SOUTH BLACKHOOF AND MAIN STREET

When my father Whitie got back to my home town of Wapakoneta after nearly three years of combat in the European Theater with the Seventh Army during World War II, he and two of his brothers had a place of business waiting for them. Although my grandfather, Murel Newland, was hardly a sentimental man, I think it was his way of welcoming his boys home from overseas and tacitly thanking them for their service.

Construction of the Interurban Streetcar Line on S. 

Blackhoof in the early 1900s, right in front of 

Zint's Cabin, the property where Murel Newland

would build the Teddy Bear building after 

World War II. (Courtesy Judy Kantner Bertrand)  

He bought a nice downtown location, the site of what had been known as Zint’s Cabin, an eatery across the street from Zint’s Candy Kitchen and next to what had once been the Interurban Streetcar Line station, when that local trolley line was still running. It was also across the street from the Blume Mansion, one-time home of a renowned city father and philanthropist for whom my father and mother’s high school was named. That lovely house was, by this time, a funeral home.

The site Murel bought was a good location on Blackhoof Street, a name that honored the town’s Shawnee past, and belonged to one of that Native nation’s most revered leaders. The place fronted on that thoroughfare between Main Street (which was not the town’s main street) and Auglaize Street (which was). Upon buying the property in 1945, Murel immediately tore down the building that was there and constructed a new one that would house the business that his three oldest sons would create on discharge from service.

Murel Newland

Whitie’s older brother Red had been in the Navy since well before the war. He had been something of a hero in the Pacific Theater—a Navy frogman and underwater demolition expert, part of an elite that would, a couple of decades later, become the Navy SEALs. He eventually became an instructor and rose to the rank of chief petty officer before breaking an officer’s jaw in a fight, getting busted and spending some time in the brig at Portsmouth. But he would make rank again before the end of the war. And the lieutenant commander with whom he’d had the altercation would go down with his ship in the Pacific—the same ship Red should have been on had he not been in jail.

Whitie seldom talked about the war. He dismissed his part in it when asked, but after his death in 2003, we learned that he had won four bronze stars and had a citation from the French government for his part in the Southern France invasion. Knowing how he felt about the war—and war in general—I’m sure he would gladly have given them all back if he had been alive to acknowledge that intended honor.

Their younger brother Chuck was enough younger that by the time he graduated high school and, like big brother Red, joined the Navy, the war was, fortunately, coming to an end. Their kid brother Don was way too young to be called up. He was only in his early teens when the war ended, which also made him too young to participate in the business his older brothers were starting. And by the time he would have been old enough to play a role, he had decided to answer his  calling to become a Methodist pastor.

Bob "Red" Newland

Whitie, Red and Chuck decided that the business they would start would be what was known in those days as a “sandwich shop and soda fountain”, with the king of sandwiches being the hamburger in all of its wonderful manifestations, but leading a menu that also included pork tenderloin, cube steak, baked ham, grilled cheese and fish sandwiches, plus french fries, onion rings, homemade soups (ham and bean, chicken noodle, vegetable or chili), salads (tossed, potato, egg and ham salad) and pies—both fruit and cream. But they found from the outset that one of their busiest times was going to be breakfast, so they added eggs (any style), ham, bacon, toast (white, rye, wholewheat), English muffins, cereal, juice (orange or tomato), pancakes, french toast, donuts and rolls. Plus the very best coffee in town—Continental brand, only served in fine hotels and restaurants and made strong, hot and black, all you could drink for a dime.

They decided to call the place the Teddy Bear, and had a local artist paint a big brown bear on the front of the building. The super-duper double burger “with everything” that topped the menu was dubbed the Big Bear Burger (abbreviated BBB on the guest check), and was the only sandwich on the menu with a special name, except for the later added steak sandwich that was called the Tummy Buster—Gene Greer, a regular who was something of a town wit and ordered that sandwich frequently referred to it as the “Abdomen Distender”. On one of the signs for the back-bar that Uncle Chuck had printed up at Republican Printing two doors up the street, the message read, “The Tummy Buster Steak Sandwich...Beef so tender we wonder how the cows even walked!”

Charles "Chuck" Newland with
sister-in-law Reba Mae

The Teddy Bear immediately became a popular daytime haunt for local businessmen, firefighters, cops, utility workers, lawyers and a number of professional women, downtown store employees and widows, who ate breakfast and lunch and took their coffee breaks there. But the soda fountain also made the Teddy Bear a magnet for “the school crowd”—kids who packed the place after school and sports events, attracted by a dozen flavors of ice-cream, as many flavors of fountain soda pop known as phosphates, fountain Coke, fountain root beer, malts, shakes and ice-cream sodas and floats. They ate hand-cut fried potatoes by the bushell accompanied by ketchup or mayonnaise, and those who were feeling flush might also order a burger. If they had a dime (for a single) or a quarter (for three tunes), they would also listen to their favorite pop hits on the juke box that stood next to the cigarette machine at the rear of the dining room.

The three Newland brothers couldn’t have been more surprised by the extent of their immediate success. In just a few short years, the Teddy Bear had become a Wapakoneta icon. And it would remain so for a number of years to come. In fact, people from the older generation of Wapakonetans still today remember the Teddy Bear as one of the pleasantest memories of their teens in our small town. And many a traveler on the Dixie Highway, from the days before interstate freeways—when travel still meant experiencing every town and city on your route from point A to point B—would recommend a stop at the Teddy Bear in Wapakoneta.

Norman "Whitie" Newland

People who were new in town or men who had come back after the war heard about it by word of mouth. Like this one guy who, on coming in for the first time, stood at the counter, and head cocked to one side looking at Red, who asked him, “What can I get for you?”

“Don’t I know you from somewhere? Your face looks familiar,” said the guy, who like a lot of young men of those times had a certain military presence about him, with his straight back, cropped hair and shiny shoes.
Red studied him for a second but nothing clicked. “I don’t know. Did you grow up in South Lima?”

“Nope. I’m from right around here.”

“Were you in service?” Red asked.

“Yeah, Navy.”

“Frogman?”

“Nope. Signal Corps. Did you join in forty-two?”

“No, thirty-nine...”

And on and on they went for a few minutes trying to figure out where they might previously have come into contact. Then, bingo!

“Ever put in at Hong Kong?”

 The Newland Boys at the Teddy Bear

“Oh wait!” says the guy. “Hong Kong! That’s it! I remember now. It was on the waterfront. You and another little sailor just about your same size came high-tailing it out of this waterfront dive with a whole slew of drunk Marines on your heels. I remember it because the two of you ran out to the end of this narrow pier and stood side by side with your backs to the drink where nobody could get around you. I remember thinking that was such a smart move but I figured you were both dead meat anyway with a pack of about a half-dozen Marines coming at you.”

By this point in the story, Red was remembering the incident and had started to chuckle. He said, “Well, here I am, so we must have survived.”

“Survived? I guess!” the guy said. “I’ve never seen so many jarheads hit the deck and not get back up in my life! I thought about going and lending a hand, but you two little guys sure didn’t need it.”

Red said, “The other guy’s name was Renfroe. We both did some amateur boxing before we got in and met in the ring in the Navy. We were pretty evenly matched and liked hanging out together. Renfroe was a real puncher and fast as hell on his feet. Couldn’t have been with a better guy that night.”

It was hard for me to imagine my ever gregarious and jovial uncle— whom local newspaper society columnist Helen Hardy always referred to as “the genial Bob Newland”—as being a bad-ass. But he was.

Speaking of which, Mrs. Hardy once wrote, “Winter must be here because the genial Bob Newland is wearing his muffler and gloves.” This was an inside joke for savvy Wapakonetans only and was written in the sixties when Red was already vice-president of a local bank and member of the Town Council. It’s that despite the Arctic cold of Ohio winters, Red never wore a topcoat or hat. In the middle of winter, his cold weather garb was the same as for warm: sportcoat and slacks, but with the sole addition of a wool scarf and a pair of fur-lined leather gloves.

But anyway, while the Teddy Bear was a fun place and a family restaurant where there wasn’t often any trouble, the few times that there was, I never remember anyone calling the police. The Newland Boys always took care of things themselves. Like the time three punks came in just looking for trouble. Eighteen to early twenties the three of them, they dripped “wise-guy” from the moment they ordered at the counter and then took the booth closest to the door. Their goal was clearly just to see how far they could go, what they could get away with. They were loud and lewd and murmurred vulgarities under their breath at the girls who came in and then cackled among themselves. When Whitie leaned over the counter and said, “Hey boys, knock it off,” they lowered their voices but looked his way every now and then and laughed derisively. There was nothing original about their pranks. When they thought noboby was looking, they emptied half the salt shaker into the sugar dispenser, twisted their spoon handles into creative new shapes, and one of them even snorted, hawkered up and spat into his Coke glass.

When Red took off his apron, tossed it onto the undercounter refrigeration unit and started around the counter, Whitie said, “Hold up, Bob. There are three of them. I’ll go with you.”

“No sweat,” Red said. “If I need you, I’ll call you.”

Approaching the punks’ table, Red said, “Okay, boys. Party’s over. Time to go.”

Predictably, the “alpha” of the trio made the mistake of standing up with his back to the front window, facing Red, and, also predictably, said, “Who’s gonna make us leave?”

“See anybody else, here, kid?” Red asked.

The Radio Hospital next door was in the 
building that had once housed the trolley station.
Jack, it's owner, was a Teddy Bear regular.

“You and what Army, pudge? There are three of us and only one of you.” the punk said with a smirk. Almost before it was out of his mouth, Red uppercut him so hard that his feet came off the floor, and he went up over the windowsill and through the plate glass onto the sidewalk unconscious. Red glanced out the broken window at the kid lying in the glass shards on the concrete to see if he was still breathing, and then turned back to the other two, whose mouths were hanging open in shock.

“Now,” said Red evenly, “there are only two of you. And I figure it’ll take both of you to carry his stupid ass to the doctor, so you’d better get up and get the hell outa here while you still can.” They did.

The Teddy Bear attracted, as I say, occasional patrons from all over the place, but its mainstay were the regulars. Some were fixtures who became hard and fast friends of the family. Others were quirky and aloof. One of these last ones was, for example, Mrs. S, whom my father imitated with contempt-filled relish.

Said Whitie, “Every damn day she comes in for lunch and it’s always the same story!”

And then he would proceed to tell how she would come in and stand at the counter, wrinkling her brow and studying the standing menu posted above the soda fountain as if seeing it for the first time, even though she came in every noon.

“Hello, Mrs. S. What can I make you for lunch?” Whitie would prompt her.

She would sigh, stare even harder at the menu board, and then say, inevitably, “What kind of soup do you have today?”

“Beef-noodle, vegetable, and ham and bean.”

“What, no chili con carne today?”

“No, not today, Mrs. S.”

“And then,” Whitie would tell us, “she goes like this...” and he would purse his lips and twist his entire mouth and nose to one side imitating her obvious disgust. “And, I shit you not, if I were to say, ‘Today we’ve got noodle, vegetable and chili,’ she’d be bound to say, ‘What, no ham and bean?’ Doesn’t matter which goddamn soup you don’t have, that’s the one she wants! Then she says, as if she’s doing me a big favor, ‘Well, all right (sigh), I guess I’ll have the vegetable, then.’ Then I’ll say, ‘Can I get you a hamburger with that?’ She’ll say, ‘No, I’ll have a grilled cheese.’ And if I say, ‘Can I get you a grilled cheese with that?’ She’ll say, ‘No, I’ll have the ham salad.” And if I say, ‘Can I get you a ham salad?’ She’ll say, ‘No, I’ll have the egg salad.’ And if I say, ‘Sorry Mrs. S, we’re fresh out of egg salad,’ she’ll go...” And again Whitie would purse his lips and twist his entire mouth and nose to one side imitating Mrs. S’s disdain, and say, “‘Well, all right then (sigh), I guess I’ll have a hamburger.’ And don’t even ask if she wants some dessert with that, because she’ll say, ‘Oh, I don’t know...Yes, I guess. What kind of pie do you have?’ When she’s standing right beside the goddamn pie case. So I say, ‘Apple, peach, cherry, blackberry, Boston cream and custard.’ And she goes (and Whitie sighs and does the sour-faced gesture again), and says, ‘What, no coconut cream?’ And I say, ‘No Mrs. S, not today,’ and she goes...(again the sigh and gesture), and then she sighs and says, ‘Well all right. I guess I’ll have the apple, then...’(and as I’m setting it on her tray) ‘...a la mode.’”

Another one of those problem customers was a local lawyer and former DA, who now mostly devoted his time to inheritance litigation and deed registration. By all accounts he had been a really good District Attorney in his day, but what people mostly knew him for was his eccentricity. And his miserliness. He was notorious for coming in and asking for a ten-cent cup of coffee with a cup of hot water on the side. Once he had those, he would say, “Hey Whitie, could I trouble you for some ketchup?” And once he had that, “You don’t happen to have a spare package of saltines, do you?” Then he would sit with the other notables at the “head table” next to the counter and sip his coffee before pouring the serving of ketchup into the cup of hot water, using his coffee spoon to mix himself up a mug of “soup”, into which he crumbled the crackers. It seemed to delight him to have finagaled himself a “free cup of soup”, and he still had his unlimited coffee refills to look forward to. This, he considered his lunch, all for one thin dime.

Since the Teddy Bear was where all the movers and shakers and other representatives of local society had their breakfast and lunch, it was also where several local reporters hung out from time to time when they were scrounging for a story. One of these was Mrs. P who broke a Wapakoneta glass ceiling by being the only woman to elbow her way into a seat at the big table with the male protagonists of local business and politics. She chain-smoked, ate buttered toast and guzzled black coffee while holding her own in the debates and putting the guys in their place when she reckoned they were full of crap. Most of them couldn’t wait for her to finish her breakfast and go back to work. They didn’t seem to realize she was working!

Sometimes around five, when she got off work, Mrs. P would be back with the whole P family for an early supper—her, Mr. P and a daughter who looked just like her and a son who looked just like her husband. I liked her, and so, had a soft spot for her family. But when I’d say this to Whitie, he would always say, “Well, they’re good customers, I’ll give you that. But Dan, that woman’s a pain in the ass!”    

But there were customers Whitie really liked as well, and he looked forward to their daily visits, like the world’s funniest undertaker, Charlie (who said when asked his profession that he dealt in “underground novelties”), and Charlie’s enormous sidekick Louie. Or the owner of a local rending and fertilizer company named Fred, of whom Whitie always said, “The man’s a millionaire but he’s just one of the guys—although it wouldn’t hurt him to shine his damn shoes, at least. They’re a mess!” Or Mark, the owner of the hardware store across the alley, who always parked his truck out back in the Teddy Bear lot because he and the Newland Boys were buddies. Or Mack, the president of the People’s National Bank, an even-tempered, dancing bear of a man who was always impeccably dressed and moved unperturbed through life at a glacial pace. Or like Jack, the private, quiet fellow with a nice smile who owned the Radio Hospital next door. Or Ralph, who walked with a bad limp from being kicked out of a moving boxcar by a railroad detective, as an adventurous young man riding the rails, and who worked for the gas company but was really a painter. Or Warren, who made a good living as an architect but who would rather have been a cartoonist, or an aging white-haired cop called Bill, who was blue through and through, but was also just a very nice guy who still knew what “protect and serve” meant.

Whitie takes a rare break to chat with "Pudgy"

Most came at the busiest times, the breakfast and lunch rushes. But a few liked a quieter time and would show up during the slow hours of mid-afternoon, when Whitie, Red or Chuck might have time to sit for ten minutes and have a cup of coffee with them. Among the ones who might ask Whitie to take a break and come sit for a spell was a fireman they called Pudgy who was always up for one of my dad’s stories and a piece of cherry pie. Or Kitty, the widow from across Main Street, whose stepson was not that much younger than she was and a truly famous screen-writer in Hollywood, a lovely silvered-haired woman who feigned a dark, hard, misanthropic shell, but who was really lonesome and vulnerable and had a soft spot for Whitie. Or like a guy named Kaminsk, who sold the Teddy Bear its ice cream and always took time out from his route to park his truck out back, let Whitie buy him a coffee and sit around with him “shootin’ the shit” for a little while.

Things were never the same for Whitie after his brothers left. They had both seen the writing on the wall. I-75 was by then a fact of life and a strip of chain-store eateries were forming what was to become “Hamburger Row” on the eastern edge of town at the Wapakoneta-Bellefontaine Street exit. People were going to go there, Whitie’s brothers warned. But Whitie couldn’t understand why anyone would want poor quality fast-food when the Teddy Bear menu was all about top quality and service. They might lose travelers, but not the regulars.

Me with Reba Mae at the Teddy Bear in 1969

So Whitie stayed, betting on his clientele. Red took a job with Mack at the bank, where he would later rise to the vice-presidency. Chuck went to work as, it turned out, a highly successful salesman at a local life insurance firm from which their father had retired after twenty-five years of service. Whitie brought in my mother, Reba Mae, to second him and, after buying out his two brothers, with finances tight, hoped to move on to ever better days. But it turned out that his loyalty to his customers was largely an act of unrequited love. McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s  or Colonel Sanders’ KFC, people tended to follow the jingles they’d heard on TV like children on the heels of the Pied Piper. A decade more of struggling and chronic depression and he was ready to call it quits, which is how a Wapakoneta icon, the Teddy Bear Restaurant, passed into history.

I now often have dreams in which the Teddy Bear figures prominently. More now than ever before. The building always looks like it did back then, with the white tiles and red trim on the front and the big brown bear painted above the door. It’s often night-time or dusk. I see the lights on and hope I’ll go in and find it like it always was, see Whitie and Reba Mae, my Uncle Red and Uncle Chuck, the regulars at the “front table” drinking their coffee and BS-ing, some of the girls I knew working in the back, girls that are gone now, like Cathy and Linda. Sometimes I do, but in those cases, it’s like I’m seeing it and them from some other dimension where they can’t see me. I “see” them like a camera lens, without being able to interact.

Not infrequently, however, I see the lights on and go in, only to find the Teddy Bear empty, as if suddenly abandoned, with the smell of soups and coffee in the air and burgers still cooking on the grill. I walk around the empty dining room, lights on, jukebox playing fifties hits, back into the kitchen where food is half-prepared and dishes waiting to be washed, on back into the back room, hoping to find Whitie there preparing the perfect blend of lean beef and suet to make the world’s best hamburgers, or Uncle Red sitting squeezed into a corner at the little desk, cranking totals out of a manual adding machine. But the back door and screen door are open and there’s no one in sight. The gravel parking lot is dead quiet and empty, not even the truck from the hardware store across the alley is  parked out back. And outside, it’s a different time.

Sometimes walking, sometimes in a car, sometimes even on my old Scwhinn bike, I reach the corner of South Blackhoof and Main. I look right and see the funeral home with its sober lights on, and look left and again see the façade of the Teddy Bear with its inviting front windows aglow. To my rear is downtown Wapakoneta, with cheery Saturday-night lights contrasting with the old iron Blackhoof Street bridge spanning the dark night waters of the Auglaize. But South Blackhoof and Main, in this dream world, is a frontier between what once felt secure, in childhood visions of what used to be, and the uncharted blackness of what lies ahead “across Main”.

Lately, I’ll turn and take a last look at the Teddy Bear and feel its snug safety and warmth—the place that fed my town, the mom and pop business that fed my home—and then I’ll face the uncertain darkness of the night to the south, take a deep breath, and stride, ride or pedal resignedly into it.