City Cafe

My grandmother was Gladys Smith, who was a waitress at The City Cafe in the early 1940s. Between the lunch and dinner runs, she would sit in one of the big windows facing Main Street and smoke a cigarette.

One day a handsome man, wearing a fedora, drove by in a convertible. Grandma turned to her co-worker and said, “He was handsome. I’m gonna marry that son of a (expletive).”

A month or so passed, and the handsome guy in the fedora came into the cafe for lunch. He sat at the bar, which is still there in the present day Brique cafe, and Grandma poured him a cup of coffee. They started talking and got along so well that the young man came back that evening and every day for two weeks.

Two weeks after they first met, the handsome young man, Fred Walker, came into the cafe, sat down at the bar, and asked my grandma to marry him and offered her a ring. She said “yes” and they married in a minister’s home two nights later, July 13, 1943. They had one child, my mother Linda Carol, and were married for 50 years.

My whole life growing up, I loved The City Cafe. It made me think of the great love story over and over. Two days before she succumbed to cancer, she told me her love story one final time and gave me the ring that Grandpa had given her at the bar in the cafe. I still wear it today.

I like to lovingly say that The City Cafe is where I got my start – right here in the heart of Elgin.

A special opening for a special exhibit will be on Saturday, Aug. 12, at the depot museum at 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. The Texas Trails Association has created detailed, beautiful and accurate panels about the entire El Camino Real de los Tejas.

All are invited. Sponsoring this exhibit here is Frontier Bank of Texas.