the 1950s. The brains of Alan Schafer, a Jewish-American businessman who saw an opportunity, grabbed it by the horns and turned it into an American roadside legacy. But long before that could happen, this story would have to travel from Oberheim, Germany, to small town America.
A Family Business
The Schafer family has a long history and tradition of running businesses in Dillon County, South Carolina. Abraham Schafer, Alan’s grandfather, is believed to be one of the first Jews to settle in this rural farming area. He first immigrated to Darlington, South Carolina, in 1870, where he worked for Isaac Iseman, a prominent Jewish merchant who had sponsored his emigration from Germany. Abraham ended up marrying Iseman’s daughter, Rebecca, and together, the couple moved to the small neighboring community of Little Rock. Here, the couple set up a mercantile store called the Schafer Company. The couple had four children, including Alan Schafer’s father, Samuel, who was born in 1888, just as Dillon was on the cusp of becoming a railroad station and town.
Finding success in the dry goods business, the couple later opened stores in the nearby towns of Dillon and Latta, and Abraham handed over the running of the new stores to his eldest children. Samuel stayed to work with his father in the family’s original mercantile store, eventually assuming the management of the Schafer Company.
Later on, Samuel married Baltimore native Wilhelmina Heller Schafer, and had two boys, Charles and Alan. Sadly, Wilhelmina passed away in 1918 from influenza when Alan was just three years old. As was the case with his father before him, Alan, along with his brother, were involved in the family business at an early age, often working odd jobs at the store. At age 11, Alan started his first business, an ice-cream stand that he opened on Saturdays
“The train came through there, so [Alan] would go to Rockingham, [North Carolina], where the Maola ice-cream distributor was, and he would get a churn of ice-cream, and he would sell it,” recalled Ryan Schafer, Alan’s grandson and current “commander” of South of the Border. According to Ryan, it was a good way for him to gain experience in the family profession.
And oddly enough, in addition to the ice-cream, Alan sold fish from the general store. “It was hard to keep fish,” explained Ryan. “He had to ice them, they stunk, and by the end of the day, him and the store across the street would be in a price war to the point that they were giving them away. He hated fish his entire life.”
After graduating from Dillon High School in 1930, Alan enrolled at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, to study journalism. While Alan was away at school, Samuel had started a beer distribution business, in order to earn more cash for the family (since many of the general store’s patrons bought groceries on credit). The family had already had success with Schafer Beverage, which bottled and distributed Asai Cola. They also got wine from a train tanker car and bottled it under the Asai name.
When Abraham, the patriarch of the family, suddenly died in 1933, Alan was urged to come back home and help his father Samuel run the business. Shy of just one semester from graduating, Alan agreed, but on one condition: they would sell the store and enter the beer business on a full-time basis. This was the same year that national prohibition was repealed. Alan had realized that with the nationwide repeal in place, people were inclined to spend money on a bottle of beer, if nothing else. And so, in 1934, taking advantage of an untapped and expanding demand for beer, the Schafer Distributing Company was born. Samuel Schafer started bringing in beer from Baltimore on a regular basis and, according to Ryan, this new business was just as successful.
“I know [Samuel] would drive to Maryland at night. It started with a state bed pickup, and they were selling it as fast as he could get back. So, then they got a bigger truck, and then two trucks, and then they started distributing it to other people in the area.” The Schafer Distributing Company went on to become the largest Miller Brewing Company Distributor in South Carolina.
Samuel Schafer died in 1945, and the company passed on to Alan.
From Pints to Pinatas
As luck would have it, in 1947, North Carolina passed a local option law which allowed counties to decide whether to have their own prohibition or not. Robeson County, just across the border, voted itself dry, as did many other counties in North Carolina. With his retailers in Robeson County cut off, Alan made a shrewd move: If he couldn’t get to his customers, he could entice them to come to him. He bought land in Hamer, South Carolina, just yards from the North Carolina border, and built a simple 18-by-36-foot cinderblock outlet for Miller Beer. He painted it a bright pink and christened it South of the Border Beer Depot.
All Alan had purposed to do was to enable his North Carolina customers to take advantage of South Carolina’s lax liquor laws. Unbeknownst to him at the time, the country’s interstate system’s positioning of two exits in close proximity to his beer stand would not only work to his benefit but would turn his modest beer stand into a world-famous roadside attraction. But not for beer.
“He realized, as time went on, that more and more of this traffic was actually tourists,” explained Kenneth Smith, Senior Editor and Co-founder of RoadsideAmerica.com. “It wasn’t locals buying beer, it was tourists driving from the northeast down to Florida.”
Alan’s business intuition had impeccable timing. With gas and travel restrictions lifted after World War II, young families were taking to the road more and more, heading south in droves. In order to attract those tourists, and in large part because South Carolina had changed the rules on where one could sell alcohol, Alan built a ten-seat grill in 1952 and renamed the establishment South of the Border Drive-In. Customers flocked to his new eatery to chow down on hamburgers and hot dogs, as well as knock back a brew or two. As the years passed, Alan acquired more land as soon as the previous owners were willing to sell it to him. By 1954, he had added twenty hotel rooms and re-named the attraction South of the Border.
Although the Schafer business had settled upon its current name, it had not yet established its current identity. That would change one day, when a Florida salesman stopped by with a case of souvenirs. He was out of money and trying to get home, so he offered to swap his souvenir case for food. Alan was a shrewd businessman, and happily accepted this offer. By the time the salesman had returned to Florida two days later, Alan had sold all of the souvenirs.
Recognizing an opportunity, he called up the salesman for another case, and the ball kept rolling.
“That flicked the neon lightbulb in Alan Schafer’s head, and he realized that this was a real potential money-making operation,” said Smith. “So, he kept expanding and expanding.”
Soon, South of the Border’s souvenir shop was selling t-shirts, flip-flops, shot glasses, mugs, and other miscellaneous items. Flush with cash, Alan added a gas station and cocktail lounge to the attraction.
But along with conventional goods, the store also sold Mexican themed knickknacks such as sombreros and maracas. When Alan took a business trip to Mexico in the mid 1950s, in an effort to establish import connections that would allow him to bring in more of these items, he met two young men who were interested in going to America to seek employment.
“[The two men] spoke a little English, so they helped him go around, and showed him where to buy hats and woven stuff, blankets and jerseys, and when he got ready to leave, they pretty much begged him to bring them back, because they wanted to come to the U.S.,” said Ryan.
Having taken a shine to the pair, Schafer helped them get into the United States, and then hired them on as bellboys for the motel office. Visitors soon began calling them Pedro and Pancho, and then simply Pedro. Thus, in a rather unremarkable fashion, a mascot was born. In short order, Pedro appeared throughout South of the Border—on signs, on merchandise, and in the form of small figures. He later appeared in the form of a 104-foot statue with legs so wide that tourists could drive their cars through them. In all instances, he was a round-faced, mustachioed man with a large sombrero—a cheerful stereotype of the Mexican bandido. Aside from Pedro, Alan populated South of the Border with all types of strange creature creations, such as a blue whale, an orange brontosaurus wearing a sombrero, and a bright-red, hundred-foot-long dachshund.
“[Alan] realized that the notion of South of the Border was a little naughty, a little exotic, and that it would appeal to people,” said Smith. “That gave the place an image, it gave it a hook. And obviously, it worked!”
“Mexico was still an exotic place, because a lot of people hadn’t traveled there,” said Jeff Kunkle of Vintage Roadside. “And they didn’t do it as a small roadside stand that sold baskets and pots. This was just a complete, over-the-top, ‘bigger than anyone could have imagined it to be’ attraction. You can spend all day wandering around, just looking at different things, taking a million photos.”
In 1962, Schafer also added fireworks to capitalize on the fact that North Carolina banned the sale of these festive explosives. Eventually, even Alan’s son Richard entered the family business by working for Schafer Distributing Company, where he later worked his way up to become president and CEO. He also filled in for his father at South of the Border for a year in the early 1980s, while Alan was in prison for voter fraud. In October 1981, Alan pled guilty to one count of conspiracy and two counts of mail fraud, as part of a scheme to buy votes in the June 1980 Democratic primary election in Dillon County. He got off easy, as the district court believed his crime to be much more serious. They had originally charged him with 16 counts of conspiracy and mail fraud and one count of obstructing justice by instructing someone to destroy 200 unnumbered absentee ballots. Despite this charitable act on Richard’s part, however, he and Alan never really saw eye to eye.
“Him and his dad butted heads on some ideas on how things should be done,” said Ryan. Laughing, he added, “Obviously, my grandfather won out.”
A Complicated Legacy
In the early 1950s, riding on the serendipitous opportunity, and ever the astute businessman, Alan embarked on a relentless advertising campaign that rivaled Burma Shave, luring road-weary travelers to make a stop south of the border. The massive billboards, in bold vivid colors, displayed facetious slogans: “Long Time, No Si! Si Pedro Today, Siesta Tomorrow!”, “Pedro’s Weather Report: Chili Today, Hot Tamale”, accompanied by an ever-smiling mascot, Pedro.
At the peak of its success, there were over 200 different billboards, which Alan designed himself, dotting I-95 and other highways from the northeast to Daytona Beach, Florida. The gimmick worked. Travelers, wanting to find out what all the fuss was about, pulled in by the millions.
But as decades passed, and times changed, not all visitors took a shine to either Pedro or South of the Border’s gaudy Mexican aesthetic. Instead of finding it charming, some deemed it to be racially insensitive and out of touch with modern times. The gently mocking slogans like “Ees onlee wan South of the Border, Amigos” and “Too moch Tequila?” did not appeal to the ever-increasingly politically correct times. Gradually, the billboards, which had become as famous as the destination itself, were replaced in the 1980s, reduced in number, and featured amusing “dad jokes” instead.
Passing the Torch
In 2001, Alan Schafer died at the age of 87, and Ryan Schafer, Alan’s grandson, took over South of the Border with his father Richard, who mostly handles real estate issues. Like his grandfather before him, though, Ryan’s first experience in the business was working odd jobs—even one of the same ones.
“I think I was ten, so that would have been ’87,” he said. “My first job was cleaning video games in the arcade and sweeping the floors. And I think after a year or two of that, I got moved to the Ice-Cream Fiesta. The lady who was my manager [there] is still a manager for me now.”
Now in his early 40s, Ryan Schafer has begun to build upon his grandfather’s legacy.
In 2010, on the site of a former indoor putt-putt course, he opened a 15,000-square-foot Reptile Lagoon, which South of the Border claims to be the largest indoor reptile exhibit in the United States. The lagoon is home to over fifteen varieties of crocodile species, as well as snakes, turtles, and other cold-blooded creatures. Educational staff and a veteran reptile handler help oversee the facility, and custom-built pools and walkways allow safe viewing by fascinated guests.
“Everyone that goes in it loves it,” said Ryan. “Now, a lot of people, they think, ‘Oh, there’s one alligator, or two alligators,’ so they’re reluctant at first to pay, but once they come out, I’ve never heard anyone complain about not getting their money’s worth.”
The Future of an Icon
Some visitors and pundits might wonder how an old-fashioned tourist trap can remain relevant in today’s America, when so many other diversions fight for travelers’ attention and dollars. Ryan is aware of the attraction’s age, and he has begun to take steps to add necessary accommodations. He has worked with realtors to bring in some chain restaurants. He is also looking at bringing in one or two chain motels, because the current motel has not aged well and is worn-down. As for keeping the vintage attraction in the family, Ryan’s son, Austin, may be in line to carry on the family tradition, but maybe not. Time will tell.
“There’s always going to be people driving from Point A to Point B,” concluded Smith. “So, there’s always going to be people who want to stop and see what South of the Border is all about. It’s just South of the Border, man. It’s just a goofy roadside tourist trap. And as long as you accept it on that level, you’re going to have a good time there.”
For Ryan, South of the Border’s appeal is timeless, and offers people a needed break from their hectic lives.
“Kids I’ve seen, they’re not as attached to souvenirs and actual objects like we were. Everything’s on their cell phone. They take a picture, it shows where the picture was taken; [they] put it on Instagram, Facebook. So, they really enjoy taking pictures with all the animals, whether it’s in the lagoon, or the fiberglass animals, or in front of the Pedros. And it’s good to just get out of the car for a little while. Everybody who goes on vacation, they rush to wherever they’re going. They’ve got a whole itinerary that they rush and try to fit in, and vacation becomes a job. When I go somewhere, I go with no plans, none of it, and it’s a lot more enjoyable.”
And who couldn’t use some simple enjoyment in their lives? It’s not hard to find if you know where to look, even if it’s way down south in a small agricultural town in South Carolina.
“The fact that it’s still here is the most important thing,” emphasized Kunkle. “It’s hard for these places to keep going, and the fact that this place has kept going in any way—rather than just selling their property to a big developer—says a lot about how much they appreciate and like the history.”
As America has grown to appreciate the generic and the predictable, and the dotcom age has created multiple generations of people who put a whole new definition to armchair travel, kitschy dated roadside attractions like South of the Border will continue to pull those seeking something different, something unexpected. That is the beauty of classic Americana. You never quite know what you will encounter.
