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Down at the DQ

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I loved this New York Times story about Hamid Chaudhry, the Pakistan-born operator of a Dairy Queen in Reading, Pennsylvania. He has made his shop a cornerstone of the community by getting involved and giving back. The reporter, Dan Barry, describes the proof he saw of a special relationship between an immigrant and his adopted home town, all of it posted on the walls –

The Cumru Elementary School thanks Hamid. The Mifflin Park Elementary School thanks Hamid. The Brecknock Elementary School thanks Hamid. The Governor Mifflin intermediate, middle and high schools thank Hamid. The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, the soccer leagues and the baseball leagues, the Crime Alert program, the home for adults with mental retardation — they all thank Hamid.

And here comes the owner, Hamid Chaudhry, in the midst of another 80-hour workweek, fresh from curling another soft-serve. As he makes his way to a corner table, customers hunched over chicken-strip baskets and sundaes call out his name, and he calls back theirs.

“Hi, Tracey; I have that check for you.” “Bye, Mrs. Brady. All good for the homecoming?” “Bye, Mr. Rush. How was the Blizzard? Want another one?”

Great guy. Great story. Even better because it includes ice cream. It sounds like Chaudhry’s DQ has become the town square.

The biggest surprise in the story? It cost him $413,000 to buy the place. Yow! Even if I had that much, I don’t think I’d bet it all on people’s love of Dilly Bars, and I find Blizzards irresistible. I guess that’s the difference between me and a real entrepreneur.

The sort of business where so many people feel welcome and connected is a boon for any town – large or small. When I was growing up in Montrose, New York, our gathering place was the convenience store down on the State Highway – a centrally located establishment with a big sign that featured the cutout of a police officer blowing a whistle, and a huge halting hand outstretched, commanding you to “Stop N’ Shop”.

What did they have there? Everything. Who did I see when I went? Everyone!

Ever live in a town with an unofficial meeting place?

50 thoughts on “Down at the DQ”

  1. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I lived in the Iowa small town in which every Friday night all residents headed downtown to meet and greet. In the fall of coursed, this was trumped by football games at the local stadium. But either place, anybody who was anybody was there. ANd the local teenagers “Scooped the Loop” in their cars.

    I don’t have many fond memories of growing up in a small town, but Friday nights downtown was really wonderful.

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  2. the burbs of bloomingto mn is where i grew up. the city grew form 13000 to 100000 people in the time when i ferst moved in there in 1957, the cornfield across the street was the indicator that the fringe of urban sprawl hadn’st quie finished. everyone was new in town but and one had a handle on how to pull the chaos togther at all. my folks joined church groups and would have meetings in the living room with the friends they had from there but as far as a community meeting space. no. each little pocket of the ton had a spot where the kids ( there were millions of kids) would hang out. the playgrond was different the woods they hung out in were different, the neighborhood groups were different, within a mile there were 3 other groups that had nothing to do with each other and don’t forget we had a cornfield that eliminated that direction completly. i would live going to fargo to visit her they had the the meeting spots for the kids in the parks or during the summer when all of fargo goes to detroit lake and hangs out in the old familiar spots tha had been the hangouts forever. the 60’s when a bicycle was the key to getting to your friends house and a way of getting to anywhere worth going was a special time. we thought my mom was crazy to tell us to be careful never to go with a man who offered you candy. that was the only warning ever. today there are a couple added details about how to go out and spend your day. innnocence is a thing of the past. by the way dairy queen was the hangout for a couple of years. fries completely covered with catsup and a wild mountain blackberry malt were the staple.

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  3. My sister worked at the DQ in Two Harbors for 7 years, 1958-64. She had so many stories I could share. But it was the meeting place for tourists, the only real tourist stop in town then. But this I know from her, the profit margin on DQ will pay for a $415,000 business more quickly than you think.
    Mankato has an old-fashioned DQ down by West HS. Only open in the winter, walk up to a window, old logo on top. I assume it cannot be sold because DQ would not allow that old store for a new owner and I do not think there is adequate space for a new store. My daughter and her husband were there last week after a movie. The teen doing the orders said, “Oh look, it’s Zygi Wilf.” Everyone turned and looked and it was, to which Wilf said, “Don’t everyone look at once.”
    So that DQ, which is very close to Glen Taylor’s house, is a place to meet billioniares.

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  4. Good morning to all,

    There was a gathering place in Clarks Grove, the Borland Cafe. It is closed and there isn’t any place like it now. You can go to the gas station and convenience store to have coffee and I guess that is sort of a gathering place, but not like the Borland Cafe. The food was not especially good at Borland’s and Anita Borland would be sure to let you know if she disagreed with you, but some how it had the right atmosphere to be a place where people liked to gather and visit. Local farmers came to Borland’s as well as people from town.

    I enjoyed visiting with some of the older people in town and heard many of their stories. The former manager of the lumber yard told me that when he started as the lumber yard manager other lumber yards tried to put him out of business, but he was able stay in business after several of them failed. One old timer was very careful with his money and wouldn’t even buy coffee if he came in to visit. He would sit on the edge of his chair as if he was just about to leave as he visited with people for a very long time before leaving.

    One other thrifty old timer said you can always save money even if you make very little money. A friend of his said that he had the oposite approach, no thrift for him, just spend it all. I also heard about one infamous person that had passed away that had to be watched when he was in the hardware store. It was said that this guy had the habit of backing up to a nail keg and slipping some nails into his pocket when no one was watching. There was also a lot of kidding and joking as well as story telling.

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    1. My dad ran a coffee shop a lot like the one you describe. He retired and closed it about 25 years ago. It was the place to go for the working guys and the farmers to meet and gossip.

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      1. Small town cafes seem to have a hard time finding enough business these days. The Borlands had experience operating small Mom and Pop cafes and didn’t need much money to keep operating. If you need to make a good living running one of these small cafes you might not be able to make a go of it. There are a lot of benefits to a community that come from having a small cafe that is a meeting places. I think communities need find some way to support their local small cafes and keep them in business.

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      2. I am reminded of one of the customers of the Borlands who definitely didn’t want to spend any more money than he had to and would ask the Borlands to provide him with whatever was available for 2 or 3 dollars. They would give him small servings of any thing that they had that was left over but still good to eat. This man owned the local hardware store and lived in a big house on the lake in Albert Lea. If you didn’t eat your diner roll he would take care of it for you.

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  5. On Friday and Saturday nights, after the game if there was one, you could find a lot of people at Henry’s, which was Marshalltown’s first fast food place (later bought up by McD’s). We’d stand in the parking lot in small bunches, waiting to see who else showed up, and then drive down 3rd, turn right at Main for 3 blocks, turn around and come back – that was how you’d scoop the loop, as Jacque mentioned. You could go farther north on 3rd and catch the DQ, A & W and Kim’s Drive-in, where you could get mayo with your french fries. Yum.

    This all evaporated after I left, as the south end of town was where all the building went. A mall that effectively gutted downtown, a K-Mart and a Walmart… everything moved south. Only thing left on the north loop is a DQ and a small Haley’s market. Sigh.

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      1. Wow, that’s kind of amazing to find someone else who remembers it – kind of confirms that it existed. What years did you live in Tama?

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  6. My dad and his buddies hang out at the grocery store at the “Round Table”, in the coffee shop portion of the store. About 20 of them meet every afternoon to discuss everything under the sun. These old guys have established a last man’s club, and the last one to survive gets a nice bottle of bourbon. There is a display case with the bottle and a personalized coffee cup for each of them. When one of them dies, they turn his cup upside down. The group is mentioned in T-paws book, and there is a picture of them getting hugs from Mrs. T. My dad is one of the rebel democrats in the group, but he is pretty proud of that picture.

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      1. Yes – HyVee in Waseca has a largish, retired men’s club of sorts. They are there, sipping weak coffee, talking about them crazy hippies, the shameful liberals, the President, the economy, and passing judgment, every day.

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      2. My dad likes to get the Republicans in his group all agitated with his digs about Republican politicians and his praise for Obama and the Clintons. He giggles like a little boy as he recounts his conversations and the reactions from the others. These guys also celebrate their birthdays with cake and treats and are a real support group for one another. Most of them are widowers and don’t have many other people to talk to.

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      3. I think that a number of the people who were customers of the Borland cafe in Clarks Grove now gather at the Hy Vee in Albert Lea.

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  7. Morning–
    I’m not sure where all of Rochester gathers unless it’s at the Mayo Clinic during flu season…
    There are some free summer time ‘concerts in the park’ on Sunday nights that draw a pretty good crowd. The last of those for this season was just last week.

    For my neighborhood (being the ‘rural’ neighborhood, that means a 6-8 square mile area) it moves between small cafes and restaurants. The first place I remember isn’t there anymore; ‘The Corner Cafe’ I think it was… it’s where all the neighbors met for breakfast and lunch. We never went– we had cows to milk in the morning but I had lunch there a few times.
    Then it was Grandma’s Kitchen and that was the place to find the Township Clerk if you needed something notarized. The former owner was a John Deere fan and knew people by name and would give you a cupcake on your birthday. When he sold it the neighborhood crowd moved on.
    Now I hear they gather at a bigger bar type restaurant called ‘Brothers’. I’m out of the loop but I have called there to find people…

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  8. Just got back from my bike ride, NOT listening to MPR.
    Sad day for me. I have been a dedicated listener to MPR classical since it went on the air in Duluth, and a paying member most but not all of that time. But as of today, I pretty much cannot anymore. This is the day they switched the news and music stations around here. I could explain all the circumstances that make the lower-powered stations dead air for me, or close to it, but who wants to hear that.
    The worst is that my grand kids have had MPR classical on at night very often, always when they were very small, especially when they were sick. Now they get no signal at all.
    In the midst of rreal traumas, it is a small thing, which I keep reminding myself.

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    1. I have a cheaper MP3, on which the battery is close to dead. Cannot afford the ipod, and there are political issues in my family right now about my buying anything from Apple, which I dare not risk explaining. Only in my family could buying from Apple be a touchy issue.

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  10. As a kid, the place to be was the neighborhood school – there was a playground for kickball and foursquare and a big open paved spot that was grand for riding bikes. It had huge window wells that had metal grates over them, but if you knew the right spots, you could shinny down between the grate and the side of the well – they were tall enough that a kid could easily stand up in the well and not get hit her head on the metal grate. The trick was getting back up (at least until you grew a bit and didn’t need a push from an older sibling or taller kid).

    Until recently, Liberty Custard was a bit of a neighborhood hangout. I almost always ran into a neighbor, someone from Daughter’s school, friends. Once I saw a guy who looked darn familiar, but couldn’t place him – he had the same look on his face…Monday morning we saw each other at work putting our lunches in the fridge and realized why the other person looked so familiar.

    The ongoing place to meet and greet is Curran’s. It was the high school hangout when my aunt was of that age (it was a drive in then), and now seems to be the place where anyone with even the vaguest connection to SW Mpls eventually shows up. The red-headed librarian from my local branch (and her twin sister) are regulars. So are several people from the church I grew up in (and my mother still attends). Once I ran into another kid from the old block who was there with her daughter, about the same age as mine. Daughter is on a first-name basis with the owner and the dinner time/weekend manager (and several others), and would check in with me (and then my husband) post-layoff about the job search and how things were going. They were absolute dears when my dad was in decline and needed to be near the rest room, have no added salt, his wine in a non-stemmed glass…It’s a small town diner in the middle of town.

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    2. We had window wells at my elementary school in Jackson, MI similar to the ones you described,Anna. We also climbed down into them and had some trouble getting out. The same school had brick work with places you climb on it by using the brick work as a climbing wall. There was a summer recreation program for the neighborhood held in the play ground.

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  11. I know this from my travels along the Middle Border, as Hamlin Garland called it, that in towns just big enough to have a McDonalds or a Hardees (a few are left around here, like Sleepy Eye) that they become old fart hangouts and also sometimes for the local power brokers.
    Hope Steve shows up today. Steve, I have yo wear a brace to drive, to type–and cannot carve much anymore–from arthritis in my right wrist.
    We will be doing one of our runs across southern MN, not getting MPR classical much of that way, and too big a bother to try to keep switching. CD time, but my wife gets frustrated if I ask her to handle that. Maybe we will listen to one CD over and over and over.

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      1. Please don’t become dependent on cortisone injections, Steve. Their relief is only temporary! You haven’t told us what happened to your wrist.

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  12. I used to stopped (hate to admit it) at Robbinsdale McDonald’s for breakfast once in a while, and it seems to be a meet-up place for seniors – always a few tables of oldsters laughing and eating and having a good time. I imagine they used to eat at a downtown diner that burned down…

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  13. I grew up in the ‘burbs–hard to tell where the city center was, much less identify a gathering place. Now that I’m living in Minneapolis I’m getting used to the idea of neighborhoods. One of my best friends lives over in Powderhorn, and their gathering place seems to be the May Day Cafe. I’m usually there on a Sunday morning, which is also when the knitters meet, and there’s a number of other people I’ve come to recognize who hang out to chat, read the New York Times and use the wifi. I’d love to have a coffeehouse like that in my neighborhood, but the closest thing is The Baker’s Wife, which has only a handful of tables and is thus not conducive to the hanging out essential to a good meetup place, alas.

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    1. I like both those places, and do you know Fireroast Mountain Cafe? Tiny, old, funky, corner of 38th St. and 37th Ave. – internet hookups, local art for sale. Best tamales and chocolate cookies around, great coffee… I’ve heard it’s being sold, so I hope they manage to keep the truly neighborhood vibe…

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  14. Back in my days of self-employed freedom, the place to go was the J&S Bean Factory on Randolph in St Paul. It is an interesting place in that it is different places at different times of day. Early in the morning are older folks, later in the afternoon, mostly students-there was even a thank you note on the wall at one point from someone who finished their Ph. D. there. It’s still there, I am not.

    Good luck with the magic shots, Steve.

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  15. Back in the day, there was the Olympia Cafe in downtown Faribault, right on the corner of Central Avenue and Fourth Street. I think that was where Faribault’s business owners, Chamber people, City Hall people and the like would all hang out. The Olympia was owned by a Greek family. The food was good and the atmosphere was hometown. Downtown businesses thrived in Faribault up through the ’80s. It’s much harder for them now.

    More recently, Faribault had a great coffee shop, JavaLive, with acoustic music and big old couches, books and magazines, a wide variety of coffees, teas, sandwiches and ice cream, where lots of people gathered every day. It was comfortable, with a really broken in feeling from all those old sofas and couches, lamps and coffee tables. Unfortunately, JavaLive’s owner passed away and his wife wasn’t able to keep it going by herself in this economy. It’s a sad loss for the community. There’s a new coffee shop there now, but it’s not the same.

    As Clyde mentioned, there’s something about the HyVee deli that attracts retired men. They can usually be found there, trading opinions. They might be attracted by the traditional, meat and potatoes meals available from the deli.

    Here in Waterville there is the Waterville Cafe. When I first came to Waterville the Cafe enjoyed a really hopping business and even catered one of our public meetings. The owner died, the place sold and now it’s hardly ever open. There’s a new coffee shop in town but it hasn’t caught on with the locals (tourists seem to like it). I think the owner is going for a more trendy coffee shop but this is a pretty traditional town. She doesn’t open until 10 a.m. and most people want their coffee before 8 a.m. I think she does a pretty good sandwich business at lunch time but you don’t really see people sitting around in there. Everybody asks me if her business is going to make it. Here, let me check my crystal ball…. I hope it does make it but I think she should make a few small changes.

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      1. I don’t remember that song, but it does remind me of School Days by Chuck Berry which is a classic rock tune with a similar theme.

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  17. Looking at my comments and those of others about small town cafes and similar places, I see that these places are dominated by men and by conversation that is kind of negative or, dare I say, backward. Well, there are times when women do gather in these places and I am glad to see it and hope that there will be an incease in the number of women in such places. Also, some interesting things are mixed in with all the negative stuff and it is good hear what people have to say even if you don’t like what they are saying.

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    1. I wonder if there is some long-held gender dynamics and socialization at work here – what I remember from my childhood is that my mom would gather with her friends in people’s homes. There were regular coffee klatches, but they gathered in kitchens instead of diners. I mostly follow that same pattern now as an adult – the regular gatherings are in someone’s home (in at least one case because we have learned that we can be disruptively noisy when we get to laughing about something). I’d wager that at least some of it is a comfort level with what you share with whom, how, and where. It’s easier to talk about your life in the detail women are prone to (to paint my gender with, pardon the pun, a broad brush) when you don’t have to worry about who might overhear the conversation.

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      2. I think you may have something there, Anna. Sometimes my book group discussions get down to the hard, nitty gritty stuff that you might not be comfortable airing with a whole cafe full of people.

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      3. I also think this traditionally has to do with the fact that women were most often in charge of their children, who back in the day were not really welcome for a morning’s coffee at the cafe, whereas guys discussing “business” were valued customers.

        I am happy to say that that seems to have changed. I see lots of women with strollers and toddlers in tow at coffee shops meeting other women with children or not as the case may be- famously, JK Rowling did much of her writing in coffee shops with her small daughter in tow.

        Coffee shops are also the hosts to many, many groups of knitters, largely, but not exclusively women.

        I daresay you can hear more of too intimate a nature just overhearing the average cell phone conversation on the train than you would in one of these gatherings.

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  18. ladies back in the day would do lunches with tables of 4 and intimate conversations. men have hangs of guys, just slide that chair over and enjoy loud laughing group efforts or loud political and social proclamations in group settings where the others can chime in and get their two cents in. ladies tend to try to come to a consensus…men don’t

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