PENDLETON — Every holiday season, they came to Pendleton in droves from near and far, seeking one thing — corn dogs.

Every holiday season since he was 10 years old, Bernard Lind was there, serving the people and preserving a longstanding, deep-fried tradition his father started 49 years prior.

This season would have been the 50th anniversary of the Christmas corn dog stand run by Lind and his wife, Julieanne. But due to the coronavirus pandemic, that streak has come to an end.

“I’m having a hard time looking at the calendar this year and thinking about what would have been,” Bernard Lind said. “I know what it means to people. I know that they have missed a lot of things this year, just like we have. And it’s hard. It really is.”

The recent spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths, and the large crowds that the stand typically attracts around the holidays, make it too risky to keep the tradition going this year, Bernard Lind said.

“My husband and I are in such a state of shock,” Julieanne Lind said. “We’ve gone 27 years together in this business, and we hit a brick wall. It all stopped. We still tell our customers, ‘It’s going to be all right. It’s not forever.’ And if we die, you’ll never see us again. We have to protect you, and we have to protect ourselves. We have to be smart in this.”

The pandemic has taken its toll on the Linds. They own the family concessions business together, and when events were postponed indefinitely in February, they lost their sole source of income, Bernard Lind said.

They have relied on unemployment relief and funds from grant programs like the CARES Act to get by. But it hasn’t been nearly enough.

For the couple, who have served hungry locals for decades, “the refrigerator wasn’t really full,” Bernard Lind said of their hardest days.

In late July, help finally came in the form of insurance and unemployment relief. But the pandemic had already worn them down, financially and emotionally.

Days once spent traveling to fairs and events across the Northwest and chatting and smiling with customers are now spent in a lonely isolation, the Linds said. The anxiety and stress is relentless, and because of it, Bernard Lind is now experiencing heart problems and chest pain, for which he recently received X-rays and tests.

“I’m so sad right now that I can’t be there for (the customers),” Julieanne Lind said. “But I can’t let that sadness ruin their future of seeing me again. It will be better. I want them to remember the memories.”

Memories are what the Linds cling to for a sense of hope in these hard times. There are countless stories, but they come from a humble beginning.

Nearly 50 years ago, Bernard Lind’s father, Francis Lind, started the annual tradition outside of Payless Drug Store on Melanie Square — then the town’s central holiday shopping destination. A labor strike at Francis’ workplace, Marlette Homes, left him with little money for Christmas, so he asked the drug store if he could set up a stand out front to pay his way through the holidays with his famous, secret corn dog recipe.

Sales immediately took off. The people demanded more.

“As a young boy, I didn’t realize what dad was building,” Lind said. “Not only did he have this corn dog recipe, but he also had a personality that went with it. Dad built up an unbelievable following. It wasn’t Christmas until the corn dog stand was there.”

Through frigid sub-zero winters, Lind would work alongside his father, supporting the family business. He felt responsibility, learned the values of hard work and dedication, and was inspired to preserve what his dad had built.

“It was a special thing. It wasn’t necessarily that he was making a fortune, ‘cause he wasn’t,” Lind said. “It was a tradition. A family bonding.”

Eventually, Francis passed ownership of the family business on to his son. Years later, a girl Lind had known from childhood came around asking to purchase some crickets he owned so she could feed her pet lizard. But really, she just wanted to know the secret recipe of his famous corn dogs, Julieanne said.

About two years later, they were married.

The tradition of the Christmas corn dogs only grew more popular — so popular that a local shop owner asked Lind to relocate out of concern that the stand was stealing their business. The move incited frustration among community members and ignited protests among local high-schoolers.

The controversy subsided, but from then on, the stand was moved from place to place year after year. Hungry customers followed.

“It started to be a situation where people were driving around all over the place looking for us,” Bernard Lind said. “That’s why this story needs to get out, so people won’t be driving all around” trying to find the stand this year.

The constant moves placed strain on the business, and the Linds fought tirelessly to keep it afloat. They traveled across the Northwest together, through Washington, Idaho and even down to Arizona, now with a variety of fried foods in tow, including fried asparagus, zucchini, cauliflower, green beans, jalapeño poppers, pickles, mushrooms, onion rings and an endless assortment of funnel cakes, cotton candy and other sweet treats.

The customer base grew so large that people crossed state lines just to see them, the Linds said. Their stories are seemingly endless — a couple who came to the stand on the day of their wedding returning years later on their anniversary; a mother who sent corn dogs to her son stationed overseas in Iraq.

Debbie McCall, a retired nurse who worked at St. Anthony Hospital for 33 years, would routinely show up early and buy more than a dozen corn dogs for her co-workers in the emergency room.

Leonard Smith, a lifelong Pendleton resident, Vietnam veteran and friend of Francis and Bernard Lind, remembers buying the corn dogs and stowing them in his freezer when the stand would close at the end of the holiday season.

“I would start craving them in October,” said Heather Moon, an office administrator in the Tri-Cities of Washington, who has been visiting the stand with her family since the mid-1970s, when she was about 8 years old. “We would spend Thanksgiving together, get up early to do our Black Friday shopping, and as soon as he opened up, we would be right there getting our corn dogs. That was our tradition.”

One memory sticks out to Bernard Lind. It was an especially warm Christmas Eve in the mid-2000s, and the parking lot of what is now Wilcox Furniture was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with customers.

“It looked like the Pendleton Round-Up was running again,” he said.

Bernard Lind looked across the road to see police headed their way. He thought he was in trouble, until he learned that the crowd was so large that officers had been assigned to help customers cross the street safely.

“It almost makes me cry sometimes thinking about the people and how we’ve touched so many lives,” Bernard Lind said, reflecting on his oldest customers, who are now bringing along their grandkids.

The Linds agree the business was never meant to make a fortune. They made a living, but to them, money was never as important as the experiences they shared with their customers, family and friends, especially around the holidays.

When asked why she believes the Christmas corn dog stand has such a loyal customer base, Julieanne Lind said: “It’s for the same reason people pray. They feel it. They have this hope. Some have this knowledge that we are genuine and true and you can really feel it. It’s an energy that transfers right from the food to you. It isn’t commercialized. This is a personal signature of devotion and everything that drives us on the road to faith. It’s faith.”