Heights Nostalgia With My Mother

Where can you order breakfast till 2:00? Satellite Cafe!





Eggs Hollandaise with extra hollandaise. You have to watch these generous serving types.

"I used to come here all the time, " says Mama as we enter. Back then it was Halls Drug Store.

"That was all a soda fountain," gesturing, "and that whole area there, where they are cooking, was where they did the drugs." Mama has a way of accidently referencing sinister activities in mundane descriptions.

She goes on. The bank across the street on the corner used to be Miss Cordell's, a big old home turned into a delicatessan which smelled, according to Mama, of wood and coffee and which had a pickle barrel and suckers from Europe.

Down the street by the Heights theater was The Food Palace where her mother always bought bread at Frank's Bakery, disappointing all her kids who wanted the white loaves in plastic sacks from the chain stores.

Across the street was Fridays Florist, which was the main florist and designer in town. "There was always sawdust on the floor. Howard was just starting out with Tipton and Hurst against Fridays. Now he's put them out of business." Or almost - I think Fridays is exiled to somewhere out Hwy 10.

Cobblestone and Vine, the boutique at the corner of Club and Van Buren, was Smith's Drug, which served cheesebugers and fries in baskets for the caddies from the Club and for what seemed like all the world on Saturdays.

"Laura," she says, "I wish you could have seen the Heights in its glory days."