GC II

Back to Mary's Cafe, as it served as Center's social center--that was fun--in the Forties and Fifties. Her first cafe had been over where the Ole Ellingson house was, behind their big store, behind where the post office now sits, but that was long before I became part of the village fabric. The one I knew had its front door at the southeast corner, a horizontal window punctuating the front, beneath which sat a bench. Upon entry we read large colored auction bills, farm and estate, the rural equivalent of garage sales, and public event notices, mainly for dances, a town's Firemen's Ball (annual fund-raisers) or someone's wedding dance (free!)on the south fiberboard wall.
Straight ahead were stacked glass cases forming a high barrier next to a pass-through to the long kitchen past the cash register. The cafe area was a backward L, the cash register with its bowl of toothpicks at the end of the short leg, near the door. The kitchen filled out the rectangle. As I've said, the top of the big L-shaped public area was closed off for a small bedroom-bathroom where Mary and Joe lived. The backward-L-shaped counter had red vinyl-topped stools good for spinning on and irritating Mary. Against the north wall were three or four plywood booths stained dark brown, with small mirrors at table level where we leaned over and primped. Down the cafe's middle sat small circular cafe tables with those popular heart-shaped twisted-back cafe chairs. We thought those were rather flimsy then, as boisterous teens would; but now they're costly reproductions so that I'd cherish the originals that disappeared from Mary's and Bloomfield's Corner Drug Store. At the rear in front of the piano was a circular dining room table with wooden chairs. Yes, the place was noisily crowded when it was full, after basketball games or during dance intermissions, but we were more patient then. Ordinarily, Mary and one helper managed, mainly a waitress who could also cook, Katherine Krause, Helen Brockman, Vie Ballard ones I recall. Sometimes a third was required or an adult customer would pitch in, for most of us knew what to do from sheer familiarity as we bought ice cream cones or wanted pie a la mode or asked for Orange Crush (in its splendid dark brown ridged bottle) or Nehi grape or creme (I'm using my choices).
The glass-stainless steel pie case hung on the wall above the stainless steel ice cream case for convenience, a sugar-wafer cone holder at its side. Next to it on a shelf was a Campbell Soup display with a plug-in stainless steel container like the one for the malt mixer somewhere in the same vicinity. (Dad was partial to thick chocolate malts.) This busy wall faced the main counter, the long part of the L. Under the counter hid various supplies from silverware to big jugs of catsup and mustard, a tin of sugar, a paper bale of napkins, for some reason fascinating me. Catsup and mustard bottles, the napkin dispenser, salt and pepper sat in regular groupings on counter and tables. I've already said the bright red (probably supplied by Coca-Cola) pop cooler was at the rear by the bedroom door, as was an oil stove necessary in winter.
Returning to the front door, right at entry on the front wall was a Wurlitzer glory, that rainbow music maker we fed coins generously, its arched front in cobalt blue, emerald, ruby, lemon, orange, glowing jewel colors that, depending on the model, might change and shift up and down or even bubble gloriously . Holding ready stacks of thick 78s or smaller 45s with the big holes, the jukebox, technically an Automatic Coin-Operated Phonograph with a Southern black slang name, mainly had Hit Parade favorites, country-western for tawdry bars, rock unthought of until Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" in my senior year, 1954. Then, as now, most radio time was given over to music, especially BTV, Before Television. However, we were cushioned in pleasantly obtuse niceness culturally, not yet stressfully besieged by nerve-jangling urban din, atavistic tribal thumping, simplistic nursery-rhyme obscene snarls, tedious adenoidal whines. So we fed in our dimes or quarters to punch the red plastic buttons on the jukebox menu holding songs like Perry Como's "Chi Baba Chi Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep)" or "No Other Love," Doris Day's "Que Sera Sera" or "Secret Love," Kitty Kallen's "Little Things Mean a Lot," the McGuire Sisters' "Sincerely," Vaughn Monroe's "Riders in the Sky," Frankie Laine's "Jezebel" or "High Noon," Teresa Brewer's "Music Music Music," Kay Starr's "Wheel of Fortune" or "Bonaparte's Retreat," Dean Martin's "That's Amore," Patti Page's "The Tennessee Waltz" or "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" Dinah Shore's "Buttons and Bows," Bing Crosby's "Far Away Places" or "Now Is the Hour," Peggy Lee's "Manana," Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy," instrumentals like "Skokiaan" or "Dragnet"--well, just look up the Hit Parade for the Forties and Fifties. We would agitate for our favorite songs, but the Hit Parade commanded the air waves (by its sales polls apparently), and that's what the jukebox guy brought. (The pool hall next door also finally got a jukebox, but it had more of that tawdry, needs-sinus-surgery country western than straight popular, naturally.)
Now that I'm back at the front door, I'm at the stacked glass candy counters, behind which on a shelf were vertical clipped potato chip and popcorn holders, the grouping our version of the Quick Fix Snack Bar. At the top in the cases nested cough drops, the bearded Smith Brothers with honey, wild cherry, black licorice more popular than menthol, the orange boxes of Luden's Honey-Licorice, the Sen Sen for smoker's and drinker's breath, the green or white packaged Wrigley's spearmint or peppermint gum, other gums like Clark's Teaberry, bright yellow Juicy Fruit, Yankee blue licorice-flavored Black Jack, thin flat Chiclets, Beeman's, Bazooka Bubble Gum. Below, Mary kept occasional novelties like Wax Lips or Mustaches, Nik-L-Nips, small wax bottles of sickeningly sweet fruit syrups, candy cigarettes (I think the packaging imitated Lucky Strike), and my favorite, rippled-clear-glass boats/locomotives/cars filled with pastel cardamom-scented pellets, why I prize that scent in my spice collection. (The Easter popularity of our top novelty, marshmallow peeps, didn't start until--when else?--1954.) A popular flavor, licorice came in black or red twists, as chewy pipes, or in boxed gumdrop Black Crows or capsule Good & Plentys. Other small candy boxes held crusty brick-red Boston Baked Beans (peanuts), Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Red Hots. Some candies came in rolls, square or round, of waxed paper or foil wraps like Tootsie Rolls, Reed's Butterscotch, Root Beer, or Cinnamon, Life Savers in various flavors, powdery Necco Wafers, or my category favorites, chewy peanut-butter Kits (taffy) or Walnettos. She had Cracker Jack boxes with their little prizes and loose Jawbreakers and Root Beer Barrels and naturally stocked Sioux City's Palmer Company chocolate-crushed nut-covered cherry mounds, Bings and Twin Bings, and the small LaFama candy bars (still in production except the LaFama is boxed, not in bars, now). Two popular bars in separated sections were Bit-O-Honey and the relatively rare Seven-Up with its seven different flavored sections in one bar. Mom liked Pearson's Salted Nut Roll and toffee Heath Bars (she also liked peanut brittle at Christmas). I liked any cherry bar, Walnut Crush, Power House, Peanut Cluster and something similar to it with maple flavoring, and Forever Yours (now Milky Way Midnight), all discontinued in their old forms. Like me. Don't remember what Dad favored with his sweet tooth, maybe Snickers. I think he was more partial to his malts and pie a la mode. Mary's sugar pile stocked many others, always the various Hershey bars, Almond Joy, Milky Way, Snickers, Mounds, Mars, Butterfingers, Baby Ruths (named for Grover Cleveland's daughter, not the ball player), periodically 5th Avenue, Clark Bar, Three Musketeers, Oh Henrys. Obviously, this tooth-destroying section was the cafe's children magnet, collecting small change in great quantities.
And that was Mary's Cafe, discounting her back room and basement storage and kitchen details. I had been deflated in exasperation when, for the second time, I invested two hours on this entry and then lost its earlier version to the ether by a careless mouse click, as happened the other day with an entry on Center's grandmothers, still to be rewritten. I know how to "Save," but, when I'm busy writing and looking up background on the Internet, it's easy to hit the wrong X before I've finished the entry, a major computer feature we all dread. It brings out my Grandpa Koftan language when I'm trying to stay peaceful. While I'm mentioning him, I got Christmas-card notice that his cousin, Emil Kaftan, with the original family name, up in a Tyndall, SD, Good Samaritan Home is 104 and still likes to keep busy the way he was the last times I've seen him at 101 and 102, tearing up cloth for rug-weaving, as his daughter, Patsy, reports. Beyond my imagination.