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| | Trevor B Hall |
It is almost 6 A.M. in the town of Edison, Washington, and Julie Martin's headlights are cutting through fog and darkness. Julie is the cook and owner of the Edison Café. When she pulls up behind the small, crooked, fire-engine-red building, her first customer is waiting for her. Few words are passed as she opens the doors and begins to ready the kitchen. Soon the local farmers will begin to pour in. They are tall, hearty men with weathered baseball caps or cowboy hats, earned dirt under every fingernail. Their entrance is always the same: the door creeks open; everyone glances at the new arrival who swings around the lunch counter to the coffee machine.
“Mornin',” shouts Julie from the kitchen. The new arrival quietly replies: “How-do?” The regulars each grab a mug, fill it, then top off everyone else's cup. It's an unwritten rule that no one's coffee gets low or cold.
Outside it's still pitch black, and the only light in Edison comes from the café — the fluorescent red EAT sign in the window and the dim yellow glow of the interior lights. Some mornings, there is playful banter; at other times they all hold comfortable stares and listen quietly to the faux-antique, turquoise radio. Edison is set in Washington State's Skagit Valley, some twenty-three thousand acres of the most plush, fertile farmland one can imagine. The valley has the look of a dark-green down comforter, creased by the water that travels down from the Cascade Mountains on its way to the Pacific Ocean. Dotting the horizon to the west are the rounded San Juan Islands. Directly to the east, the ten-thousand-foot volcanic Mount Baker stands watch (when, on occasion, the winter clouds split to allow its appearance). It is from this mountain that rainwater begins the journey down through the foothills and into the Samish River and its tributaries, creating wetlands on this valley floor.
The valley gives life to a wide variety of birds: waterfowl (mostly ducks), eagles, blue herons, huge flocks of sparrows, occasionally an exotic snowy egret or a mysterious Egyptian hawk. The valley is home to some of the best winter hawk-watching in the country. It is an active, lively place where nature and its doings are never far from the eye.
Most of Skagit Valley is farmland, and Edison is one of the only towns with remnants of a main street (though Edison is no longer officially recognized by a postal zip code of its own). Established in 1869 and named after the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, the town enjoyed a heyday in the late 1880s, when it boasted three hotels, two churches, three grocery stores, a hardware store, a bank, a cheese factory, and four thirst-quenching establishments. For the most part, individually owned farms have since been pushed out by larger industry, and the logging and fishing businesses have slowed to a near standstill. The town has learned to be grateful for its two remaining bars and, of course, the Edison Café.
As the day progresses, the café will see three waves of customers: the early-morning farmers; the gamy, dice-wielding “shakers and rollers”; and the Edison Elementary School's rear-window gang.
The first crew is mostly men (and two women, Ruby and Lucille) in their fifties or sixties. They are people who have, in one-way or another, worked the land of Skagit Valley: dairy farmers, potato farmers, fisherman, construction workers. The Edison Café is home for them — a combination dining room and kitchen.
One local asserts that while an estimated twenty-seven people have actually owned the café since its beginnings in 1944, life in the café hasn't changed much over the years. Some of the owners have tried to fancy the place up a bit, but the changes were always met with either indifference or outright scorn by its customers. Julie understands: “It needs to be a place where people can come in with cow dung on their boots. You can't change that.”
Julie is an attractive woman in her early forties, her blond hair usually pulled back for cooking — a woman who knows what people around here like, to the point that almost no one actually places a food order. Customers sit down, chat with whomever is around, and eventually some food shows up — their meal, which is a day's selection of certain familiar possibilities, consists of two pieces of bacon, a pancake, and a sausage; two eggs, a piece of bacon, and hash browns; an egg, two pancakes, and toast. The bill arrives on time. Everyone pays for the food (though some on mentally-kept accounts), but if you're lucky, you can drink coffee for free.
“They roll me double or nothin’ for the coffee,” Julie declares. With five dice, in three rolls, you must get a six, a five, a four, then the highest total of the remaining two dice wins. Those are the basic rules, but time has built many nuances into this game. Before people head out the door, they call to Julie, “Come roll me for this coffee.” Julie emerges from the kitchen, dries her hands on her white apron, straightens her shoulders, peers at her competition, and grabs the dented leather dice cup. When Julie is on one of her winning streaks, she gets her fair share of suspicious looks, but it’s part of the deal.
“Now, don't you bad mouth me for that one,” she gently warns a loser as she makes way back to the griddle.
By about 7:30 A.M., the first wave of customers is off to work, and the dice cup has moved to the corner table, where the next wave will hit. It’s not the last Julie will see of the morning crew though; most will return periodically throughout the day (some of them four or five times). A little bit of light comes into the valley and Julie can step out back for a moment's break.
Other than the arrival of her two waitresses — the sharp-tongued Roxy and the charming woman known as “Bear” — or one of Julie’s two high-school-aged daughters, the midmorning quiet lasts until about 10 o’clock, when the shakers and rollers — a group of eight to ten local residents, mostly retired couples — show up, as they do every day, for The Game. The first half-hour or so is spent rolling for coffee until someone rises to the top as the day’s winner. That person then rolls one-on-one against Julie, double or nothing, for the entire table’s coffee. It’s a noisy and energetic time to be in the café. Talk of the weather, the nation, and town gossip rumble through the café. Then, promptly at 10:45, the usual breakfasts are delivered for everyone.
The meals are the standard fare — eggs, toast, hash browns, bacon — except in the case of Peter Menth, who is in his late sixties and whose well-trimmed gray beard and black captain’s hat give him the authority of a fishing-boat captain at sea. His meal commands an equally grand respect and even has its own name on the menu: the Peter Pan Hotcake. This is no ordinary hotcake, and is surely the mark of a man who “won't grow up.” Simply put, it is huge — so big that Peter bought his own larger-than-life plate to accommodate it — but the hotcake still falls over the sides. Julie respectfully keeps the plate in back.
Yet the usual stack is nothing to ignore — especially when ordered as part of the farmer's breakfast special: two eggs, two sausage links, two strips of bacon, hash browns, and two pancakes, all for $7.25. Many adolescent appetites have made an attempt at this one and come close — until the pancakes arrived, thudding on the counter under their own weight.
In his book Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon offers that the measure of an American café can be taken by the number of calendars on its wall; five calendars earns his top rating. The Edison Café tops that by three, and I would add one twist to Least Heat-Moon's measuring stick: if one of the calendars features pictures of tractors…loosen your belt. This café offers such a calendar, and a meal for two, really, all for under $10; a customer is hard pressed to spend more than $5, and further pressed not to leave the Edison Café teetering, completely full. Nonetheless, at noon a gang of students from the Edison Elementary School certainly tries their hand at this. (The café sits on the school's property, always has, which is why the elementary-school students are allowed to run over for lunch.) One local, Duane, recalls the café's presence in his life during his days as a student in the late 1940s: “I remember being beat up in this café in 1947 — by my dad,” he says with a smile — then explains: “I brought a white-face bull right in the front door, did a one-eighty-degree turn with it, and headed out. They banned me for a month.” The school cafeteria food soon helped him mend his ways, and today’s students are quick to tell you that Julie's food is an “awesome” option.
The madness begins quietly enough as two of the students, Emma and Kyla, arrive before the crowds. Through good grades, they have earned the right to “work the window” and get a free lunch in exchange. Moments after their arrival, the rush is on. From the back window of the café, it looks like a mob running in panic from a fire: backpacks bouncing off of shoulders, sneakers squeaking across the wet pavement, eyes wide with possibility.
“We keep them under control,” Emma says. “They give us their order, we shout it out to Julie, then we make sure everyone gets the right food. It’s not too hard, and we get a free lunch, which is great!” Julie loves her two helpers, referring to them as “my girls.”
This last rush is usually over by 12:30; then Julie’s girls head back to school, and she can take a well-earned rest on the bench out back. The sun is most likely to show its face about this time of the day, and she leans against the café wall, her face aimed at the warmth. One of her waitresses likely joins her, and the gossip begins. If it’s her daughter, she often prods, “Didn't I fire you this morning for being late?” Leaning on her Mom’s shoulder, the daughter shoots back, “Mom, you fire me every morning.”
So it has gone for years and years — a community tradition born of the need for food, comfort, and ritual. Everyday service to others is willingly and eagerly offered as a café owner’s privilege — a service tendered with love, not because it promotes good corporate culture or because it will bolster profits, but because these are Julie’s “day husbands”, her “shakers and rollers,” her “girls.” The Edison Café is a town’s reliable home away from home, where personal politics and pettiness must be checked at the door. From the dark, foggy mornings to the breaks of sunshine in the afternoon, Julie knows that day in and day out, for better and for worse, in Edison, Washington, she “gets ‘em fed.”
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Trevor Hall, a graduate of Western Washington University and Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, is a teacher and writer living in Cambridge, MA. He is an Associate Editor at DoubleTake Magazine and the founder of The Call Academy. This article originally appeared in the Fall 2001 issue of DoubleTake Magazine. www.doubletakemagazine.org |
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