By Bob Copperstone
Shabbily Dressed for Travel
So after school lets out, I go first to the Wigwam. I see my dad, Hank, at the sandwich board or fountain, or cash register, or working the room as host, greeting customers.
“How’s your dinner?” or “Where’re you folks from?” he asks the tourists, always with a pleasant, infectious smile.
U.S. Highways 30-A Alternate and U.S. 77 through the city are heavily traveled tourist arteries. The tourist trade, as my folks call it, impacts the Wigwam so that we hire extra help during the tourist season.
My mom, Irma, is usually presiding at her kitchen, either slaving away at the steam-table, dishing up the day’s menu, or working on tomorrow’s special so it will be ready to pop into the oven when she opens the café at 6 a.m. and gears up for breakfast and the noon rush.
My mother always clucks her tongue at how tourists dress for travelling.
“Where in the world do they get those clothes?” she wonders. “They really have to dig deep in the attic for worst ones they can find.”
On weekdays, the noon crowd often fills every seat. We hire several girls from the high school to work from noon to 1 p.m. in return for a free lunch that they gobble up in time to go back to school.
(That’s why, years later, it seemed like almost every adult female in Wahoo could tell me that they once “worked for Hank and Irma.”
For the Love of Billiards
My dad, Henry (Hank), knows just about everyone in Wahoo and surrounding counties, and everyone knows him.
Whenever he steps out either the Wigwam’s front or alley door, calls of “Hi, Hank!” follow him.
So when he wants to play a game of pool, he sneaks to the Sportsman’s Bar and Billiards, usually going out the Wigwam’s back door. It’s kind of an unseemly pastime, but not totally taboo. Not too many a respectable businessmen could be seen frequenting one of the town’s many “beer joints,” as my mom contemptuously calls them.
My dad’s business attire would certainly draw attention if he tried to pop into the Sportsman’s front door. His ample silver mane of hair sets off a crisp white shirt with sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms; a narrow black necktie; dark trousers; and a trademark short, white, always-fresh lap apron.
Dad shoots a mean stick of snooker pool, and is so sharp that he is one of the favored few allowed to use the pristine first table, which is kept covered most of the day to keep the kids and riff-raff away. The table would even be fit or use if Minnesota Fats popped in. (He never did).
I have inherited my dad’s love of pool. I and cousin my age, Gary Kracman, often peek longingly into the back alley window of the Bartek’s beer joint pool hall across the alley from the Wigwam. A sports memorabilia store occupies that building now.
We wait until the bartender is called up front, and then we’d dash through the rear door, grab a cue, and start shooting the balls around, just like the big boys.
The bartender cusses us out when he spies us, and we run like thieves.
We keep returning, though. The hypnotic click of the billiard balls, the cigarette smoke pall hanging low over the pool tables, the smell of stale beer, and a faint whiff of the nearby toilets are like perfume to us. The game is so grownup!
Sportsman’s bar is mostly set up for snooker, while the one Gary and I window-peek at is for nine-ball pool, a game with generously wider pockets. Some of us called that game “farmer pool” or, more often, “slop pool”. It lacked finesse, we think, and we ignore the fact that many a Wahoo farmer could shoot rings around most any of us kids in either game.
Indian Maiden’s a Real Looker
Almost any photograph from years past of the interior of Hank and Irma Copperstone’s Wigwam Café in Wahoo would show a large, glass-framed lithograph picturing a beautiful, scantily-dressed Indian maiden poised to sacrifice herself into a fiery volcano.
As you come in the front door, the picture was on the wall above the rear booth. (That booth has since been replaced by a second restroom, which was mandated by liquor license laws.)
The picture has long been a favorite family anecdote:
The rear booth, as in many restaurants to this day, was the unofficial roost for kitchen and wait staff. In fact, in the 1980, a sign on the wall above the booth announced, “Irma’s Office”.
One day, probably in the 1960s, my mother, Irma, was sitting in her usual spot at the booth, facing the wall where the picture hung, her back to the front door.
One day, a frequent customer came over and gathered the courage to ask Irma why, time and time again, she was intently studying the maiden. He had been observing that for a long time, and it bothered him.
Mom was confused at first, and it took a minute to realize what he was talking about.
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed, “I’m not looking at her!”
She gently explained that the framed glass directly mirrored the front of the café. In the reflected image, she could see the cash register and customers coming and going at the front door.
And at the same time, she could keep an eye on the kitchen, which was her main responsibility at the Wigwam.
* * *
I don’t know where the picture is today, but several years ago the latest property owner, Clayton Wade, told me that it may still be around somewhere.
I’m sure the beautiful maiden still hasn’t jumped into the fiery volcano.
(To be continued)
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