[Thinking about Fry Street reminded me of this piece I wrote about Jim’s Diner, a Fry Street institution of some years back, when it closed. I thought I’d repost it here for nostalgia’s sake and because Jim’s is really gone now, if there’s such a thing as more gone than gone. I was wrong about a couple of things. The Delta Lodge did rebuild, and the mural I thought would disappear remained at the time I left Denton.]
Friday, March 20, 1998
I wandered to my office today along empty sidewalks. Denton gets pretty deserted around campus during breaks. As I was returning home I passed what had once been Jim’s Diner, a local institution on Fry Street where I live in the heart of the funky district of this funky little town, which I mostly love for its funkiness. Jim’s is no more, and as I passed the place it used to be I noticed that the new owners are redecorating. Let me tell you about Jim’s and why this makes me sad.
Many an afternoon I have walked into Jim’s, taken a cold Shiner out of the ice locker on the counter, paid my buck and a quarter, and sipped my beer in the shade of the porch on the north side of the place; sat at a big aluminum-topped picnic table, watched the street people and the dogs, been entertained by the art deco mural on the wall depicting the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and Elvis, talked with my student friends and others about the neighborhood being destroyed by police moving into a new station nextdoor, maybe a little about Zen (old farts don’t know much about Zen, but we like to learn whatever we can) or whether it would ever rain. I belong to an informal old farts club. We eat breakfast together on Tuesdays, and we used to eat at Jim’s, enjoying the fifties awful food, laughing about the Elvis cup you could rent for $100 (something the original Jim had left behind), soaking up the decor consisting of a couple of mannequins dressed in funky costumes, posters and newspaper articles from the fifties framed and unframed on the walls, signed pictures of movie and rock stars, a large foot wearing a two-color shoe, and other objects d’art which might have appealed to P. T. Barnum. No old gas pumps or longhorns in the place, no deer trophies, no branding irons, nothing gauche like that.
About eight months ago, Jim’s was sold. Right off the bat, they quit serving breakfast. The fellow who had owned the place for the last ten years, bought it from the original Jim and kept its tradition, had sold out to a couple of Italians, whom I have nothing against, but among things Denton doesn’t need more of are Italian, Chinese, and Tex-Mex restaurants. Greek would have been nice, we only have three Greek places; or Thai maybe, we have two of those. My favorite Italian restaurant is just around the corner, maybe a block away, and get this—the same guys own it who bought Jim’s. I guess I just don’t understand capitalism. As I say, I live in this neighborhood by choice. I like it, and it’s cheap, but I have terrible dreams of gentrification some nights now, of rents being raised to drive out the old farts and cops chasing away the street people. Now that Jim’s is gone, an anchor of my life no longer exists.
If you think I’m an alarmist, consider these facts. The Delta Lodge at the corner of Fry and Oak, just across the street from Jim’s, which used to be the Sammy house before the Sammys got in trouble with the wowsers, is no more. A fire took it three years ago, and I don’t think the Lodge will ever rebuild. How could they replicate what they had anyway?–a ramshackle old three-story wooden house, a firetrap some said, decorated in Halloween-carnival awful. The Fry Street Fair, which the Lodge sponsors, has moved back to the street for a weekend in April, having been kicked off by the city for a while, but it’s a shadow of its former self. A jazz club in an old convenience store building was evicted, not because its music was loud but because its clientele included lots of grunge-dressing, tattoo-wearing young folk; and where there’s fire there’s smoke, if you get my drift. Soon somebody will decide it’s time to ban appearances by Brave Combo, or evict the folks from the beer and wine shop on the corner, or arrest me for jaywalking or loitering. The cops now regularly stop young folk on the street without real probable cause, just because they look strung out or homeless.
So the demise of Jim’s makes me sad because it comes as part of a perceptible trend, and today was especially sad as I walked past my old haunt, closed, as it was for spring break. The windows had been covered with paper, but I heard hammering and looked in an open door to see what was going on. All the old decorations had vanished, the mannequins, the foot, the old pictures of Tom Mix. The new owners had left things pretty much as whey were until just last week, but now I see stucco-like stuff on the walls, all the wonderfully ugly fifties booths gone. I fully expect to see silk flowers and red checked tablecloths when the new Jim’s opens next week. A spanking new set of outdoor furniture, metal mesh painted green, sits on the porch. The Beatles mural has big holes in it now; they’ll probably just paint over it.
Ubi es, ubi es, O my good place, Jim’s—I miss you old buddy! But they’re not getting me out of here just yet. Us old farts have moved to Ruby’s on the square, where we are protected by domino players, a senior citizen’s buffet, and a stuffed alligator. It is here that an old friend who went crazy used to like to give tourists copies of a photograph of the last hanging in town. Ubi es, O my good place! The stuffed alligator is nice, a real piece of culture, but I have often wondered about the fate of Jim’s Elvis cup. I have heard the last Jim’s owner is now a race car driver in Florida. He probably took it with him.
[Originally posted at Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms.]
