Dining Out in Cedar Vale

By Gary White (CVHS, Class of 1955)

There were limited possibilities for eating out when I was growing up in Cedar Vale, Kansas. This reflected the fact that most of us seldom, if ever, ate anywhere but at home. I know my parents couldn’t afford do so very often.

By far, the most popular eating establishment was Herb Marshall’s hamburger joint on Highway 166 down the block from the bank building on the north side of the street. When there was something going on that brought the rural folk to town, you would often see people out on the street waiting for a place at Herb’s counter. The joint could only accommodate ten or so patrons at a time. There was a long counter running the length of the place with Herb and Hazel behind the counter frying hamburgers, dishing chili, and filling coffee cups. There were one or two small tables in the front corners of the place and that just left room for people to come in the front door in the center and order hamburgers “to go.” At the time I was growing up, Herb’s hamburgers were always $.10 each. Inflation must not have been much of a factor in the 1940s and 50s. The hamburgers were hot and steamy and the best quality fat you could get anywhere around.

As good as the hamburgers were, Herb’s chili was considered to be his real claim to fame. Hot, thick, and fragrant, Herb’s chili was a treat we reserved for special occasions at our house. And the smell of the chili mixed with the frying beef was like a magnet drawing us down the street and into the joint. Later, when I had money of my own I would sometimes indulge myself with a bowl of Herb’s chili with beans. If I could now return in time I would certainly head for Herb’s and have a meal in those wonderful grease-soaked surroundings.

I can remember quite well that Herb kept bricks of cold chili in the fridge next to the stove. I can just see him dropping a brick into a big stew pot, adding water and some dry ingredients to form the ambrosia that we all knew and loved. I had always thought that Herb brewed his own chili, but Don Cox informs me that he actually bought the bricks from a meat packing house, probably the same place where he got the ground beef. I now know that at least part of the dry ingredients were cumin and rolled oats—the cumin to create his unique flavor and the rolled oats to make additional bulk in the brew. Someone, either the meat packing house or Herb himself, also added a bit of sugar. There is nothing like a bit of sugar in a salty dish to feed one’s addiction to sweet, and addicted we were.

To finish your meal at Herb’s you could have a big piece of Hazel’s homemade pie, which she baked at their house and brought into the joint. My stomach still remembers the complete satisfaction of having dined on the chili or hamburgers topped off by cherry pie—that was living!

Since we had relatives living in Sedan, Caney, and points east, my parents would often be traveling in that direction. In Sedan there was Riney’s grill, which was even smaller than Herb’s joint, but had good hamburgers. In Caney we could purchase a bag of a dozen hamburgers for $1.00 in a takeout place on Highway 166. We thought that was the best bargain around and my parents seldom passed it up when on the way home from a visit with relatives.

For a more complete dining experience there was Hilltop Cafe across from the grade school and next door to Clarence Marshall’s gas station. Clarence was Herb’s brother and, since he sold Standard Oil Company gasoline, as did my dad, we would often loaf at the service station. Hilltop Cafe was our place for a treat if we were there at meal time. At the Hilltop you could get a stack or a short stack with bacon for breakfast and a hot beef sandwich for lunch. I could also order a grilled cheese sandwich with pickles and fries for variety. The Hilltop was a classy establishment, with booths and tables and a juke box playing the best of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In the evenings you could order a full meal there. I remember the chicken-fried steaks and the salisbury steaks at the Hilltop. It seems that I ate mostly beef while growing up, since chicken didn’t appeal to me.

Behind the Hilltop were a set of tourist cabins where transient workers lived when working in the area. People who were building roads or harvesting grain made the Hilltop Cafe their dining room. This made the Hilltop into a small window on the outside world that was rare in Cedar Vale, Kansas. I would seldom go into the Hilltop without seeing strangers eating and conversing there.

There was another eating establishment, Bernice and Charlie Donahue's Cafe, down on the corner of main street and Highway 166 across from the bank. My mother considered that place to be a “house of ill repute” and would not allow my father to take me there. To my knowledge, I never crossed the threshold of the place, but it remains in my memory as a mysteriously attractive and forbidden domain where all sorts of illicit activities took place. I’m sure that those illicit activities, which probably had no basis in fact other than my mother’s overactive imagination, would seem quite tame viewed from a twenty-first century perspective, but they certainly added to the flavor of the town I grew up in.