I Remember...The Barn  

by John Wm. Houghton
January 29, 2012
published in the Culver Citizen

An undated photo of The Barn on School Street, provided by Mimi Miller, in a typically jubilant scene of local youth enjoying the locale.

(Taken from this month's installment of "It's _still_ the lake water" -- a title paying tribute to Bob Kyle's long-ago Culver Citizen column, "It must be the lake water" -- a regular feature of the print version of The Culver Citizen, by Rev. Dr. John W. Houghton) .

Regular readers of this column know that a good deal of its business has taken place in one local restaurant notable for its walls of historical information; but the awesome burden of being the Citizen’s senior columnist carries with it some sense of civic responsibilities, and so a person does try to dine in more than just the one place.

So it was that one Monday evening this summer found me sitting, not all that far from the edge of the lake, more or less in the shadow of a suspended scow, talking with Cutter Washburn about an older restaurant, The Barn. I had written about the Barn before, as part of a more general column, but this was an opportunity to get a better picture of the old School Street malt shop, which closed when I was about five.

Were used to going into the gas station these days for any number of things, from milk to the local paper. Sixty or seventy years ago, I dont think service stations were quite so likely to have the function of a grocery or general store, but many of them did seem to have a sideline in candy and tobacco. When I was in schoolparticularly in junior highthe cool kids went south, just across Lake Shore Drive, to Hatten's Garage to stock up on jaw breakers and chocolate bars. (Of course, neither the school building nor the garage is there any more, the one being mostly an empty lot and the other a car wash.)

According to Cutter, his parents’ interest in the care and feeding of teenagers had its start in that sort of gas-station candy sales, at a Phillips 66 service station on the north-west corner of Lake Shore Drive and State Street, currently the site of the fire station.

The elder Washburns had moved here from Fort Wayne (where they were already operating a gas tation) around 1941, and the Phillips station quickly became a teen hang-out—beyond the snacks for sale, the place had board and card games on hand to make it, as we would say today, user-friendly.

After about four years of this, around 1945, the Washburns converted what had until then been an actual barn on the east side of School Street into a restaurant. There was a kitchen in the back with tables out front (these were later replaced by booths obtained from a bar that had gone out of business).

Eventually, the walls were covered with photographs (some of them now on the walls of the downtown cafe mentioned earlier), and the entertainment options were increased by the purchase of Culver’s seventh television set (though there was as yet little to watch).

When the restaurant was first opened, though, such basic elements as meat were still being rationed, and candy was in short supply.

Everett Hoesel, proprietor of the El Rancho Theater, now the Uptown Cinema, drove to Chicago each week, in order to pick up directly from the distributors films which would otherwise have become available only months later as they went around the circuit of small town movie houses.

On the same trip, Mr. Hoesel would obtain a supply of sweets from the Brach’s candy company in Chicago (I discover from Wikipedia that the old Brach’s factory was used to represent Gotham Hospital in one of the recent Batman movies).

Business at the restaurant seems to have been pretty casual. Many people stopped in just for a Coke or a cup of coffee, and more than a few didn’t order anything at all, but simply came by to see what was going on. In the morning, when the Barn wasn’t even open, kids would stop by the Washburns’ home (which was next door to the restaurant).

The Washburns liked to give local students their first jobs—lunch was typically served by a high schooler who had a study hall in the late morning, and this person’s salary was often just a meal of his or her own (or, in some cases, teenagers being teenagers, two meals, one before everyone else and one after).

Cutter himself had a job in the restaurant from the time he was in 3rd or 4th grade; when he was on JV athletic teams (which had late practices), he could come home, help with the after-school rush, and then go back for sports.

The Washburns sometimes provided a home for local kids whose parents had had to move out of town, and these members of the extended family were occasionally employed at the Barn, as well.

In all the time the restaurant was in business, the Washburns never had to fire anyone, and received only one bad check, for two dollars.

The Barn’s phone number was 86 (a source of confusion, as the Methodist parsonage across the street was 68). [NOTE verification needs to be done - the Methodest Parsonage at this time has been given as 203 N. Main present BP gas station] In those pre-internet, pre-cellphone, days, when the nearest commercial radio station was in South Bend, the phone came in handy after home basketball games: Cutter would run home from the gym and phone the operator to pass on the score. People who hadn’t made it to the contest would then just call in to ask for the results.

The Washburns also operated the Beach Lodge for several years, generally closing the Barn while they did so.

Cutter says that, even though the apartment atop the lodge was uninsulated (much less air-conditioned), the lake breeze (and the late hours) made it more practical to just stay there than to go home to School Street every night.

Indeed, some of the Lodge workers, after closing up, taking a late-night swim (not always with suits), and having a final snack, would simply go over and sleep on the benches of Capt. Amond’s Maxinkuckee, tied up at the park pier.

Generally, Cutter says, it was easy to make the switch to sleeping at the park—though on one early-summer occasion, he suddenly awoke from a nightmare about a tidal wave, only to discover that a train had stopped on the tracks through the park with the engine running only a few feet away from his bedroom window.

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