The morning sun came through the huge windows and shone on the worn linoleum floors, glided across chrome diner tables and chairs, and slid up to the old bar-type counter dotted with stools all the way around it. Conversations were punctuated with the sound of clanking coffee cups and tinkling silverware; orders being called in and Mae’s high-pitched voice yelling. It smelled like coffee, toast, bacon, old greasy french fries, and the daily crowd.
“Ham and up/wheat; two scrambled/white; half order French toast.” Maggie would speak her customer’s breakfast orders through the window above the counter. “What?” Mae would yell back, and Maggie would patiently repeat the order a couple of more times before Mae said got it straight.
And when Mae slid the food back through the window, across the ancient linoleum countertop, haphazardly arranged on the old restaurant style thick crockery dishes, it was rarely right. And so, the negotiations would begin. Sometimes if you said, “Those eggs were supposed to be up” she’d emit a few cuss words, reach up and grab the eggs by the edge and flip them over with her hands, right in front of everyone watching and slide them back out. “There” she’d yell, ‘that’s what their getting! I don’t have time to keep changing people’s orders, they should order what they want and stick with it.”
She never acknowledged the mistake had been hers. And when asked why she didn’t take the tickets to read, she replied “I don’t need to read my orders, I remember them all perfectly in my head. I’ve been doing this longer than you’ve been born young lady!”
Along each side of the counter, about six feet high up on the walls were pictures painted of another diner counter. There were coffee cups and napkin holders, salt and pepper shakers lining this countertop also. But what drew and held your attention were the caricatures of the customers at the counter. There was a beautiful girl with a well-rounded figure, a train engineer looking at his stopwatch, several other blue-collar workers, a cowboy, a nurse, a waitress serving food, and a wolf, sitting up at the counter in clothing, licking his lips. Mr. Wolf was sitting next to the beautiful girl of course! The artist had depicted himself with paintbrushes behind his ear.
Mae was immensely proud of the pictures on the walls alongside the counter. I’ve never seen anything like them. They were the most fascinating artwork you could imagine, life-sized, vibrant colors and memorable faces. They still exist today, in the same little greasy spoon, but now it’s called by another name. Mae is long gone, as are most of her customers.Neil’s Café had been around forever. Neil was dead though, and his wife Mae had owned and operated it for as long as anyone could remember. I thought she was about 90 years old then, but that’s how all young people see someone over fifty. She was short, with arthritic hands and bowed legs. Her hair was gray, always looked greasy, and it was never free from a bun covered with a hair net. I did not understand why Maggie offered her such respect, no matter how Mae treated her.
Maggie worked at this greasy spoon for over seventeen years serving botched up orders and listening with patience and respect to Mae’s constant tirades. Maggie’s wages were ninety cents an hour back then, with tips amounting to about $20 a day. She got paid in cash, in a little brown envelope every week. Sometimes when Mae was short of cash, Maggie paid the meat man for her, or the milk delivery man. Mae would reimburse her at the end of the day from the cash register.
Maggie paid my way through a Christian school slinging hash, brewing coffee, wiping up tables and lending a kind ear to her customers. During the summer vacation from high school I worked at Neil’s, waiting tables alongside my mother, Maggie. It was hot, and it was greasy – the food and the atmosphere that surrounded us. There are so many funny stories I could tell you about those times you would probably think I was making them up. I enjoy taking them out and thinking about them occasionally.
Neil’s was on the Continental Trailways bus route, and so everyday at noon 2 or 3 busloads full of strangers entered the door, trying to get their lunch in time to get back on the bus. Waiting to see who would come through that door everyday was a fun game for Maggie and me. We served every size, shape, and color of person you could imagine. We waited on tables full of hippies alongside tables full of nuns, and single businessmen, recent escapees from the “nut house” in Pueblo, old sick people, gorgeous young people, clean and dirty, young and old, drunks and ministers, people crying, people laughing, and people passing through to their appointed destinations. The bus drivers always had a story to tell about someone on their route that day.
The lunch menu consisted of the blue plate special, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, various cold and hot sandwiches, and chili. The specials were things like shortribs and horseradish, liver and onions, or chicken-fried steak. And the chili – I always waited for the day someone would die from food poisoning on the spot right there in the café! Mae kept what she called “chili stock” in an old aluminum pan, sitting on the back of the grill. She never cleaned it, refrigerated it, or changed it. She added to it frequently, and then used it to make the base for her chili. The recipe was top secret and guarded carefully. I never had the courage to taste it, so I don’t know if it was award winning or not. I imagine it was pretty famous about an hour after someone ate it though.
We had to be at work at 5:00 a.m. The mornings were cool and beautiful as we’d head for work, talking about how things would go that day. Maggie and me spent our days waiting tables and getting to know our regulars. Lots of locals came in for breakfast, or just sat there for hours drinking coffee and chatting. Mae would make them leave when the bus trade started about 11:30. She’d holler at them “Get on out of here, I got bus people to feed!” But they came back everyday and sat up at the counter. It was tradition and it was the only restaurant like it for miles around. I used to think it was the only restaurant like it for planets around.
Our regulars were the people who kept the town running, government employees, street sweepers, business owners, local artists, diverse types of blue-collar workers and the rail roaders on layover. And every one of them loved Maggie. That was one reason they returned everyday, for the friendship and acceptance she offered. She listened to their stories, and responded with laughter or sympathy, which ever they needed. She kept their coffee cups full and their secrets confidential. She knew everyone by name, all about their families and their trials.
I worked there four summers, starting when I was 14 years old. One of my favorite parts about working at Neil’s was the uniforms I got to wear. I guess it was mostly because Maggie and I would go shopping together and have a blast picking them out at the local Mode-O-Day. It was always exciting to see what colors and styles they would have in stock. Once in a while we got new white shoes to wear when the grease had ruined our old ones. I loved tying the different aprons my mom had made around my waist and seeing my reflection in the mirror. It seemed so grown-up and sophisticated. Imagine that, a waitress uniform was sophisticated to me! Maggie bought all my uniforms.
Maggie taught me a lot of things during those summers. How to sling hash, clean tables, fill napkin holders and saltshakers, sweep the floors and bus dishes. But they weren’t the real lessons I learned. I didn’t know it then, but she set the example of hard work, endurance needed to get through days like that, kindness, patience and respect for everyone around her. When customers treated her badly, she treated them with kindness. She carried an extra load for me, filled in the gaps for me because I was never the waitress she was, and never complained or criticized me. You might say, well, that was easy, you were her daughter. But, she did it for everyone she worked with, always going the extra step for someone when they were tired, or just plain didn’t want to carry their share.
During my shift, I spent most of my tips in the jukebox, playing my current favorite love songs over and over again. And I spent my wages on clothes and record albums and other teenage necessities. Maggie would not put any of her tips in the jukebox. She needed every penny she earned, and I never realized those pennies she pinched were almost all for me.
We were Seventh-day Adventists, and we worshipped God on our Sabbath, Saturday. Maggie never compromised that fact, and even when Mae would call her on Saturday morning, pleading with her to come to work because someone was sick or the day was going crazy, she held onto that principle. It would have meant another $30 income for Maggie, which is like a cup of coffee and a bagel’s worth today, but that was a big amount of money to her back then. The tuition that she paid for me to go to Academy took almost all of her income for the year.
But Maggie held her commitment to God as the most important thing in her life, and she never wavered. She never wavered. Example noted.
I wandered away from God and Maggie after high school and chose a path that was far different than what her hopes had been for me. And the very choices she hoped her personal sacrifices would help me not to make in my life became a reality. I discounted her love and her example, and thought she was old-fashioned and clueless.
Instead I chose a life of partying, drinking and drugging and all of the activities and men that accompany that choice. I did this because at age eighteen I suddently realized I was possibly the smartest person ever born, and I knew everything about life. Sound familiar?
“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12 NIV
But Maggie's prayers never stopped for me, nor her faith that God would someday bring me home. And, He did. Maggie’s example was one that helped me thirty years later when I decided to keep the Sabbath again. I told my clients I was no longer working on Saturday. That was the day I generated most of my income for the week. I had a lot of fear and insecurity about it, but I put my faith in God, and He has not failed me, just as He had never failed Maggie.
Do you know when you have a precious memory? Are you able to define it? It is the one that sits in your heart, warm and glowing, and makes you smile and keeps you company. My summers with Maggie at Neil’s Café take up one of those spaces for me. I could never replace them with ones I could have had about going to camp or hanging out with my friends and doing much of nothing.
Those days together are part of who my mom and I were together, and I love them! I praise God that He gave us that time together. And every single day, I praise God that He gave me Maggie for my mother. Much later in life, when I was reconciled through Christ, Maggie and me spent almost twelve close and loving years together worshipping, talking, sewing, cooking, studying and whatever else mothers and daughters do late in life. I held her hand through her last breath.
I want to say to daughters, or anyone else with a mother, don't spend your tips on the worthless trinkets of life. Don't separate yourself from your mother so far you might not get back. It will matter someday. The time you miss will hurt badly and leave difficult scars to heal. Your Creator can heal and give you beauty for ashes, but the time will never be regained.
" . . . to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." Isaiah 61:3
To Maggie, my favorite waitress – Your tips made a difference! And by the way, my tips will never be wasted again!
I love the picture and personalitidea you portrayed here. 💕 I would love to hear some of the memories/stories from the dinner! I’ll bet there are lessons to be found in every single story. Ty for sharing this one. 😊