Local Flavor

It Takes a Village, I Tell You
When two ladies decide to open their very first restaurant, help can come from a surprising variety of places.

by Deb Barshafsky

While the rest of you were oooing and aahing over fireworks on the Fourth of July, I made $44.23 in tips waiting tables at a barbecue restaurant. Add that to the hourly wage of two dollars I would have received had this not been volunteer labor and I would have taken home less than 70 bucks. For 12 hours work! Did I say grueling work? Stand on your feet and feel your legs ache kind of work. Bark orders through the pass-through window work. Smile pretty at the surly customer work. Try not to think about the sweat and grease layering on your face work. Work I'm not at all used to kind of work.

This experience, which I like to view as an interesting sociological experiment, gave me a new understanding of the waiters and waitresses of the world. Not to mention an acute appreciation of my day job and the healing powers of a midnight bubble bath. It also gave me real insight into the effort and sheer will it takes to get a restaurant off the ground. And like the African proverb tells us, it takes a village....

Cathy Walton and Linda Hurst are entertainers. Large personalities, large hearts, large capacity for raucous gatherings. Their home, a cozy log cabin on the banks of Thurmond Lake, is a refuge for friends and family near and far. Beer on tap, a fully stocked bar, a barbecue pit, every kind of smoker and grill ever invented. All the trappings of a rustic and homey lake diner. This is the genesis of the Little River Road House, the barbecue-themed restaurant they recently opened in rural Columbia County.

After Bob's Pizza met its demise this past spring, the rambling old building at 6622 Washington Rd. stood empty for months. The red tin roof faded in the sunlight, swallows established residence in the eaves that nature slowly reclaimed herself. And every time Cathy and Linda drove around the bend, past Pair of Jacks and on to the Little River Bridge, they thought, we could do something with that spot. We could make something happen.

In June, Cathy and Linda closed on the sprawling three-acre property. Their notion of a comfortable and inviting lake diner suddenly had legs. And all the family and friends that Cathy and Linda had embraced and supported and welcomed and entertained and simply shored up over the years reported for duty, paintbrushes, rakes, drills, brooms and rubber gloves in hand.

Melissa appeared with her crate of paints and created a wonderland of turtles and egrets and jumping large-mouth bass on the restaurant walls. Cindy tweaked the air-conditioning system and manned the grills on opening day. Junior installed new tin on the roof and sawed table tops for the seating. Kyle, Linda's son, decoupaged them. The two Mikes did everything and could be found at any moment either hauling trash or parked on the business end of the shop vac.

Anne carefully carved "Little River Roadhouse Est. 2003" on the front of the heavy pine bar. Katherine and PeeWee scrubbed bathrooms, made coleslaw, peeled potatoes. Susan, with her keen mind for electrical pathways, carefully threaded cables to their rightful ports on the back of the computer. Sandra, Cathy's sister, brought home-cooked meals to sustain everyone.

And then there's all the people I didn't know, the guy installing the walk-in freezers, the folks hauling in all the Boston butts and whole chickens for opening day, the pair of little girls who politely asked for Sprite refills while their father graded the lot for the barbecue hut.

For weeks, the structure was a hive of activity. Friends and family and general well-wishers did whatever needed doing whenever it needed to be done. I painted a kingfisher on the mural, helped shellac the bar and, on the weekend Cathy and Linda officially opened the doors, I waited tables and prepared to-go orders till they officially closed the doors.

By press time, the Road House will have been operating three months. At this writing, less than a month from opening day, the place already has feel, it has juice and energy, it has a personality. And it already has regulars. Marvin Cooley Jr. is one of them and he proceeds to extol the Road House's virtues (family, fraternity, et al). But at this moment, I'm more interested in his opinion of the steamed shrimp. "A little twang," he says, "but not overpowering."

Linda is a constant and comforting presence behind the bar, overseeing the front, mixing drinks, settling up tabs and taking care of folks dropping in for some takeout ribs or a couple of 330.6 (that's full pool for you non-lake folks) hot dogs.

Cathy's domain is the hut, the barbecue outbuilding in which she lovingly smokes chickens, ribs and the restaurant's trademark Boston butts. Entertainer that she is, she works the room just as well, greeting neighbors and strangers as easily as old friends, sitting down and chatting people up under the colorful signs that cover the pine plank walls.

But back to this village concept. Two sisters, Mary and Lou Anne, keep the food moving. Mary preparing meals in the back, Lou taking orders and serving in the front. Lou sticks her head through the kitchen window and hollers, "I need some cocktail sauce and if I have to fix it myself I'm taking a percentage of your pay." Ah, sisterly love.

Bobbie also works in the kitchen. Her husband custom built one of the grills to Cathy's specifications, her son mans it and her daughter, a volunteer firefighter, is sort of the Jill of All Trades, hauling in supplies, cutting the grass, washing dishes. My next-door neighbor installed the air-conditioning system. His granddaughter waits tables. A village, I tell you.

Cathy and Linda are my friends, dear friends, and some might say that I do not have the most objective point of view for the Little River Road House to be the subject of one of my journalistic forays. But the last time I went up for dinner, I did not venture behind the bar. I didn't wander into the kitchen to sample the slaw and the macaroni and cheese. I didn't get my own beer. Lou, one of my waitressing partners on the Fourth of July, took care of me ("You need anything else, baby?").

I ordered the Butt Bits, hand- chopped pieces of succulent pork, like a regular customer. I ate like a regular customer. I tipped better than a regular customer. And I simply took it all in. Linda's uncanny ability to make you feel like you're the only person in the world when she talks to you.

Cathy's uncontainable exuberance. The playful banter between Lou and Mary through the pass-through window. The satisfied look on the faces of a family of four when the B-B-Q Samitch Plates are placed before them. The neighbors who stopped in for beer and burgers ("Tommy," Cathy urged, "tell them the story about the hornet's nest."). And as Tommy slipped into an amusing yarn about how not to act around stinging insects, I sat back in my chair, took a slow sip from my Killian's and watched the gap between our decoupaged tables disappear.