By Bob Copperstone
For many people in Wahoo and surrounding Saunders County in the mid-20th century, the Wigwam Café was a powerful, green-themed touchstone.
Today, I happily draw on those fond memories.
Along with the Fairview and the Day & Nite cafes on the highway north of downtown, the Wigwam Café was a community gathering place with nickel fountain Cokes, dime double-dip ice cream cones, 25-cent malts, 20-cent hamburgers, 15-cent french fries, 90-cent full dinners, and 50-cent Blue Plate Specials.
The crowds came for breakfast (we opened at 6 a.m.), lunch, coffee break, dinner, and evening snacking.
Those same people often headed for “the Wigwam” after school activities and civic functions, including football and basketball games and sock hops (the cafe usually closed near midnight).
Today, nostalgia floods the conversation when the landmark cafe is mentioned. A surprising number of people remark, “I remember the green.”
Yes, the official “Wigwam Green” interior-paint color.
The ubiquitous green caught the eye everywhere you looked – it was the Wigwam’s trademark.
As you walked through the green-painted, heavy wooden front door, you confronted the 1920s full-service soda fountain countertop, which was a lovely green and brown tile bulwark of a structure.
To your left was the green-painted cigar cabinet and cash register counter. To the right were the four green 2-seater (4 in a pinch) so-called “little booths.”
Stepping in further, to the right were the big green wooden booths, and on the left the counter with a dozen or so green-painted metal-back stools facing the green wooden counter.
Behind the counter on either side of the coffee urn were wooden cabinets and shelves, all painted green, of course.
The double swinging wooden kitchen doors looming large at the back end of the room completed the green palette. At the end of the west counter, backing up to the kitchen, was a huge hulk of an air conditioner cabinet, also green.
Wigwam Green Paint Color is Born
According to family lore, “Wigwam Green” was created soon after the new partners, my parents Hank and Irma Copperstone, and another couple, Clair (Muzzy) and Dorothy (Dodo or Dode) Miller, purchased the café in the late 1940s from Malcolm Anderson, Dorothy’s father.
The two-story, plus basement, building itself was owned by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a charitable secret fraternity to whom monthly rent was paid, and whose members met regularly on the top floor. The basement once housed a barber shop, with entrance steps into a pit from the outside sidewalk.
The new Wigwam owners realized they would need to do some repairing and repainting, so they huddled with Les Hult, the paint and wallpaper dealer across the street, who custom-mixed paint to copy the original shade of green (the Wigwam Café opened in 1929). After numerous attempts, Les came up with a spot-on match.
Les wisely copied the formula, officially labeled it “Wigwam Green,” and added it to his inventory of cans of paints for sale. There may still be items around Wahoo to this day painted our favorite Wigwam Green.
Art Deco Roots
The green scheme possibly had been suggested by those beautiful green and brown Art Deco antique tiles on the soda fountain island and surrounding cabinets that caught your eye as you walked in the front door.
Unfortunately, according to the current owner Clayton Wade, the tile island had begun to sink into the floor that couldn’t hold the weight, and were crumbling at the grout. Clayton said they couldn’t be saved.
I have fond enough memories of Wigwam Green today, but I still wince at the teenage angst that the paint caused me back then.
Because it was my job to paint every spindle, leg, splat and rung of every one of those cursed all-wood bentwood chairs that lurked under the center tables, malevolently (and intentionally, I was sure) acquiring chips, scrapes and other paint loss that regularly required my time and effort to fix.
I think there were a couple hundred chairs. OK, I exaggerate– 18 or 20, at best. It only seemed like more; they just kept coming. I had to paint the booths and woodwork, too.
The painting chores cut rather deeply into my social life, as that job required after-hours and weekend labor.
That often kept me from joining my wannabe-hoodlum friends I was running with at the time. Only a few of us got to sport ducktail haircuts. The rest of us, who were allowed to get only standard flattop or plain crew cuts, sneered and called them “ducks-asses” and pretended not to be envious.
Painting and Saturday night mopping and waxing the floors kept me from joining my pals who, naturally, were busy robbing gas stations and liquor stores and shooting it out with the cops -- or so our parents seemed to have feared. Actually, my obligations undoubtedly kept me out of some lesser mischief.
‘Wigwam Corner’ in Southern California
Several years ago, my sister Rochelle and her husband, Jack Wiltfang, purchased one of the Wigwam’s center-floor dining tables and several of the chairs from Clayton and his wife, Sylvia, who had them stored in the basement.
To my, and innumerable Wigwam lovers’ delight, the Wiltfangs took them back to their home in Oxnard, California
That furniture has been displayed, along with menus, china, "Blue Plate Special" compartmentalized platters, and other memorabilia, in what they call the “Wigwam Corner” at their home in Oxnard, Calif.
Update: October 2024: Rochelle said that one of her granddaughters is using the table and some chairs in her apartment, and the other memorabilia is in storage. Rochelle recently had discussions about eventually offering the Wigwam Corner to the Saunders County Museum for possible accession.
Despite the nostalgia, a return of a lavish Wigwam Green-heavy paint scheme at the Wigwam doesn’t seem to be in the offing.
Several years ago, I broached that topic with Clayton, but he didn’t seem eager to resurrect that particular motif, as he had already taken the Wigwam to a different decorating level.
The Wigwam has been closed and shuttered, with the front windows now papered over, since the Wahoo State Bank fire next door in November 2016.1
But if I remember correctly, the Wigwam’s color scheme had been updated to nicely incorporate a less-mono-hued blend of colors. The result rather pleased me, despite my nostalgia for the more muscular green color dominance.
Looking into the future, I’d frankly be surprised to see any continuation, soon or ever, of the Wigwam as I knew it then.
But we can -- we must, and we will -- always hope.
(To be continued)
https://www.3newsnow.com/news/local-news/wigwam-cafe-hopes-to-make-comeback
As Told By Uncle Bob: Growing Up Wigwam, Episode 2