Every little town had a favorite hangout when I was growing up in the 1950s version of Lawler. The following piece from ‘Depot Street Memories…The Lawler Stories’ speaks of such a place. Here’s hoping that you old-timers enjoy looking back; and those of you either too young to experience it or who have never been to Lawler get a feeling of such an important part of our history. (Bill Sheridan)
Chapter Seventeen
Martin’s Café
THE place to congregate when I was growing up in Lawler was a restaurant on the north side of the main drag, next to Chick’s Barber Shop, called Martin’s Café. It was owned and operated by Vincent (Dint) and Gert Martin.
Dint and Gert made the very best malts in Lawler. Actually, they made the only malts in Lawler. Having a corner on the malt market on a hot August day in Lawler was a good thing, especially along with their scrumptious hamburgers and other home-cooked meals.
Several aspects made Martin’s a cool place to hang out. I loved the way they let you spend as little as a nickel, dime, or quarter on something, and did not expect you to leave right away. There was a circular bench facing the main drag where teenagers sat, sometimes for hours, discussing the main issues of the day. “Can you believe the price of gas? It’s up to a buck for three gallons. When is that price increase going to end?”
Or, “That Presley dude from Memphis is weird. He ain’t never gonna’ amount to anything. This rock ‘n roll stuff they’re talking about is just a fad.”
And they had wonderful photos above the booths on the west side of the café showing off all the Lawler High basketball teams going back years and years. It was terrific to study those old black and white pictures and imagine what their games must have been like in the 1930s and 1940s. And many of the people in the photos were now middle-aged and still living in town, so it was great fun to compare them to the way they currently looked with their expanded bellies and receding hair lines.
During the 1950s, after a big basketball win on a Friday night, we’d all head for Martin’s, put a dime in the juke box to hear Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Conway Twitty, Gene Vincent, Buddy Knox, and a bunch of others sing on 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) records.
Then we cheered for the players as they came into the cafe one-by-one or in small groups.
Romances began and ended in those booths. Arguments over the merits of John Deere vs. Farmall, or Oliver tractors were never settled; and secrets were shared over Cherry Cokes that have not been divulged to this very day, decades later. The black and white television, featuring sporting events such as Wednesday Night Fights and the World Series, was considered community property because most Lawler families did not yet own a TV.
That’s how I learned I was as nearsighted as Mr. McGoo. I was sitting at a round table one Wednesday night watching a boxing match with some friends when my third grade classmate, Bob Boeding, came in wearing a pair of glasses. He may have been the first in our grade to do so. I said, “Hey, Bob. Can I try those on just to see what it’s like?”
“Sure,” he answered while handing them to me.
I was shocked. I saw what the world was SUPPOSED to look like. A cloud had lifted. I saw shapes and forms that I did not know existed, and hated to hand them back to Bob. Within a week, I was taken to an eye doctor and have not been without glasses since.
On summer Saturday nights Paula and Jim, daughter and son of the Martins, sold freshly popped popcorn in a stand in front of the restaurant as Lawlerites milled through the street.
Outside, on the west side of the building, were vines much like those in Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. Sparrows by the hundreds lived in those vines, so my buddy Ronnie Sjullie and I could shoot blindly into the wall with our BB guns and be assured of hitting a random target in those pre-PETA days. One evening we got into trouble by firing at sparrows sitting on top of the façade wall facing the street. There was a vacant lot behind the wall so we faced south and tried to hit the birds. Dint walked out around 7 p.m. and asked if we had been doing the shooting.
“Yeah,” we replied. It wasn’t exactly a case that needed to be solved by CSI since each of us stood there with a BB gun in our hands.
“Well, Florence Goss (the postmistress) needs to talk to you.”
“Okay. Do you know what she wants?”
“I sure do. You’ve put a couple holes in the window of her apartment above the post office!”
We were ashamed, terrified, and feared the worst as we marched up the stairs to her home. Fortunately for Ronnie and me, Florence was a forgiving soul who kindly asked us to use better judgment in the future and declined to send us to Leavenworth for destroying federal property.
On the front side of that same wall was a fading patriotic painting of a flag, along with printed names of military men and women from Lawler who had served our nation during WWI and WWII listed under it. It saddens me that I don’t have a photo of that precious sign.
I don’t recall how long Dint and Gert ran the café, but I know that they raised their wonderful family and provided a terrific service to the town with their hard work and generous spirit. Through the years I’ve had the good fortune to eat at some wonderful restaurants around the United States, but none of them have offered the same comfort and joy as the burgers and malts sold at Martin’s Café in Lawler, Iowa.
It was a special place.
What a kick it would be to go back in there to have the Martins serve up their delicious chow one last time.