Eat At Joe's on the Front Page
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February 10, 2004
Eat and greet, over easy: A roadside cafe doubles as a community center in Low Pass
By Karen McCowan
The Register-Guard
LOW PASS - The sign says "Eat at Joe's," and local residents do - sometimes three meals a day.
But that's not the half of it.
Sitting along Highway 36 between Cheshire and Triangle Lake, the tiny cafe also is the unofficial community center for people from miles around.
They celebrate holidays here. Hold meetings of their computer and scrapbooking clubs. Borrow romance novels and thrillers from the paperback lending library.
Ysidro Perez (left) and Brett Kump have a post-breakfast conversation after eating at Joe's.
Co-owner Joe Weiler cooks up some oatmeal while taking a phone call in the cafe's cramped kitchen. Joe's low-key, friendly attitude has made the restaurant a welcoming place for locals as well as outsiders.
They organize political campaigns. Consult a stack of "house" dictionaries to solve their crossword puzzles. On at least two occasions, they've even gotten married here.
The place is such a vital hub, a pair of local business owners recently laid a new floor when owners Joe and Nancy Weiler couldn't afford one.
The cafe is so small, it doesn't even have an ice machine; the Weilers still pop cubes out of trays. It's the kind of place where regulars walk in, reach behind the lunch counter for a mug and pour their own coffee. The kind of place where Joe doesn't even have to ask before he begins cooking many orders.
"He knows what I'm gonna have - two eggs, over medium, and hash browns," Junction City resident Leroy Carlson says.
"This place is Cheers without the alcohol," Triangle Lake resident Gayle Howard says. "Not only does everybody know your name, but they keep steaks in the freezer with your name on them."
Howard and his wife, Tricia, regularly drive the eight miles from home to eat meals prepared by the Weilers, who took over the cafe five years ago.
Relatively speaking, the two are still newcomers.
Customers such as LaVerne Gave have been regulars ever since the place opened in 1953.
"Those are Verne's elbow prints on the counter," says Joe, a transplanted Californian with ice blue eyes and receding hair pulled back in a ponytail.
He's not joking. Directly beneath Gave's clasped hands, the pattern on the yellow, 1950s Formica has been worn away.
Gave watched as the cafe was built across the highway from his grandparents' place, where he grew up.
He became a regular after going to work at the nearby Hult lumber mill - where he lost the tip of his finger to a conveyor chain. He remained one even after becoming a baker for a Eugene grocery chain.
LaVerne Gave has been a regular at the cafe on Highway 36 since it opened in 1953.
"I came in pretty much every day, depending on who was making the coffee," said Gave, his mustache twisted into silvery curlicues. "There was a time when they would hold yesterday's coffee up to see how much light shined through, and just add water."
By all accounts, the coffee - and the atmosphere - have improved since the Weilers began running the restaurant, long owned and leased to other operators by Nancy's mother.
"Things changed radically - all for the good," customer Tricia Howard said. "It used to be dark and dingy. Now it's light and bright."
The couple cleaned and painted, replacing a bare light bulb with a bright fixture. They opened up a wall to add seating in an adjacent room that had contained only a pool table.
The profit margin is so narrow that the changes have been do-it-yourself. Nancy sewed the checkered curtains and hand-painted the dinner plates. And she was reduced to tears when they tried to tile the concrete floor and failed to allow enough time for the glue to set up.
"Glue was squeezing up between the tiles when anybody walked on the floor," she said.
Regular David Allen, owner of nearby Photon flashlight manufacturer Laughing Rabbit Inc., advised the couple to tear the tiles out and start again. Seeing Nancy's reaction, he realized they didn't have the money.
And so, over the Christmas holidays, Allen and his wife, Dallas, bought new tiles and worked with another couple to lay a new black-and-white checkerboard floor.
"It's a local restaurant, and we're family in the sense that we've all chosen to live in the woods," Allen said.
That sense of family is underscored by traditions started by the Weilers, including an annual Thanksgiving "Orphans' Dinner." The couple close the restaurant and cook turkeys and ham. As many as 40 local residents with no nearby family bring potluck side dishes.
And when regulars Ray and Denise Morgel decided to get married in December 2002, Eat at Joe's was the obvious site.
"We put up all these flowers and little white lights, and you can't believe how elegant it looked in here!" Nancy said proudly.
Even that was a community effort.
"Nancy was struggling to ice the wedding cake," recalled Gave, the retired baker. "So I ran home and got my (cake decorating) tubes and helped out."
Karen McCowan can be reached at 338-2422 or kmccowan @guardnet.com.
Photos: Kevin Clark / The Register-Guard