Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Requiscat in Pace, Kaffee Haus

Requiscat in Pace, Kaffee Haus


Back in the very early '70's, after I'd fulfilled my military obligation and had gone back to the factory I'd worked at before enlisting, I realized that being a factory worker wasn't something that I'd be satisfied with for the rest of my life. I began to search around for something else to get into and realized that I had the G.I. Bill available to me and that I could use it for money if I wanted to go to school.


But what did I want to study?


My training in the Air Force was in meteorology and I'd pretty much burned myself out at that in four years, so it would have to be something else. I thought that computers looked interesting and looked at a computer school in Akron. After touring the facility I'd decided to go there and had even gone to that school to start classes on the day I was supposed to. But when I arrived for my first class, the storefront that had housed the school was empty, totally deserted. The school was obviously closed. It had apparently happened sometime between the time I'd put down a deposit and the time I'd tried to start attending class. A few weeks, tops. Luckily I hadn't put much money down for the classes – perhaps less than $50, so I wasn't out much cash, but it was disheartening and humiliating to realize I'd been fleeced. I like to believe in my heart that the closing of the school was something that wasn't foreseen when I'd given the place my deposit, that it had gone belly-up abruptly, but that was probably just wishful thinking. I'd been hoodwinked, film-flammed and taken. I contacted the Better Business Bureau and found out that I was only one of a rather large number of erstwhile students who had been relieved of various amounts of money and not given any classes at all. They said my chances of recompense were virtually nil. They said I was lucky my loss was so small.


So I was again looking for a place to get some sort of education.


After some more research I realized that there was a quite respectable business college in my home town. For some reason I'd never considered going there. It had been in business for many, many years, had lots of respectable graduates who were all over the place in business and government, and it was a place which accepted and appreciated former G.I.'s. Plus they had classes in computer stuff!


I applied and was accepted.


I started my classes and attended there for about a year and a half, after which I graduated with a diploma in Computer Programming and Higher Accounting. I ended up with a sheepskin diploma and a job opportunity upon graduation.


All was well.


But this story isn't about my education after being in the military. It's actually about a place to eat.


So how do we get from a school to a restaurant? Let's continue on a bit further.


I ended up attending the business college two times, all told. The first time was an approximate 18 month period in the early '70's after which I earned a diploma. The second time was in the later '70's after the college had received accreditation and was allowed to award Associate Degrees in certain fields. I went back the second time around and ended up earning two Associate Degrees, one in Accounting and one in Business Administration. That time I attended evening classes. The first go-around was day classes.


But that still doesn't lead us to the place to eat does it? So let's carry on, shall we?


Since the first year-and-a-half's classes were all day affairs and conducted during the daytime, we were dismissed over the lunch hour and had to find places to eat. There were several choices close by, one a little place on the ground floor of the building the school was in, which we frequented often. Another we hit once in a while was at the local Newberry's five and dime store which had a lunch counter and pretty good lunches for low, low prices.


And the other place that we liked to go to was on the north end of town. We had to drive there, eat pretty fast, and get back to classes quickly, but we really liked the place. Sometimes we were a little late returning to classes on the days we ate there, but we weren't usually chastised for lateness by the school. We were paying our fees and tuition and that was the important fact at our school.


This restaurant in the north end was a Perkins Pancake House.


For those of you not familiar with the name, it is a chain of restaurants that originated in Cincinnati in 1958, franchised itself over the next 11 years and ended up having over 480 restaurants in 34 states and 5 Canadian provinces. The corporation is still doing business today albeit with fewer restaurants due to restructuring and the economy. Our Perkins did business as Perkins from 1969 until 1978 when it was sold and renamed “The Kaffee Haus”. It remained in business until just recently.


Back in my college days, when we would visit the restaurant for our quick lunches, we liked the fact that the breakfast menu was available all day. One of our particular treats up there was the blueberry waffle. It was a huge hot waffle with a big dollop of blueberry compote on top and finished off with a couple mounds of homemade whipped cream. It was a lot of calories, of course, but in those days we were young and could burn one off pretty quickly. A blueberry waffle and coffee was our good-to-go meal then. Our breakfast of champions, so to speak.


I can still smell the grainy waffle smell and the sweet, sweet odor of the blueberry and whipped cream.


The place was also interesting because of the artwork that was displayed there. From as far back as I could remember there were huge paintings on the walls of the restaurant, probably 7 or 8 as I recall. All were large paintings on canvas, some probably 3 foot by 3 foot, others up to 4 foot by 6 foot. All of them depicting scenes of my hometown's founding and pivotal events in its history. One showed a gentleman named August Imgard who was purportedly the first man to have a Christmas tree in America and was a citizen of our hometown. Another showed a wagon train heading across the Appalachians heading there. Still another showed the arrival of the first train and the festivities which welcomed it. Another one had a portrait of the Revolutionary War general who our town is named after and another had the portrait of the famous local Indian chief whose name is still commemorated in a stream that flows through town. They were surprising well done works, all obviously by the same amateur hand, all colorful and interesting in their own ways. I always enjoyed studying them as I'd wait for my food to arrive.


After college I rarely visited the establishment. My wife and I would go there occasionally, but not with any frequency.


About a dozen years or so ago, my wife and I began to make it a habit to eat breakfast out on Saturday mornings. It wasn't really a conscious decision. We just got into the habit of starting our weekend with someone else cooking our breakfasts. We'd eat at different restaurants around town, but more and more began gravitating to the Kaffee Haus. We became regulars after a while, and soon had a free and easy acquaintance with the wait staff. We liked the menu and were quite happy to spend an hour or so a week with the nice ladies who waited tables there. We had our favorites and enjoyed the chit-chat with them as they went about their duties.


But time doesn't stand still and the lady who owned the restaurant had gotten on in years and had grown tired of running it. She'd been in the restaurant business for 42 years and was ready to pull the plug.


So in late August of this year, the restaurant went on the auction block. The lady owner had tried to sell the business privately to someone who was interested in keeping it as a restaurant, and we'd all been rooting for that particular resolution, but she had been unable to do so.


The restaurant sold quickly I've heard.


And of course it didn't go to anyone interested in keeping it as a restaurant. In fact, it sold to the veterinary clinic next door. He wanted the property to expand his business.


The wrecking ball and backhoes took down the building a week or two ago. All that's left is a small patch of dirt with yellow construction tape around it. The footprint of the restaurant can still be seen in the dirt.


It's surprisingly small.


So, in the end, the life of this building can be counted as 42 years, give or take a month or two. Uncounted meals had been served and enjoyed there and many lives touched by the family that owned it and the loyal workers who spent some or most of their working lives there.


My wife and I are sad that it's gone. We miss the special recipe pancakes, the blueberry waffles. We miss the smiles of the waitresses and their small talk as they hustled to serve the meals. We miss the comfort of being a “regular” at a place that welcomed you.


We miss the Kaffee Haus.


We've since moved our Saturday breakfast business to a restaurant only a short distance from the old property. It's picked up a lot of the trade from the old place and is quite busy but it's not really the same. One of our favorite waitresses from the old place is even working there. We're glad she found a position so quickly. But it's still not the same.


I have no idea where the other ladies are today. I hope they found jobs and I wish all the staff well.


So another chapter in my hometown's history has come to an end. It also ends a chapter in my own history, one that stretches from my college days through my adult years and up to the present.


I drove by the site again today on my way to work. I looked to my left and saw the small sad patch of dirt sitting there like an accusation, like a sad commentary, like the socket of a tooth that had weakened in old age and had to be extracted.


I turned my face away, my eyes misting a bit with nostalgia, and drove on to work.