A fond farewell to Luby’s Cafeteria.
My LuAnn Platter of choice was a breaded fillet of fried fish, green beans, macaroni and cheese, and a dinner roll.
We would slide our melamine trays across the thick metal bars of the buffet line and politely ask for our choice of entree and sides.
LuAnn Platters were a steal. They’d cut the meat in half (half a fillet; a breast or a thigh) and fill up the rest with starches and carbs. But a deal is a deal and a meal is a meal. And Luby’s always filled you up.
Salad, entree, sides, bread, dessert, beverage.
That was the order. Desserts and drinks we had to slide right by. Glass bowls of green and red gelatin cubes wiggled their hellos. Isosceles slices of pumpkin, coconut cream and key lime pie stood regally on matching plates.
Cartons of whole, low-fat, and chocolate milk lounged atop a bed of ice. We slid past those, too.
We ate at Luby’s maybe once a week. A home-cooked meal that brought us all to the table, my dad meeting my mom and sister and me there after work.
We’d carry our trays across the dining room, learning the art of balance and pacing with every step. Tables would be full. We might sit by a window. Eat our food. Do homework as my mom graded papers.
Then the ice-water-ice-tea lady would roll by. Luby’s is a serve-yourself buffet except for the free, unlimited refills on ice water and ice tea. Her dark green apron would match the dark green linen napkin of our utensil rolls — the napkin always a little damp from a rushed dry. This level of subtle coordination felt reassuring. These people knew how to run a cafeteria.
My dad might wave hello to the table of cops having supper (he worked the police beat for the local paper). My mom might artfully dodge the family of a former student.
Vinyl table tops made to look like wood. Heavy, Naugahyde chairs on wheels that would scoot you right up to your plate.
Luby’s was our formal dining room, if a room where you dine with cloth napkins and enjoy tinkling glass cups of ice water makes a room formal.
Any casualness the buffet line afforded was tempered by heavy draperies on ceiling-height windows. Thick industrial carpet that hushed what should have been a noisy, reverberating room.
We would eat as a family on weeknights. With my grandparents on Sundays after church. We never ate there to celebrate birthdays.
Luby’s wasn’t a treat. It was a rotating option on my family’s dinner menu. Three or four nights a week my dad would cook. One night a week we might get McDonald’s on the way home from theater class or choir practice. Another night, we’d all eat at Luby’s.
Luby’s could be melancholy, like Sunday evenings. Maybe that’s what drew us there at the end of a weekend. Avoiding dishes before the start of the week.
Luby’s could be home-y. It was, after all, a warm plate of comfort food.
Luby’s was familiar. It was tradition. It was a holdover from a bygone era.
I knew Luby’s in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We lost touch sometime in the early aughts.
I don’t know much about Luby’s these past 15 years, but I sincerely hope she went out draped in cascading forest green nylon, serving scoops of that famous macaroni and cheese until the last.
When your business or your brand or your company dies, when you close its doors or sign-off its handle for the very last time, I hope there are people out there that think of whatever you built the way I think of Luby’s. With fondness, with nostalgia, with a lump in my throat.
Luby’s was never meant to survive this semi-awakened world with our green drinks and high-end home cookware. But she served us well. She made us stand up to receive our food. She made us sit down together to enjoy it. She was a stronghold of the middle class. A place to look forward to and to look back on.
She lived a long life. It’s sad to see her go, but I sure am glad she was here.
