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Village Squire, 1980-09, Page 10ReaI Living Cheese Come and taste old fashioned vintage cheddars in our historic building. We offer a careful selection of fine Canadian Cheese ... you are invited to try Brown Bag Sandwiches and our. Gourmet Picnic Boxes. Don't miss us or our Real Living Cheese. 3 locations in Stratford 441;ok.,deise_qlouse Write for our free brochure: 423 Erie Street Stratford, Ontario N5A 2N3 D Call (519-271-3160) Also at Festival Square and the `Famrers' Market Saturday mornings/ Maxine has served homecooked food. She still uses her large aluminum perk coffee pot. Maxine makes the soups in the winter, plus the pies and potatoes. "Anything I can make, I make instead d buying it" Maxine says. Besides the food, what else makes truckers slow their diesel engines to a halt? Almost incredible service is another factor. Some of the large companies have "tacks" on their truck's engines which tell how fast the engine is going for a period of several hours, and how long the trucker takes a break. Maxine Seers says, "For some truckers, the food must be ordered, served and eaten within ten or fifteen minutes."And Maxine respects that. One trucker who used to frequent Tess's Truck Stop in Bornholm, (now closed) said "once I was in a restaurant and had to wait ten minutes before they even asked my order!" At Kathy's Truck Stop they offer what is known as a five minute special --the trucker in and out in five minutes. READY AND WAITING Joan Wiley, the owner's daughter, knows her customers well. Not only by name, but by what they eat. Especially at breakfast, when Joan sees the truckers coming, she cracks the eggs onto the grill. By the time they come in, PG. 8 VILLAGE SQUIRE/SEPTEMBER 1980 the waitress is serving their breakfast. Joan knows what 70 percent of her customers are going to order before they walk in the door. S ne knows how many truckers she's having for break- fast and lunch by who comes in first in the early morning. Joan usually gets the Hutton (cement company) truckers. She knows if Wes comes in first, then Bob, Don, Ray, Bob, and another Bob will follow. She precooks the bacon before they come. The Laidlaw and Hutton trucks tell her what kind of day it's going to be. 300 truckers is a good day. 200 is average. But not all her business is truckers. The tourists must smell her chili cooking, because they provide 25 percent of her summer business. In Auburn, Maxine goes one step further in providing fast service. In the winter, the Sifto Salt trucks from Goderich radio in to Maxine's CB and tell her of their arrival. But in summer the air waves are too busy from radio, so she turns it off. The chance to talk to fellow truckers is another reason why they all seem to stop at one place. Bob Webster, a trucker from Sunoco in Brucefield, eating at Debbie's Restaurant says, "I get talking to the other Tads. Over the years there's not too many truckers that 1 don't know." Truckers use their CB's and agree to meet at certain truck stops, especially truckers within the same company. At Kathy's Truck Stop, Joan says she's had up to 27 Hutton truck drivers at one time. One Hutton at one time is rare. THEY KNOW EACH OTHER Truckers know each other and the waitresses know them. To some people this is important. Jim Martell, a driver for Koch Transport, was drinking coffee at Kathy's Truck Stop. He's been trucking since he was 16, for 26 years. He doesn't like places where the waitresses are "here one day and gone the next." Jim likes to get to know the waitresses-- he says they add to the atmosphere. At the truck stops I visited, the truckers and waitresses usually called each other by their first names. I think I've finally figured out a reason why so many truck stops have rows of swirling stools across a long counter with grills behind. The truckers face the waitres- ses and can carry on a conversation while the waitress is getting the food ready, if she's not too busy. At Wallace Coffee Shop and Lunches, trucker Bill Martindale and the waitress covered everything in conversation from Bill's wife to the kids. No matter how good the food is or Rick Wiley, chef at Kathy's Truck Stop, Shakespeare, prepares another hamburger for a customer from beef bought from a local butcher. how great the waitresses are, the truckers can't stop unless they have a place to park. A trucker from Loblaws said, "I can only park this thing in certain places." Namely, large places. When you drive by a truck stop, you sometimes notice the large open area for parking in front of the building more than the actual sign. Now you know why. Last of all, truckers don't like pulling out thick wads of green paper when given their bill for a meal. Most truckers eat out twice a day. The average trucker spends 52 to 53 per stop. They don't appreciate high restaurant prices. Ham- burgers cost from 51.10 to 51.25 at restaurants and run about the dollar mark at truck stops. Jim Martell doesn't gD to ordinary restaurants because they're too expensive and the service isn't good, he says. "Here, they know what I want and who I am," he says. You don't see advertisements in newspapers for truck stops. And their signs by the road are modest. That's because the truckers already know where they are and they've been going there for years. Truck stop owners don't put their profits into Tiffany lamps, oil paintings and indoor spurting fountains. They put it into wholesome food even your mother would eat.