West Gadsden Cafe - Tuesday's Menu

Tuesday's Menu

Fried or Bar B Q Chicken (In later years the Fried became Chicken Fingers)

Meat Loaf

Baked Ham

Creamed Potatoes

Large Dried Lima Beans 

(fordhooks I think my mother called them)

Turnip Greens

Harvard Beets

Buttered Carrots

Tossed Salad

Congealed Salad

Pear Salad

Special for Today was Banana Pudding

and regular pies

If you cook dried beans, then you know you have to "look" each one.  There are things in there that you don't want to eat--rocks, bad beans and etc.  The cafe cooked 25 pounds of beans at a time, so we had a lot to "look".  They would pour them out on one of the tables when the crowd was almost gone and as the waitresses had time, each person would sit and "look" the beans.  You would be surprised at the number of people that would come by and say, "Are yall counting the beans?"  My mother would always say, "Remind me to never go eat at their house."  Mother was very picky about cleanliness at  the cafe.

On Tuesday, there were several postmen that always ate a "meat loaf sandwich".  If someone came in and asked for something not on the menu, but that could be fixed from what we had, we always tried to prepare it for them.  If you were on a special diet and were a regular, then mother would cook your food as you needed it, sometimes without the same seasonings used in the regular preparations.

The waitresses had "sections" and each of them had customers that sat with only them.  If their waitress's tables were full, then they would sit somewhere else and asked for their waitress or sometimes they would wait until a table was clear in her section.

We had some very special folks that ate with us.  They became like family.  You knew them and their children.  Some had been eating with my grandparents long before I was born.  I literally grew up in the cafe.  My sister and I complained when we had to work, but we sure miss it now!

The picture above is our family eating Thanksgiving Dinner at the cafe.  There were so many of us that year that we thought it would be easier for us to eat there.  I think it is Thanksgiving but it could have been Christmas.