Corner Cafe
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
We took a table on the corner next to wooden box planters with purple salvia. The kids sat in the wrought iron chairs at one end and my wife and I on the other. Historic buildings streched down the long hill lined with full and shapely pear trees. At 5 p.m., the middle-August sun was warm on our shoulders and bare skin. For the Midwest, there has been a relative cold spell the last few days with temps topping out in the low 80s when normally the grass has been roasted and starched yellow – the same consistency as cigarette paper.
We’d never been to this place before and, in fact, we had only decided to stay under the auspices that we would be able to find a family-friendly place to eat. We’d been shopping for knick-knacks and antiques at the Goodwill in Bonner Springs on the strip close to the main drag and the interstate. Bonner, as the locals refer to it, also has a small historic district that sits on limestone hillsides overlooking the river. The drive is only 20 minutes or so from our house, but it’s just far enough away and different enough to feel like a mini-vacation. Neither my wife nor I expected that we would come to care so much about this town or a few of its residents in the short three hours we’d spend there.
I’d parked the car in a parking lot for a tire shop and, rather than unloading the children, went to investigate the cafe. I walked into the receiving area, which was considerably darker than outside, and peered into the dining area. The whole place was done in a 1940s aviation era style with a fighter jet model on the wall and photos of great airplanes along the booths. I was wearing loose-fitting khaki pants and a plain white T-shirt and I felt, for a moment, as though I especially fit in, like a pilot maybe or an engine mechanic who could have gone back in time to a real streetside cafe of that era and had a few drinks without standing out.
The booths and a few chrome-trimmed tables straight from a 50s diner at the room’s center were empty. I was greeted by the hostess who stepped out from the kitchen and saw me taking it all in. She said the restaraunt had just opened for dinner, then assured me the environment was family friendly. I was already sold.
As charming as the cafe was, though, the night was too beautiful to sit indoors, so we’d settled on the ambiance of dining under the clear sky. Our hostess filled up my beaded glass with ice tea and I sipped it watching a light breeze blow in the treetops and trying to imagine what it was people did 100 years ago in all these red-bricked buildings across from me. The days were much slower then and but the pressures just as great. The menus we were brought presented a light and healthy but classic fare with everything from chicken pasta parmeseana to roast beef dip sandwiches. The first page explained the owners’ reasoning for opening the establishment. Cafes simply lost their appeal as the decades passed and the days become more rushed. This place was created in an effort to recapture the timelessness of the downtown cafe.
Again, the breeze blew. We put in our order and in less than 10 minutes, it was on the table. Betsy, my wife, had gone inside to take our oldest daughter to the restroom and, like me, she was enamored with the place. She was more taken with the arrival of a blonde-headed boy on his bicycle. He was no more than eight years and had apparently dropped his bike outside the cafe, near our table, then walked right in and sat at the counter to put in his own order. Somehow I’d missed him in tending to the kids and visiting with our server. Besty’s heart immediately went out to him. She thought him to be a lonely boy and inquired with the server about him.
We learned he was a regular here, that he made his money mowing lawns, had few friends and could be seen around town on his bicycle. We also imagined his parents were either careless about him or glad he could be self-entertained. We thought about buying his food and inquired about that too, but soon found he’d already paid.
While we were eating, we discussed his home life – again, as we imagined it. We raved about the food. I decided on the grilled chicken and Betsy the Italian soup lunch portion. I shared a bite of the sandwich with her so she could taste the homemade chipotle sauce smeared on the bun and sticking the Swiss cheese to it.
Someone had taped a flyer to the cafe’s front door. A pianist was going to be playing that night at 6 p.m. A few minutes later an older woman carrying sheet music walked past us and the hollow sound of piano music could be faintly heard at our table.
With dinner done, we all went inside and the children played and danced together. Charlie led Caroline in a slow number that put Betsy in tears. She said she could see them together in the distant future at Caroline’s wedding.
The music sounded like jazz piano as memorized and carefully played by a school teacher on an old upright piano, though I doubt she’d ever taught. The little boy at the counter asked if he could play a song, and she politely let him take over. Tapping a few notes nervously, he was embarassed to have an audience and his song was over quickly. We politely applauded and the woman was back on her bench at the keyboards.
The kids danced some more until more customers came. Betsy slipped a five-spot into a glass jar on the piano, then we headed down the quaint block, first to a shiek boutique called the Pink Zebra decorated. Flamboyant clothing filled the window display: party dresses, tights with polka-dot ruffles, silver over-sized purses and studded blouses. The girls looked in the windows while Charlie and Caroline walked along a nearby rock wall.
We followed the wall past a small grassy hillside to a drug store with a window filled with candles and fall home decor. Other than the Rx sign outside, nothing about the place appeared as though it was a pharmacists office. The next window down was an antique shop and next to it, an actual home decor store. There the street led to a small corner park with a train caboose and pond the children could play around. Both sets of stairs to the train caboose were cordoned off.
I have heard that small towns are dieing throughtout the Midwest and the ones that remain are not as they once were. In fact, I’ve seen the burned out hulls of them, like Hiawatha, Kan., when I’d interviewed there a few years ago for a small newspaper editor position. Houses just off the empty downtown square were ruined with blackened window sills and entrys with no doors, just dark rectangles with partial stairwells visible. It’s small, local hospital was filled with old farmers and dying legacies, the children of these long lines now in big cities making lives in technology and fields as far away from farming as possible.
The few smalltowns that survive are centered around industrial work or low-paying manufacturing positions. They are occupied by foreign laborers as are the old town halls or court house steps, but that does not mean the dreams have changed.
Bonner Springs is close enough to Kansas City more commuters to live here and the foreign help to rise every morning and drive to golf courses and suburban lawns where they preen rose bushes and shubbery from before the sun rises until after it falls, then celebrate deep into the night before rising and doing it all again.
This isn’t a small town, per say. The population is about 12,000 and there’s a nearby ampi-theater that draws thousands to concerts and stage acts. But the feeling is similar, especially on Friday nights in the summer. The streets near the main drag are overcome with motorcyclists pulling into bike night at local pub that has a back deck that sits high as a wharf restaraunt only looking out on blacktop, not breakers and cloudy ocean swells.
This one city block ib its old downtown helped me forget all of my own troubles. I was lost in the cracked sidewalks, these hills a half-block down from the sad retirement home highrise, lost in my own past that some people here still remember and are attempting to preserve.
