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rugged individualism became the keel upon which our ship of state
was built. My mother’s parents Mildred and Buck Defrees were made of
the same timber. They were a testament to that spirit brought over
by those early colonists, and I am proud to say I inherited much of
that spirit, which is a story for another day.
My grandparents owned and operated the Midway Café here in Lincoln
for decades. Open for breakfast and lunch, the small cafe
accommodated about twenty souls. Granddad, who also ran a lawn care
business, opened the restaurant at six a.m., which meant he lumbered
the few yards from their house on the corner of Jefferson and Fifth
to the back door of the business at four-thirty each morning. He
would fire up the grill, start coffee, and cook breakfast for the
early birds then leave to tend to his other obligations after the
day cook and waitress came in at seven. Grams (we weren’t allowed to
call her grandma or grandmother) would come in at nine after seeing
to the necessary bookwork and shopping.
My grandmother, a diminutive black-haired attractive woman, always
glowing, good natured, friendly, and personable possessed all the
required skills of a hostess. She was an actress, and the Midway
Café was her stage.
Buck, stooped shouldered, hardworking and
industrious, silent and moody was the backstage manager. When he
wasn’t mowing grass or tending necessary tasks at the eatery, he was
tilling the soil, planting seed, and performing all the various jobs
of raising a substantial garden whose seasonal produce made its way
to the tables of hungry customers. Produce not readily used was
gladly accepted by neighbors.
In addition to the vegetable garden there were blackberry bushes and
a couple peach and apple trees. My mouth still waters when I think
of the blackberry cobblers Grams would bake and serve swimming in
rich cream. We would press berries through a colander turning our
hands the color of that “purple people eater” some may recall from a
long-ago novelty song. Adding sugar to the juice and mixing with
carbonated water from the café, we had ourselves a beverage that
today has been commoditized.
But the biggest treat when visiting were the café raids allowed by
an over- indulgent grandmother. With me being the oldest of her four
grandkids, first thing she’d do upon our arrival was hand me the key
to the café and say: “Junebug (that was her nickname for me until I
finally put a stop to it) take the kids over for treats. If you can
imagine the affect of allowing four kids loose in a wonderland of
pie, cake, cookies, candy, ice-cream and soda had on the profit
margin of a small restaurant then you can understand the scowl on
Granddad’s face as we headed out to plunder those undefended sweets.
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After this pillaging had been allowed to run
out-of-control for sometime, Buck finally put his foot down and
pulled back on the throttle of this cavity express. For Buck it was
all about dollars and sense. And having had her favored way of
expressing love derailed, Grams didn’t argue. She might have said,
“Love is blind,” or better yet as author William Kent Krueger
accurately wrote in This Tender Land: “But the heart isn’t the
logical organ of the body.”
Granddad, a Republican and like most folks back then voted a
straight ticket, died in 1989—the year Reagan vacated the White
House. Looking back, I seriously doubt Buck knew our cowboy
president was on record having said: “Hard work never killed anyone
but why risk it?”
Henry Ford’s innovations in production went on to influence
manufacturing across the board including assembly line sandwiches.
So with the arrival of a fast-food joint across the street from the
Midway forever altering the landscape, the café’s fate was engraved
in stone, nudging closer the end of that era of self-reliant
individualism. I suppose it’s only human nature not to know what you
miss until it’s gone—such is the case for many attributes of
Americana forsaken but not forgotten.
But the closing of that era saw the advent of a new one wherein
nostalgic paraphernalia (ironically made in China) harkening back to
the good old days can be purchased at countless outlets dotting
highways and byways “from sea to shining sea,” with historic Route
66 getting more than its share of annual travelers in search of that
something lost. I’ll let you the readers ask yourselves: “Is the
loss of that self-reliant, can-do spirit been worth the price for
what some call the “McDonaldization” of our culture?”
It may seem rather silly to the reader for me to
dream of a revival of that bold spirit that made this country a
testament to self-motivated, individual initiative, but I’ll keep
that dream alive because our ever-growing reliance on Uncle Sam, who
like an overly protective loving parent, has taken its toll on our
collective spirit. That our need for government assistance continues
to swell our national debt—currently dancing at the door to the tune
of $34 trillion—poses a serious threat to national security, i.e.
foreign powers, not necessarily friendly, hold many of our IOUs.
I’ve recently relocated to Lincoln. If anyone would care to share
memories about the Midway Café, or Mildred and Buck Defrees, I can
be reached at dewdropin58@gmail.com
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