“The Club”

“Route 66: The Mother Road” author Michael Wallis emailed this essay, titled “The Club,” on Monday night, just days after the remaining walls of the historic but long-closed Club Cafe in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, were torn down.

I commend this to your attention. Below is the essay in its entirety.

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It was a half century ago. I was a Marine hitching home to Missouri from California on Route 66. I sported lance corporal chevrons on my sleeves and a garrison cap (best known as a piss-cutter) on my head. I toted a sea bag on my shoulder. Snaring a ride was easy. Sometimes I didn’t even have to stick out my thumb.

Along the way I tried to stop at those highway oases that were dispensing hospitality and great chow long before I was born. Once I got through Albuquerque — eastbound on the Mother Road — I knew Santa Rosa wasn’t too far away when I spied the first billboard covered with that big smiling face of a fat man. That grin said it all — pure satisfaction. By the time the Pecos River bridge came into view my mouth was watering. Then in the center of town on the old highway, I asked to get out and thanked the driver for the ride.

I was at the Club Cafe. No fancy accent mark on the “e” in Cafe and nothing instant inside except the service.

A huge sign our front reminded everyone that this was an “Original Route 66 Restaurant Since 1935,” when the nation was slammed by the one-two punch of Dust Bowl and Depression. When I slid into one of the red vinyl booths it was like I had died and gone to heaven — but a heaven scented with fresh chiles, frying onions, and sizzling beef.

If I had been a condemned man, I knew what my last meal would be — “honest-to-goodness authentic sourdough biscuits, hamburgers made with 100% ground beef, homemade chile and chicken-fried steaks made with tender, fresh meat and served with old-fashioned iron-skillet gravy.”

A time or two I even topped off the meal with a slice of the Club’s cinnamon apple pie, knowing that just down the road at Glenrio, the highway town perched on the border of New Mexico and Texas, at the venerable Texas Longhorn Cafe (again no accent mark), there would be a rhubarb pie waiting with my name, rank, and service number emblazoned on the crust.

Only a few years later as that slab of monotony called Interstate 40 starting elbowing its way into the Land of Enchantment, I was out of uniform and in civilian duds when I met Ron Chavez, the new owner of the Club. I learned that as a kid he shined shoes on the front sidewalk and later worked there as a fry cook. Ron was from a tiny village on the Pecos, a few miles south of Santa Rosa. Named Puerto de Luna, “gateway to the moon,” it is where the green chile is spectacular, Coronado built a bridge, and Billy the Kid danced the night away at fandangos.

Ron was the genuine article. He loved the Club and in the tradition of those before him, he only served what he called “real food.” During one of the many meals I consumed at the Club with my sweet Suzanne, Ron regaled us with stories as tasty and memorable as the cuisine he served. “We have stood the test of taste and time,” Ron said more than once. “In the Route 66 days there was nothing frozen, flash-fried, or microwaved. I have customers who stopped here to eat when they were kids. They want the same kind of food and that’s what we serve.”

The Club survived, thanks to Ron, until 1992. It was the victim of “progress” — the super highway and fast–food joints.  Ron hung up his apron and took up the pen. He moved to Taos and wrote prose and poetry that will live forever. Although the Club Cafe was closed for many years, I am grateful Ron did not have to see the walls come tumbling down and the debris piled up on that spot where once a boy with big dreams and a poet’s heart shined shoes.

Long live Ron Chavez and long live the Club Cafe (Remember, no accent mark on the “e”).

(Image of the Club Cafe’s “Fat Man” logo, courtesy of Michael Wallis)