The Cafe

 How to describe E_______ Cafe? That's tough, for me, because I've been there too many times. It sits off the street in an area that used to be a vital little stretch of stores long since gone out of business and re-opened lately in the form of little art studios and a puppet museum, a Mexican restaurant, and a hair salon, maybe some others. 

E_______ Cafe has been there probably throughout all of this from the very beginning. A one story building in an L shape, with long windows and neon signs identifying the cafe and declaring it "open." There are a couple of entrances. It's not shiny clean inside, but just clean. The tables, the floor, the acoustic tile ceiling, the counter, the little kiosk where the cash register is, they're all old but serviceable. The food is good, if not healthy, strictly speaking. Gravy is involved. The pancakes are huge and hang over the edges of the plates they're served on. This is the Midwest. 

The waitresses don't wear uniforms--they wear jeans and tops beneath a variety of hair-dos. The customers are mostly regulars, and there's a lot of them. They talk across tables at people they know. Old couples, some with walkers, but most not. Men who work outside and are on break, or who stopped for breakfast on their way to the first job. Sometimes small families with kids. Everyone's wearing jeans. If it's winter, the men are also wearing flannel shirts and canvas Carhart jackets, probably, and give-away logo ball caps. These, the caps, stay on, walking in, seated, eating, talking.  In warmer weather it's T-shirts, some with messages printed across them. Don't read them. 

On the way in, you see a coffee can set on the sidewalk by the door with cigarette butts in it. Inside, in the men's room, at least, someone thought it appropriate to hang a "no smoking" sign. 

And the prices are reasonably low, the service impeccable if not elegant, and the food really is pretty good. Eventually, if you visit often enough, the waitresses know you and say hi when you walk through the door, and usually bring coffee the way you like it without first asking.