Woolworth's lunch counter a menu of memories

Charlie Brown sat and recalled days gone by and days to come recently at the old Woolworth’s lunch counter on State Street.

Only thing. Woolworth’s is long gone. So too are many of Brown’s buddies, fellow businessmen of Bristol with whom Brown convened at the counter several times daily.

They’re gone, but the counter has returned.

Rechristened as Robin’s Diner with Ronnie Shaffer and his wife Lorin as managers, little seems to have changed. The long brown counter, gleaming stainless steel seats with original black leather cushions remain. There’s a new life in the old Woolworth’s locale.

"It’s recapturing," said Ronnie Shaffer, "bringing back a part of history."

And that pleases Brown, who managed Woolworth’s in Bristol, and former Woolworth’s employee Betty Rice.

"I spent a lot of time over there," Rice said on Thursday afternoon while seated at the counter. She looked upon it as if seeing a ghost.. "I spent a lot of time ... over there."

Brown just smiled. He managed Woolworth’s from January 1967 through December 1980, when he retired.

"January 17, 1967, I parked my car out front, threw my brand new Stetson in the front seat, went to get a hamburger across the street, walked back to my car and my hat was gone," Brown said. "I was ready to go back home."

Brown, a Florida native, stayed. He now owns the building that once housed Woolworth’s. Since 1992, he’s operated Uncle Sam’s, a pawn shop, there.

"To be able to bring a little bit of history back," Ronnie Shaffer said, "feels good."

Back to the future

Since August 2011, Bristol’s beloved Woolworth’s lunch counter, lives again as Robin’s Diner.

"We opened the Tuesday before race weekend, Aug. 23," Ronnie Shaffer said. "It was a little scary at first."

Food City Family Race Night in downtown Bristol proved to be the second day of business for Robin’s Diner. Folks filled its stools like it was 1950s and 60s Bristol again.

"It looked like old times," Brown said, grinning wide. "Oh, it made me feel good!"

Robin’s should make those who loved the old Woolworth’s counter feel good, too. Though closed for about two decades, it’s remarkably intact as it was during its heyday years of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.

The long brown counter from which many a piece of lemon chess pie was served and then eaten, where countless cups of coffee was poured and then consumed, is the same. The stainless steel work station behind the counter, which seems to stretch onward into eternity along the back wall, that’s the same, too.

"People smile when they come in," said Lorin Shaffer.

Woolworth’s lunch counter 

No wonder.

Woolworth’s in Bristol and that includes the lunch counter dates back farther than most folks can recall. Bristol’s dean of history V.N. "Bud" Phillips said that it most likely dates to the early 1920s.

Brown said that he’s seen writing on a back wall that notes the first day of business as 1921.

"Woolworth’s had their letters in gold out front of the building," Phillips said.

And for most of the 20th Century, Woolworth’s lunch counter amounted to one of many lunch counters along State Street. McCrory’s, Kress, H.P. King’s and so forth all had lunch counters.

Margaret Smith worked for nearly 20 years at Woolworth’s lunch counter, much of that time as its manager.

"I worked there from ’70 to ’87," Smith said. "Oh, I loved it. We did a lot of business."

Folks from throughout downtown Bristol convened morning, at noon and in the afternoon at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. Some were en route to work, others on lunch break from work and then others stopped off on their way home after work.

"All the businessmen ate there, Henry King and his gang," Smith said. "You got to know everyone by name. We knew what they wanted when they came through the door. We’d have their coffee waiting for them when they sat down."

Harry S. Truman was president of the United States during the days when Nancy Richardson Gorley served many hot cup of coffee at Woolworth’s.

"Back in ’48 and ’49," Gorley said. "The counter was just full of people waiting at lunch time. Oh, they had great pies. I liked the cherry pie."

Woolworth’s was nothing like today’s McDonald’s or Burger King, fast food establishments built on speed, hamburgers and French fries.

"We didn’t have hamburgers or hot dogs," Gorley said. "It was plate lunches. They served food like meat loaf, mostly vegetables."

The passage of more than a half century has done little to fade Gorley’s memories of working at Woolworth’s lunch counter.

"The floors (behind the counter) were wooden with planks as dividers," she said.

Oh, and their uniforms, they had to be just so.

"We wore white uniforms and an apron," Gorley said. "You could not work at that counter without a hairnet."

Fast forward through presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, Americans at war in Vietnam and the Beatles and the Rolling Stones rocked radios when Betty Rice worked her first day at the Woolworth’s lunch counter.

"I started there in 1968," Rice said. "I worked there off and on, oh gosh, until they closed in ’88."

Think about her tenure. Through Vietnam and the Cold War with the Soviet Union, rock music to disco music, president Richard Nixon’s presidency and Watergate and his resignation and right on through president Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, Rice manned the counter at Woolworth’s.

"Oh, we had fun," Rice said. "I’m from Ohio. They’d tease me and call me a damn yankee. They’d try to teach me to talk like a hillbilly. We had a lot of fun there. That’s why I kept coming back."

The Coffee Club  

Perhaps that best explains the unofficial formation and long-time existence of the Coffee Club. Businessmen and buddies and soaked-to-the soul characters throughout downtown Bristol regularly convened at Woolworth’s lunch counter. It was fun.

Charlie Brown was one of the Coffee Club.

"Bill Burriss was president of BurWil Construction Company and he was in here every day," Brown said. "H.P. King had his own lunch counter but he came in here every day, too. The gang, got together, usually twice a day, morning and afternoon."

The Coffee Club included such unforgettable characters as Bobby Harkleroad, who would park his bicycle in front or out back and come in for coffee and conversation with the gang. Keys Buchanan ran a furniture store. Dave Sandidge, Brown said, kept the books for H.P. King’s. Don Qualls managed the shoe department at H.P. King’s.

They numbered among the gang known and fondly recalled as the Coffee Club.

"Henry King was quite a cut-up," Rice said. "I asked him one time why he came there instead of his own lunch counter at H.P. King’s. He said, ‘to get away from my damn relatives!’ Oh, we all had fun here."

For example, then as now a dumb waiter is located at the extreme right end of the long stainless steel work station behind the counter. In those days, the dumb waiter served as an elevator for food. The food was cooked upstairs on the second floor, placed on the dumb waiter and sent down to the counter.

Well, at least one time something other than food took flight down that dumb waiter.

"There was a girl who rode down the dumb waiter one time," Brown said with a wide as the Bristol sign grin. "It was crazy."

Kids at the counter  

Two of Ronnie and Lorin Shaffer’s three children toddled all about Robin’s Diner on Thursday. Hannah, 2, fiddled with an American flag on a stick. Esaias, 1, played in his playpen at the end of the lunch counter one second, grabbed a bunch of bags of potato chips the next.

"People will come in and say they remember sitting here when they were kids," Lorin Shaffer said.

That includes Shana Parsons’ mother, Becky.

"She grew up going there," Parsons said. "Lunch counters were a big thing back then. It’s a great thing that at least one of them is open again downtown."

Parsons and her musician of note husband J.P. Parsons, became parents last year when their son Shepherd was born.

"Of course I’m gonna take Shepherd to Woolworth’s (Robin’s Diner)!" Shana Parsons said. "It makes it full circle for me. That is so cool."

Cool and inviting, that’s what Woolworth’s lunch counter meant for Cheryl Ann Brown. She was 8 years old when her father Charlie began work as the store’s manager in 1967.

"I felt like all the ladies at the counter were like adopted moms," Cheryl Ann Brown said.

She now manages Uncle Sam’s for her father. But then, she managed to navigate Woolworth’s far and wide and from floor to floor.

"They all took care of me," Brown said. "Egg sandwiches, chocolate melts, the best. They always had an ear to listen. Great advice. It was like a big family, Woolworth’s."

Downtown Bristol booms … then and now   

Those were the days.

Downtown Bristol, State Street, the sidewalks and the stores, bustled throughout much of the 20th Century. America’s upward mobility post World War II certainly mushroomed in Bristol.

"It was what they called the good old days," Margaret Smith said. "I thought they were good."

Department stores included H.P. King’s, Kress, Parks-Belk, Roses, and McCrory’s. Drug stores ranged from Bradley’s to Buntings and their eternally- loved hot dogs. Theaters ranged from the Paramount, Columbia, Cameo and so forth.

"When I came here (in the early 1950s), Bristol was a very busy town," Bud Phillips said. "Everything was down State Street. I don’t think there was a vacant building."

Manufacturing plants included Big Jack, which made overalls, and L.C. King, which made and still makes Pointer brand overalls.

And you can wager the wagon that Woolworth’s lunch counter benefitted from Bristol’s boomtown days.

"It was busy downtown," Betty Rice said. "Bristol was the hub to shop. I had some I waited on every Saturday who came over from North Carolina. Their little boy always wanted the macaroni and cheese."

Big Jack employees, phone company employees and who knows who all typically entered through Woolworth’s back door, walked the length of the building and parked themselves on a stool. Others streamed like a dam-demolished river through the front.

"I’ve seen people standing in line three-deep for lunch," Charlie Brown said, "just waiting to get in."

Then the malls came.

As the 1970s morphed into the 1980s and ’90s, many a business in downtown Bristol faded into the annals of time. Parks-Belk moved to the mall. Then, one by one, they closed.

"I’ve seen Bristol flourish and I have seen it when it was almost a ghost town," Phillips said followed with a pause, "...and I’ve seen it come back."

McCroy’s, H.P. King’s, Woolworth’s they aren’t coming back.

Yet on Thursday afternoon Robert Pilk served a throng of customers at his longtime comic book store, Mountain Empire Comics, just around the corner from State Street on 6th.

Leah Ross worked steps away from Uncle Sam’s and the old Woolworth’s building. In the shadow of the Bristol sign, the executive director of Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion filmed a promotional spot for September’s Rhythm & Roots.

Then on Thursday night life buzzed busily in the old H.P. King building. The band Uncle Hamish & the Hooligans entertained into the Bristol night inside the recently restored and refashioned locale that now houses 620 State.

"Outstanding," Charlie Brown said of downtown Bristol’s revival. "Our business (at Uncle Sam’s) has continued to grow. Downtown is an outstanding place to shop."

And eat.

"If you want nostalgia," Cheryl Ann Brown said of Robin’s Diner, "you can’t find a place better than this."

Robin’s Diner, aka Woolworth’s lunch counter, renewed

They no longer prepare food in the second floor kitchen. Its stoves and counters and walk-in refrigerator remain intact though long silent and now cloaked in dark and dust. Food no longer travels via the dumb waiter.

Instead, Ronnie Shaffer makes the lunch counter’s hamburgers and hot dogs, turkey sandwiches and coffee and so forth in sight of customers.

"It’s good food," Shaffer said. "We’re really looking forward to getting the word out. Word of mouth. This is definitely unlike any fast food restaurant that you’ll see."

So come. Eat. Revisit Bristol’s past knee-deep in its thriving revival.

Most customers sit where generations past sat, on one of 23 stools that line in a row like art deco relics revived. Others sit in one of several red upholstered booths, which weren’t there in days of old.

Betty Rice sat a stool on Thursday. Memories, they flooded right back like a list of orders taken on Woolworth’s busiest of days.

On her way out she pointed to a simple sign upon the counter that advertised hot chocolate.

"Oh!" Rice said, "when there was a parade we couldn’t make enough of that!"

And so it goes amid 21st century downtown Bristol. Characters have come Queenie, the Pretty Sisters, Shady May and on and on and they have gone.

But Woolworth’s lunch counter lives again as Robin’s Diner.

"It’s still here. We’ve got this lunch counter," Cheryl Ann Brown said. "Just to sit and swivel, if you’ve done it once, you’ll remember it."

Info

» Robin’s Diner, 614 State St., Bristol, Tenn.

»Hours: Monday-Tuesday, Thursday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.

»Phone: (423) 764-3331 (Uncle Sam's Loan Office)

Tom Netherland is a freelance writer. He may be reached at features@bristolnews.com.