Typed Thoughts: Dan’s Lakewood Cafe

The old cook laboring away in the kitchen was barely able to stand on his own. Now hacking up a lung, he immediately grabbed for the towel rack mounted on the wall in order to remain upright — a move that would be repeated numerous times throughout our visit. After the coughing stopped, the old man returned to his duties hunched over the hot griddle. He appeared as if he had not been able to stand fully upright for many years. At this point my friend Jimmy was literally on the floor. The two of us had grabbed a couple of empty stools at the counter, providing us with a direct view into the kitchen. While a health inspector would not have been entertained by such a sight, Jimmy had been laughing so hard that he had fallen off of his stool. The old cook had not noticed us even once during this entire time.

I don’t know that anyone in the entire place had noticed for that matter. It was just like any other early morning at Dan’s Lakewood Cafe. Though it was my first visit, Jimmy had been here numerous times. He had intentionally chosen the spots at the counter so that I would be sure to get the full impact of the Dan’s experience. It was a real shithole of an eatery, but the Lakewood Cafe wound up becoming my shithole of an eatery for the remainder of the time that I lived in Dallas. Had I been sober that first time I stepped foot in the place, I doubt that I would have returned. This would have been a shame.

It wasn’t just the dirt cheap food that attracted people to Dan’s, though this was definitely a big selling point. The Special at Dan’s cost just $3.25 and included two eggs, a chicken-fried steak, a biscuit, and all you could drink coffee. While this was cheap even by 1980’s standards, it should be noted that the chicken-fried steak at Dan’s was basically a breaded salisbury steak about as big around as a beer coaster. Certainly not the epitome of fine dining by any means. I would point out that I never became sick due to the food that Dan’s served during the few years I visited. The only time I regretted dining at Dan’s was when I went to eat there during daylight hours while completely sober. That was a mistake that had almost ruined me.

It wasn’t just that the Lakewood Cafe was a rather unsightly place in full daylight, but the day crew at Dan’s simply couldn’t hold a candle to the night crew there. Ultimately it was the waitstaff at Dan’s that kept me coming back time after time, the dynamic duo of Jean and Billie. Picture two women well into their later years, each sporting big hair and cat eye glasses. They were like characters from The Far Side that had come to life. Jean had dark hair that she wore in a bouffant style that was a bit on the shorter side (much like herself). Billie on the other hand rocked a blonde beehive that was almost as big as Texas itself. Jean was a bit on the salty side and took her time warming to newcomers, while Billie was one of the sweetest women to have ever walked the face of the earth. The two complimented each other perfectly and I loved them both.

Early one morning after a long night out I bumped into my neighbors who lived in the apartment next to mine. They were getting back just at the same time and were both hungry. It was at this point that I mentioned Dan’s, The two of them had enjoyed my tales of this place in the past so I figured that they should finally see the place for themselves. As the three of us made the trek down to the Lakewood Cafe, I wondered if I might have steered them wrong, I knew of a few other places that were open 24 hours and thought over alternate plans in my mind in case the two of them wound up being disgusted.

While I had no way of knowing what Norton and Jenny might have thought of Dan’s when we first walked in, they did not turn around and run. They were able to overlook the fact that the booths at Dan’s were held together with almost as much duct tape as vinyl covering as we all sat down. As Jean and I were fast friends by that point in time, my neighbors were spared any gruffness she might have shown them had they shown up on their own, We all had our specials and then headed back home, determining the outing a success. After that I never stopped hearing about Dan’s Lakewood Cafe from Norton and Jenny. Though the three of us never really went out together on weekend nights, we did manage to visit Dan’s together more than once after that while the two of them went on to visit Dan’s on their own. It seems that they too couldn’t get enough of the cheap eats, along with Jean & Billie come 2:30 in the morning after a long night out.

I eventually made my escape from Dallas, moving on down to Austin instead. I preferred pretty much everything about Austin, especially the live music scene there. (Not that Dallas was all that bad in this regard.) While Austin did have many legendary all-night breakfast joints of its own, it didn’t have anything quite like Dan’s Lakewood Cafe. Not that I would have moved back to Dallas, it just hasn’t the best fit for me, but I did find myself missing Dan’s from time to time for quite a while.

A number of years later I received a letter in the mail from Norton and Jenny. I hadn’t thought of them in quite some time, so I was very surprised by this. I wondered what might have caused them to write to me after so much time had passed. Upon opening the envelope and finding the enclosed newspaper clipping I immediately understood. The clipping contained the obituary of Billie Guthrie, including a photo of her complete with her incredible beehive halrdo and cat eye glasses. Though I realized that Billie and I shared similar first names, I never knew that she and I shared the same last name until then.

I also learned that I wasn’t the only one who had taken an instant liking to Billie. It seems that the director Oliver Stone had been turned on to Dan’s Lakewood Cafe at some point. After meeting Billie he decided to interview her over the course of many subsequent visits. Apparently he had an interest in developing a character based upon her. Who could blame him? I wasn’t all that surprised to learn such a thing, though I don’t know that anything ever came of this. Not that it matters all that much to me as I had the fortune of knowing Billie in real life. As did Oliver Stone and countless others.

More than three decades have passed since I was a semi-regular at Dan’s. I no longer drink and eat like I did back then. How I managed to stay out partying until all hours and finish such nights off with a meal at Dan’s while remaining slim as a rail is beyond me. No doubt being in my 20’s at the time had something to do with it. These days I look more like the old cook who struggled away in the kitchen back at the Lakewood Cafe during all hours of the night. Yet I remain grateful for the memories I have during that phase of my life, the good memories that is as I also have a few that I wish I could forget. Regardless, I cherish the fact that Dan’s Lakewood Cafe once existed as I knew it, along with Jean, Billie, and the old cook himself.

AFTERTHOUGHTS: As I’ve been struggling to come up with new typewriter-related content for a while now, I finally decided to create a new category for this blog titled Typed Thoughts. This will allow me to post everything from childhood memories to pieces of short fiction (as I once posted to One Typed Page). I figure that as long as such pieces are typecast, then they can still be considered typewriter-related.

I lived in Dallas at two different times in my life. Though Dallas was never my favorite place, it happened to be where the jobs were located. I first lived in Dallas after dropping out of college, when I went to work for Texas Instruments. After returning to school and obtaining my degree, I once again returned to Dallas when I went to work for Bell Northern Research. BNR was the research and development laboratory for Northern Telecom/NORTEL. Among the technologies that we were focused on back then was a newfangled thing known as a cell phone, the standards for which had yet to be determined in this country.

While I wound up making some of the best friends of my life while living in Dallas, I never really made my peace with the place and so I wound up drinking far more than was good for me back then. This never impacted my work or anything like that and I was very fortunate that I never managed to hurt myself or anyone else, but I’m not really proud of that stage of my life. Yet that is ultimately what led me to places like Dan’s and countless other dives, diners and drive-ins around the DFW metroplex. I searched online to see if I could find a copy of Billie’s obituary that appeared in the Dallas Morning News, to no avail. I do remember that the obituary made mention of Oliver Stone being in Dallas for the filming of the Born On The Fourth Of July back when he was introduced to Dan’s Lakewood Cafe, and in turn to Billie herself. For what it’s worth, I doubt that any actress would have been capable of doing Billie true justice.

SPECIAL NOTE: Congratulations to my friend Eric Tidd, who recently started his own typecast blog “The Permanence of the Next Word“. Eric and I have swapped a number of great memory-based stories in our personal correspondence, so I’m really looking forward to following his blog.