Population: 637
I’m walking down Naches Avenue and strangers wave at me. I think they are staring at me because they’ve never seen me before, and if I catch them staring at me they have to wave, real friendly-like.
A young woman pushing a stroller turned the corner just as I did and we almost ran into each other. She asked me, “Aren’t you hot in that sweater?” I said, “I was just about to take it off.” I thought maybe she wanted to strike up a conversation, but she just rolled past me with her baby and didn’t say any more.
At the gas station, the attendant apparently knows half the customers well enough to talk about her night last night, her grandma, and her son’s illness.
There’s a café on the main drag, open 6am – 3pm. It’s a large open space, with antiques for sale in the front part of the store. Tables from the 1970s, which I imagine started as an opportunity but then became a theme.
I remember it as ‘Grandma’s place’. I go in and seat myself at a booth. She is chatting at a table with three friends. She looks at me and says ‘hi’, but finishes what she is saying before coming over. She asks what I would like to eat, pointing to a menu written on the wall next to a sign that says “order what you want, eat what you get.” I order a cup of soup that is so good I order another one, even though I have to get up and go to the counter to ask for it.
One whole wall is peg board, sparsely decorated. There is a table of cookbooks for sale with recipes from members of the local church, and on the wall, a framed newspaper article with her picture on it.
The kitchen is open to the dining area, I can see everything. Her 9-year-old granddaughter appears and goes into the kitchen to fix her food. The next day, her grandson is there eating lunch. There is always four or five people at her table talking and eating.
Grandma asks me questions. Do I live around here? - even though she knows I don’t . Where am I staying, which house is it? In a few minutes she figures out which house it is - the brick house with the wood fence. She wants to know why I am here, but doesn’t ask directly. Am I visiting family, the mountains? Where did I come from?
She lets me know that they are closed on the weekend, but adds that she could fix me something to take home on Friday if I need it.
I don’t get a check, I just go up to the cash register and she rings up my bill from memory. It seems too cheap - I remind her that I had two soups. I know, she says.
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