The Ladies' Luncheon Room, The Local Cafeteria, and My Grandmother

Special to AOL from Eric Diesel

"Mehepyew?" If you need to have that translated, you're not from the South.

Technically, I'm not either. I grew up in Arkansas, at the hands of defectors from the glittering lights of Tulsa, which means we were as much boots and saddles as we were hoop skirts and string ties. My folks were refugees from (counting backwards) young adulthood in the fabulous fifties, teenage-hood during the second world war, and childhood during the Great Depression. I'm not kidding – in photographs from the era that look like stills from a William Wyler film, my father wore a buzz cut and a letterman's sweater, my mother was a genuine bobbysoxer. And my grandmother, my blessed saint of a grandmother, was half Caucasian and half Osage Indian, a situation that informed her entire existence, as she did everything by halves and wholes: she was half-sophisticated and half-raunchy, half a genteel southern lady and half a rambunctious rodeo queen, half charming and half cantankerous. And we were half rich and half poor. And that's how, in a moment, we will get back to "Mehepyew."

If you know anything about Osage history, you know that during the Oklahoma land rush, many of these Native Americans wound up in the area surrounding what would become Tulsa, and that that selfsame land wound up being oil-rich. There are depression-era documentary photos of Osage women cooking on fire pits with Mercedes Benzes parked nearby. My grandmother was not one of the wealthy Osage, but she still felt the effects of being half traditional Indian and half city lady: like many of her contemporaries, being exposed to Tulsa gentility left its mark on her. One thing that she remembered vividly, even nostalgically was the ladies' luncheon room.

All cities had them, back then: luncheon rooms where ladies brought other ladies for midday meals. One wore one's whitest gloves and nicest hat, one showed off one's smartest suit or newest shirtwaist dress, and one's handbag always corresponded to one's shoes. The seams on one's stockings marched a perfectly curved line up one's calves, and one's lipstick was just as pristine and perfect as Tallulah Bankhead's. These were not the rough-and-tumble lunch wagons where working men fed, nor were they the gaudy but comforting diners where families were treated to Sunday supper (note: not lunch) after church. The ladies' lunch room was as much the milieu of its key customer -- the society lady of whatever local society there was – as the foundation garment salon of the downtown Dillard's.

The food and the ambience so reflected. Dishes were delicate and elegant (for certain occasions, downright fancy): salmon or chicken poached in herbs and perhaps a suspicious dash of wine, quivering aspics (at that time, the barometer of fanciness was the presence of a cold, jellied salad), and salads as delicately dressed as the clientele. A relish tray arrived to inaugurate the meal, each compartment crowed with a jewel-like dab of relish very similar to the one with which the sous-chef's mother won the blue ribbon at the State Fair. For dessert, one chose from downy angel cake attended by a shower of fresh berries, a ladylike fan of madelines skinny-dipping in a swirl of lemon sauce, fresh ice cream if it was the correct season. Special occasions concluded with a showstopping blancmange, decanted from a fancy mold offstage and carved, Thanksgiving turkey-like, tableside.

Circumstances took my grandmother from both downtown Tulsa and its ladies' luncheon rooms, but she clung as fiercely to the memories of that time in her life as she did to the glass relish tray that was a surviving memento. (I still have it, but that's a column for another time). I have since learned -- here's to you, Grandma -- that memories of niceties can get you through lean times. I have also learned that when lean times have subsided, it is well and good, even obligatory, to express gratitude for your blessings. Like attracts like, so if you have two metaphorical dimes to rub together, you spend one of them treating your family to a fancy meal. And this takes to "Mehepyew."

By the time I came along, ladies' luncheon rooms were a thing of the recent past. Another thing I have learned that my grandmother was right about is that experiences wax and wane with circumstance, so it really does make perfect sense that when my grandmother had reason or funds or both or occasionally neither to take us to out for dinner, in her mind the correct venue, the one that evoked her own memories of refinements past, was the local cafeteria.

K&W was downtown, on the literal and socio-economic slope between the Campbell-Bell department store and the Woolworth's, but if my grandmother's aqua Chevy land-yacht kept sailing past the turnoff for downtown Fayetteville, my excitement, already awakened, enlivened. The next turnoff might be the bigger cafeteria in the tony Evelyn Hills shopping center (which also had Montgomery Ward's and Ben Franklin, where a rare quarter might be pressed into my hand for a handful of contraband candy). And if we kept going (steady, lad, steady) that could only mean one thing: the newly opened, air-conditioned, avocado-green-and-burnt-orange chicness of the Northwest Arkansas Mall, and the Borden's Cafeteria housed therein.

You knew Borden's was fancy because the entrance, rather than being open to the mall proper like the hoi-polloi pizza place and the groundlings' burger hut, was a curved wall, lit by pin spots and covered in beige and gold fabric just like the backdrop in front of which Carol Burnett, wearing a glittery Mackie gown, took questions from the audience. This dramatic entrance set up tremendous anticipation and was my own inauguration to the idea that dining at a restaurant could be an experience as well as a stop for fuel. Once you ascended this glittering portal, the hostess (a hostess!) took you to a table and then, as Lady Bountiful, indicated the steam tables. Remember, this was thirty years ago, and at that time, the casino trough line had not become a common denominator. A cafeteria was not a buffet, at which you serve yourself. Rather, in a cafeteria, you were served, and the clarion call of the be-hairnetted workers on the other side of the sneeze guard was "Mehepyew?"

As by now you've remembered or figured out, "Mehepyew?" translated from the Cafeteriese, is "May I help you?" Like the dialects of the South itself, this word evolved according to the geography and purpose of each station. She Who Presided Over The Veg-All barked "Freshveg?" just like a waitress at Mildred Pierce's, while He Who Carved Turkey And Roast Beef snapped "Wannameat?" and rapped the glass with his tongs if in your excitement you and your plate answered yes too quickly. If you tried to dip into the smoky mahogany depths of the barbeque table, The Priestess of Aromatic Smoke waved her slotted spoon at you and declaimed "I'll serve y'all!" If you wanted to be bothered with salad, you got a heap of damp iceberg lettuce, shivering from its ice bath, mixed with shreds of carrot and halves of exotic cherry tomatoes, doused accordingly after you answered the riddle of "Frencher Eyetalian?"

And so forth through the adventures and vernacular of each station: hot rolls ("Buttern' jam?"), soup if you had room ("Smoothernoodle?"), a Jell-O station where the question wasn't if you wanted any but if it should be "Plainer parfay?" a coffee station where adults got asked "Reelersanka?" and were rewarded with their selection with an efficiency I wish I could find among just one of today's baristas. The journey culminated with ladies at the pie station who cut slices as perfectly and said "Minserapple?" as sweetly and toothlessly as Sipsey at the Whistle Stop Café.

Everybody, throughout the entire place, said "Mehepyew?" as automatically as I say "Dammit!" when I can't find my keys or my cell phone -- two items of adulthood I would give back in a heartbeat to begin with. Make that half a heartbeat, if outside of a séance I could sit at that table, with my grandmother presiding with ladylike poise or a wicked cackle, again. At the time, plainerparfait Jell-O had supplanted the blancmange of her past just as city restaurants and local diners have taken over the cafeterias of mine. But I know that in remembering these moments I honor her. Sentiment is the Mehepyew? of memory -- and yes, as a matter of fact, you can hep all yew want.

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