Wayne’s, when I worked at The Eagle Democrat, was the place to find almost anyone you needed to see about anything.
Paul Whitaker ran the day shift at Wayne’s from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m.
He ran it like General George S. Patton – in a white chef’s apron with an ever present big bladed knife.
Paul barked out orders and took few, if any prisoners, if you crossed this fast-moving, gregarious persona.
Few people I have known had as good a time at their job as did Paul Whitaker.
And he WAS a one-man “Welcome Wagon” to Warren and Bradley County for more than 35 years behind the same lunch counter.
Never, did he meet a stranger.
If you didn’t know Paul Whitaker when you crossed over the threshold of the door at Wayne’s, you did before you left.
He made sure of that.
And if you had been away from Warren for a year, or a decade, he made your return home, indeed a welcomed homecoming with a handshake and an announcement to all within hearing in the dining room.
But let’s get on to the claim to fame for Wayne’s as the No. 2 coffee service in the state – behind only the famed Marion Hotel (and the political famous bar – the Gar Hole).
A representative of the Folger Coffee Company, back in the 1960s when the coffee bean brewer serviced their own coffee supplies to local restaurants, proclaimed the Wayne’s Confectionary, No. 2 on its list of Arkansas top coffee customers.
In an interview in the early 1970s, Whitaker was still proud of that No. 2 ranking.
What brought about the memory of ranking was asking Whitaker how many cups of coffee Wayne’s served every day?
“Too many to count,” he said.
And then he remembered the record.
“Once the Folgers Coffee Company of Arkansas kept records on the amount of coffee used around the state,” Whitaker said.
“We (Wayne’s) came in second behind the big, old Marion Hotel in Little Rock.”
When this was written the old Marion Hotel was shuttered for decades and now torn down and long gone from the Little Rock skyline.
Paul speculated that they (Wayne’s) until the mid-1970s, probably had the No. 1 spot, but were never officially told.
Folgers Inc., eventually, got out of its local distribution of its product and Wayne’s subsequently changed coffee companies.
We will never know if Wayne’s was ever No. 1 on Folgers’ list, but Whitaker and everyone else seemed very happy to be No.2.
At Wayne’s the pot of traditional black coffee and even decaffeinated coffee (which came along later) were never empty.
And Wayne’s never quit serving breakfast – no matter of the time of day.
Early mornings and later afternoons were the best times to be in Wayne’s.
I can see Paul Whitaker, pouring up glass bowl of a steaming hot pot of coffee into those white porcelain cups.
They had a sturdy, thick porcelain cup for the regulars and a little different and nicer set for the new faces who ventured in off the street.
Some of the regulars, a group of old men, from the nearby Coker Hotel, always had their coffee with a saucer – to saucer their “hot” coffee.
If you never seen anyone “saucer” their coffee, one tips the cup until a little of the liquid ran down into the saucer. You then blow on the saucering coffee to help cool it down.
A later innovation was to serve you up a short, 4-ounce plastic cup of crushed ice water, to be spooned or poured cool that steaming hot coffee. You had to ask for cream and sugar was available on the table.
Those little ice water glasses is another Pastime memory for another day.
But stopping to ponder how could Wayne’s have sold so much coffee each and every day probably puzzled the Folger Coffee representative, but it didn’t surprise me.
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