The Holly Springs City Cafe: Gone but not forgotten

    I was thinking about the Holly Springs City Cafe the other day. It’s said we don’t appreciate things until we don’t have them any more, and that’s certainly true of the City Cafe.
    I’m not sure how old I was when I first remember going to the City Cafe. I would guess 9 or 10. Cokes were served in 6.5 oz. bottles along with a glass of ice. I was always a little frustrated by the small bottle size, but at the same time the Coke from the smaller bottles seemed to taste better. They used to say they put the same amount of syrup in the 6.5- and 10-ounce bottles.
    The City Cafe was owned and operated by Juanita Jones. She either inherited it or owned it jointly with her late husband, who I think might have been named Ed. He was quite a bit older than her, which says something since I don’t remember her being that young. I don’t remember him ever saying anything. He just said at the cash register and took money. I think Mr. Jones died around 1975.
    There aren’t many restaurants that offer fresh vegetables, but the City Cafe did most days. They would buy them from local growers who would drop them off or perhaps off the back of the many pickup trucks that used to park across from the Post Office. I haven’t seen a pickup with produce for sale in quite a while; not sure what happened to the fresh vegetable supply.
    Most of the pies that were offered for dessert were homemade, or restaurant-made anyway. The late attorney John Kennedy would always ask when the pie was made and it was always “Made fresh this morning.” This really wasn’t true as sometimes the pie was a day or two old; it took some detective work and careful interrogation to ferret out which pies were truly just made. I don’t like coconut, but I remember liking Juanita Jones’ coconut pie.
    My junior year in high school I arranged my class schedule so that I could leave school at noon and work at my dad’s office. A few people have engaged in a campaign of lies and innuendos against me by suggesting that perhaps I didn’t expend too much effort on the job. Don’t believe them!
    I do remember that my work day almost always began with lunch at the City Cafe, sitting at the back table with Dad, John Kennedy, Ralph Avent, Hamlet Yarbrough and his cotton buying partner Mr. Allen, along with a host of others who joined in on an irregular basis.

• Keeping up with the conversation was a bit like trying to follow a game of Ping Pong. Somebody might mention almost hitting a deer on the way to work; another might mention they heard Thus-And-So got in a wreck; etc., etc. with the subject changing every minute. One day Ralph Avent declared “I could have killed two this morning” to everyone’s puzzlement. You see, at the start of the conversation somebody had mentioned almost hitting a deer; the conversation had moved on, but Ralph hadn’t.
• Ralph had the same order every day: “I’ll have what Sidney got.” One day my dad ordered and Ralph turned to him and said, “Sidney, you know I don’t like turnip greens!”
• Mrs. Jones was slightly hard of hearing and would repeat everything you said, changing only the pronoun. If you said, “I’d like the pork chop and mashed potatoes,” she would start writing the ticket while saying in a fairly loud voice, “You’d like the pork chop and mashed potatoes.” One day my brother Lanier found a worm in his squash – a hazard when using fresh vegetables – and very quietly pointed out to Mrs. Jones that there was a worm in his squash. Mrs. Jones responded: THERE’S A WORM IN YOUR SQUASH! So much for being discreet.
• The City Cafe always had French fries that were nice and crunchy and done. They had a great hamburger and a really good club sandwich, which cost $3.50 with fries included. One day my dad lavishly complimented Mrs. Jones on her fine sandwich by telling her that he had paid $6 for a club sandwich at the Cincinnati airport the day before and it wasn’t nearly as good as her club sandwich; he spent quite a bit of verbiage in telling her how fine her sandwich was. The next day the price of the club sandwich was increased from $3.50 to $6.
• If someone got a dessert that was particularly good, a friend might ask for a taste. My dad never did that. On the other hand, if someone declared that something tasted awful, Dad usually said, “Lemme see.”
• One day the conversation made me think of a joke I had read in a men’s magazine. It was a clean joke, mind you, so I threw it into the fray. John Kennedy, sitting at the other end of the long table turned and said in a loud voice, “So, you read Hustler, too!" My 15- or 16-year-old face got pretty red after that.

    The City Cafe had a fine breakfast as well and different time slots would draw a different crowd. There was always a big crowd for breakfast, a smaller crowd mid-morning, then a big lunch crowd for about 90 minutes, and then a small crowd around 3 p.m. This was before the day of coffee places on every corner, but the City Cafe had Starbucks beat. And their iced tea was always perfect.
    Perhaps I’ll think of some more stories later on, but I sure do miss that place!

Using a courtesy title in a debate would have cost DeSantis nothing, but failure to do so may be costly

    If I lived in Florida I’d be voting for Republican Ron DeSantis for the Senate. I think Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum is going to try to turn Florida into another California, and he has some crime and corruption problems lurking just beneath the surface.
    But Gillum was right to call DeSantis out for failing to refer to his as “Mayor” or “Mister” during debates, instead only calling him “Andrew.” Gillum always referred to DeSantis as “Congressman” or “Mister.”
    When Sarah Palin debated Joe Biden in the 2012 vice-presidential debate she walked across the stage and shook his hand and said, “Can I call you ‘Joe’?” Well of course he had no choice, and both used first names during the debate. Supposedly Palin kept accidentally saying “O’Biden” during rehearsals and was afraid she might do so during the actual debate. If DeSantis had asked Gillum permission to use his first name Gillum would have had to grudgingly agree, but DeSantis never asked.
    Prior to 1965 the number of white gentiles in the South who would willingly address a black person, regardless of rank or wealth, as “Mister” probably wouldn’t fill a conference room. It just wasn’t done. Surely DeSantis is aware of this.
    As an attorney my father always addressed his clients as “Mr.” or “Mrs.;” for many it was the first time they had been addressed in that fashion in their life, and Dad shared a few humorous stories about various reactions he received. A law school classmate who researched transcripts of the Congressional voting rights hearings held in every Mississippi county, in which almost every attorney took part, said my father was the only North Mississippi attorney she noted who addressed black witnesses as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” in 1965.
    A story my father shared with us frequently when we were growing up was about buying the land where I grew up from the widow of the black Methodist bishop, a Mrs. Cottrell, who lived in St. Louis. In the 1950s, people actually conducted business by letter, so my father wrote her and asked if she wanted to sell the land, and after several exchanges of letters they reached a deal. Dad traveled to St. Louis to close the trade, and after getting the deed my father asked her why she decided to sell him the land, since he knew a number of people had tried unsuccessfully to buy it.
    “Well Mr. Hurdle,” she responded, “I did receive a number of letters from people asking about that property. Their letters always started out ‘Dear Babe (her nickname).’ I didn’t even know those people and I just wasn’t very interested in doing business with them. When I opened your letter the first words I read were ‘Dear Mrs. Cottrell’ and I thought, ‘This might be a man I can do business with.’ ”
    I should note that my father was not a wild-eyed liberal; he was a Roosevelt Democrat, more moderate than most Mississippians at the time, but anyone from outside the South would have considered him quite conservative. But courtesy was free and so he gave it freely.
    Perhaps DeSantis would have treated a white opponent exactly as he treated Gillum. It’s not unheard of for politicians to refer to their opponents by their first name. But for DeSantis not to realize how his behavior would be received is just an amazing display of tone-deafness.
    Courtesy titles, like courtesy, are free, and DeSantis displayed an amazing stinginess of spirit that likely did him no good with most of the voters. I don’t think Gillum will be good for Florida, but DeSantis’ actions may have given him the extra boost he needed to be elected governor.

The biggest tip I ever saw my father leave was probably the least deserved

    My father, Sidney Hurdle, died just over a year ago. In the weeks after his death I shared a number of stories about him or the things he told me.
    Recently we went through Dad's desk and started the job of cleaning out his office. He had not been in it for several years before his death; the stairs were too much for him. And so the office has been just as he left it four or five years ago.
    I found some interesting things, some of which I will share over the next few weeks. But I saw something while cleaning that made me remember the biggest tip, by percentage, that I ever saw my dad leave at a restaurant.
    Dad wasn't much of a tipper. He felt 10 percent was something rewarded for good service. He grudgingly would leave 15 percent on occasion. Today we've been browbeaten into leaving 20 percent for lackadaisical service, but not my dad.
    I believe the year was 1994. My brother Mike and I were with Dad in Vincennes, Ind., where the Peabody Coal Company was auctioning off substantial blocks of reclaimed coal land.
    The sale was held in a conference room at the local Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inn chain has improved in recent years, but at the time most Holiday Inns had restaurants that set the standard for mediocrity. We chose to eat in said restaurant.
    We were seated at one of two occupied tables in the large restaurant, and the people at the other table seemed to be just drinking coffee. There was one waitress, a rather large woman who huffed and puffed around as if walking from the kitchen to the table was an unreasonable job demand. The food was poor and the service awful. Our waitress explained the poor service by complaining that her employer had just forced her to take a room service order to a guest. The horrors!
    After a long delay the waitress finally brought our soup out with no spoons. We had teaspoons at the table, but naturally we wanted soup spoons. She told us they didn't have any and shambled away. As soon as she was gone we all muttered to each other that we were certain they had soup spoons, but felt the waitress just didn't want to expend the effort to walk across the restaurant to get them.
    I can't remember our total bill; I'm sure it was less than $20. Dad laid down $25 in cash and we hit the exit. Mike and I immediately demanded to know why a man who hates to tip left more than a 25 percent tip for terrible service. We were both of the opinion that the woman didn't deserve a dime.
    Dad's response was as follows: "Based on the service we just had, that may be the only tip she gets today. She's probably got children at home. They need it."
    I'm not sure it makes much sense to tip extra for really poor service, but that was my dad's policy.

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9 And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.
10 But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.
11 And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,
12 Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
13 But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
14 Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

Mathew 20:9-15