When I owned the Club Cafe in Santa Rosa, NM, I was featured in the book by Michael Wallis, "Route 66 The Mother Road." He was one of the many media personalities who fell in love with the food, the fun and the stories I told while feeding the hungry Route 66 travelers. The following is an excerpt from the book...
"A Route 66 Portrait - Ron Chavez"
Born: June 18, 1936. Occupation: Owner of the Club Cafe, Writer.
Residence: Santa Rosa, New Mexico
"I was born just eleven miles southeast of Santa Rosa in the village of Puerto de Luna. The name means 'gateway to the moon,' because there's a narrow gap in the tall maountains near the village where at certain times during the month the moon shines through into the river valley. It's a very old village. Billy the Kid danced there and my family lived there for many generations.
"We were very isolated. There was only a ribbon of 66 going through these parts. That was our touch with the world. We were also poor, but we never lacked for anything. My father had gone to Colorado and California when he was young and worked in the fields. He picked sugar beets and was a dirt farmer. Times were hard during the Depression. Those were terrible years. I paid my dues too. When I was a kid, I shined shoes right out front of this cafe. I worked as a busboy here and then became a cook. Phil Craig and Floyd Shaw owned the place back then. There were eight waitresses in the morning and ten more in the evening.
"The Club Cafe was a jumping son of a gun. It was always busy. I remember seeing my first Bermuda shorts here. A man walked in with shorts on and I fell over. I had never seen anything like that. After working as a busboy, I became a dishwasher, which paid a little better, and little by little I started cooking. Phil Craig took me aside and taught me how to bake sourdough biscuits and pies and cinnamon rolls. Phil was one of those Depression guys who came out of Texas on a freight train. He was poor as dirt and he married a local girl named Ruby, and her father had the cafe and Phil started working here. He took me under his wing. I learned the food business and how to deal with the public. I developed an affinity for this place and for the people who come down that highway out there. That's why I continue to work hard to keep the cafe going and keep the highway alive.
"I have six children and one of my sons and a daughter are involved in the business. I started my son out as a dishwasher, and at first he didn't understand why he had to do that. He wanted to be out front wearing a white shirt and a tie and smiling at everybody who came in here to eat. I told him if we're going to make this cafe into a dynasty, all the white shirts and smiles in the world won't help. You have got to learn the business. You have got to know how to make the best salad, prepare the finest chili, cook a steak, bake sourdough biscuits, make real gravy, and you have to know how to wash dishes. I told him we have to build a reputation for this place that will never be anything but excellent. Without that, we might as well step aside and let the tumbleweds come into town and run down the road.
"I spent eighteen years working out in California. When we came back here in 1973, theis cafe had almost died. The town was bypassed and people were deserting the highway left and right. I remember this highway after World War II. It was really something. Cars were being manufactured again, and people started making money and taking vacations cross-country. Many of them had never been out in the Southwest. The big fat-man signs attracted them. The signs were Phil Craig's idea, and they were painted by a billboard artist named Jim Hall.
"People can still see the signs and they can also see other fantastic things - wide-open spaces and panoramas, cars boiling over by the side of the highway, rattlesnake pits, and Indians. They can sleep in motels that look like teepees and eat food that they'd never had before. There were changes when all that interstate highway talk started. It was Eisenhower who got the interestate going. He'd seen those highways in Germany. But even though the interstates came along and tried to knock 66 out of the picture, the old highway has never died. I don't think it ever will."
———————- http://www.taosplazaart.com/
Afternote: Ron Chavez’s Club Café did not survive the blanding of America. McDonald’s came into town, just as Ron had predicted, and that was the end of his way of life. Disillusioned, depressed and displaced, he left Santa Rosa and landed in the mountains above Taos where his desperate Spirit was revived. Reconnecting with the land, he rose from the ashes of blandness like a beautiful Phoenix, brilliant and bold and flying high again. He’s now working on his writing full-time, and his book of poetry and short stories, "Time of Triumph," is about to be published. He now lives in Taos, NM and performs readings of his poetry and short stories in both English and Spanish.
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