Mourning the death of the Cajun Café

I came across the derelict structure a short few years ago when I was driving my van crammed with furniture and boxes on my move back home to Montana. The building obviously had been long abandoned. A corner of the roof threatened to collapse. Windows were broken and a door hung loose. A warped and peeling sign across the front announced that this heap of debris had once been the Cajun Café. A homemade “For Sale” sign stood staked in the yard. “You’re a long way from Louisiana,” I thought.

I was driving that scenic section of U.S. Highway 2 in the north country, half-way between Bonners Ferry and Troy. Neither place a major population center. The only residents I could see here in the north woods were moose and lodge-pole pine. Who in their right mind would have opened a Cajun café, definitely a niche restaurant, out here in the middle of nowhere?

But I recognized that the café was once somebody’s dream. My imagination took over. I hate to see a dream die. Immediately I thought of my friend, long retired from the restaurant business. Whenever we found ourselves dining out, we tended to talk, in that idle way of people who enjoy good food, about what makes a good eatery work.

So later that evening I phoned him. “Got a great business opportunity for you, a little fixer-upper.” I sort of described the place, left out several pertinent details, emphasized “potential,” talked fast past “location” and tried to sell a bill of goods around “tourist” and “seasonal.”

A few months later my friend drove this route with me. “Are we anywhere near that place you told me about. I want to get a good look at it.”

When at last I spotted the old Cajun Café I eased off the road into the driveway. “There she is. A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity waiting for you to make it happen.”

He laughed. “You call that a fixer-upper, huh?”

“Build it, they will come, isn’t that The American Way,” I replied.

“Are you kidding? We’ve been driving an empty road for miles. Who is here to come?”

That tumble-down structure along the highway entertained us for nearly five years. We would imagine a Saturday night at the Cajun Café. The gumbo special on the menu. Foot stompin’ live music. Customers who bucked snowmobiles from their off-the-grid cabins across the trackless wilderness, elbow to elbow at the bar. Good honest food, catfish and hush puppies. Beer to swill it down. Belches and scratches. Hound dogs lounging by the fire. Music blaring. Fights on the dance floor. Good honest fun.

Whenever I made the trip, I took note of the condition of the Cajun Café. I assured my friend that nobody had slipped in and bought it out from under him.

Until last winter. I braked to a stop. Couldn’t believe my eyes. The Cajun Café was gone. In its place, a pile of charred rubble. I felt too sad to report this tragic turn of events.

But recently my friend drove out to see me and took the northern route. My phone rang, “I guess you know it’s gone,” he said. “You know, I wish I could have met the guy who built a Cajun restaurant way out here.”

I drive that route often. I stop and leave flowers at the site, flowers to commemorate a dream, someone’s hopes and aspirations, up in flames. But dang, I can still picture the fire roaring in the cast iron stove in the corner, shrimp and catfish sizzling on the grill, my friend pulling nozzles and filling beer mugs, his wife carrying heaping plates of jambalaya to the customers sitting at trestle tables in their mukluks and Carhartts, snowmobiles clustered outside the door, zydeco on the jukebox; in short, a community center where neighbors meet, wild game is bartered for firewood, deals are made, disputes are settled and young folks fall in love. Let the good times roll.

(Sondra Ashton graduated from Harlem High School in 1963 and left for good. She finds, upon her return, that things are a little different. Keep in touch with her at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com. While Sondra is tending to personal business, we are running some updated versions of earlier columns. She will be back at work next week.)