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André Jeffries -
Prince's Hot Chicken Shack

E. W. Mayo -
Mayo's Fried Pies & Mahalia Jackson's Chicken

David Swett -
Swett's

Hap Townes -
Hap Townes Restaurant

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Interviews conducted by John Egerton, Mary Beth Lasseter, and Joe York. 

This project sponsored by TABASCO.

Hap Townes

Hap Townes
Owner, Hap Towne's Restaurant

What I would do, okay; when I came in at 4 o’clock the first thing I would do was make coffee. And then I’d put my roasts on and then I’d put the beans on and I’d get that stove pretty much cleared off to where when the cook come in at 6 o’clock, well, she could start frying and they could start making the slaw and the cottage cheese salad and getting those things ready. I had so many people that wanted to know, "Hap, when do you cook all this food here?" I’d point at that little stove, regular coal oil stove--we had to cook it right here on this stove.

– Hap Townes

"In pretty much the same manner for almost sixty-five years, the two Hap Towneses of Nashville, father and son, served up Southern home cooking to a long line of faithful and appreciative customers. Hap the elder started the tradition in 1921 with a curbside eatery on wheels, literally a movable feast. Hap the younger took up the spoon and spatula when he returned form the war in 1946. Together they built a new café, a little stone diner with forty-nine seats, on a quiet back street in south Nashville and made it into a lunchtime institution. The father kept an active interest in the business until shortly before he died at the age of ninety. The son sold out and retired in 1985."

Southern Food, 1987

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

Subject: Hap Townes
Date: July 17, 2006
Location: Nashville Public Library--Nashville, TN
Interviewer: John Egerton

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John Egerton: Yeah; now let’s pick up the story with your father when he started a push-cart lunch wagon. Where was that?

Hap Townes: Okay; down on Lynnwood where I was born and raised and he built the home there. He built a dog wagon in the backyard--he and his brother, Wyman Townes and of course he was up at Gladesville also. So he and his brother built that and it had--I think there was 10 seats in it--five on each side there. I mean it was one of them things--just like an old streetcar more or less.

And you could put the--the sides up?

No.

You sit under it? It wasn’t--it was bigger than that?

It was stools in there and the windows--I remember those windows--he had a leather strap about like this; he could grab his leather strap and pull it up and push the button and the window would stay up--stay open there. So anyway, when he went down to the fairgrounds, the entrance of the fairgrounds, Wedgewood Avenue dead-ends into the fairgrounds there so they had to have a turnaround there. So he asked the City if he could pull dog wagon up there you know and sell some sandwiches and what have you? Wanted to know what they would charge me and they said I won't charge you anything; go ahead and pull it up there.

What does the term dog wagon refer to--hotdogs?

Yeah; I guess so--in those days.

Called it a dog wagon?

Yeah; they called it a hotdog--a dog wagon. So actually he was there part of one summer. One of the guys that came in there told him--he said Mr. Townes, he said Vanderbilt University over on 2nd Avenue, he said they’ve--that’s where the Dental School is and he said you’ve got all those boys over there living in those dormitories and they don’t have anything to eat. He said the families have to bring food in during--on the weekend and they take their closet in there to hang your ham up in there, a loaf of bread, and--and mayonnaise and mustard or whatever on the floor there. When they want something to eat they make them a sandwich. So he said you ought to go over there and see about getting one of those lots right across the street; he said it’s all vacant land.

Right there on Rutledge Hill up there on 2nd Avenue.

But you know where the fire hall is. But you’re coming out of town from there and it would be down in the next block right in front of where Howard High School was built there. So Dad found the guy that owned apiece of that property and he told him what he wanted to do and asked him could he put his dog wagon on it or what would he charge? And the guy said well I won't charge you anything.

What year was this--’27 or something like that?

Let me see--okay this was in 1921. Twenty-one or twenty-two officially. So then he--he talked to this guy and Dad said no, I want to pay you something. He said okay; he said how about $7 a month. He said okay; I’ll pay you $7 a month. So he rolled the dog wagon over there and he and his brother--not at the time--he was in there making the sandwiches; he went over and talked to all those boys and they started coming over there eating and after business got good and he started kind of adding on to the place a little bit. Well he told those boys to--if they would come over and work breakfast with him--to help make breakfast he’d buy their breakfast if they’d stay there like an hour--just come for an hour and help us. And then another guy would come for another hour and another guy would come for another hour, so they got their meals free. [Laughs]

And did they push that cart over there?

Yeah. It was pulled over there. Now I don’t know whether somebody--

I mean they wouldn’t hitch up a--hitch it up to a car or a truck or--?

Well I don’t--to tell you the truth I don’t know how they got it on there--

Because it would be kind of heavy wouldn’t it?

It was big. Oh yeah; I’m sure it would be.

Take two of them at least to push it.

They didn’t push it; I’m sure that they--they got somebody to hook up a horse to it.

A horse to it?

Something over there to take it over there.

And they went back and forth every day?

No, no; they left it standing there.

They set it up there permanently?

They set it up there. Okay; the guy like you said--he agreed with--he didn’t want to charge them nothing. He agreed with the $7--$7 bucks. Well then once those boys started coming over there for them meals to help him get started, well he began to add onto the place there. So then those boys started coming over in great numbers, so the guy that owned the property saw he was doing a good business there and he come down and he wanted--I forgot what it was--a great sum, you know like $30 or $40 a month. So Dad found out who owned the property right next to that and asked the guy if he wanted to sell it and he told him yeah; he’d sell it to him, so Dad bought that so he didn’t have to worry about the rent anymore. [Laughs]

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Okay; so did he put a sign up?

Well he had Hap Townes written on the front of the restaurant there. He didn’t at first. One of the customers that was eating with him, he said--now he wasn’t a student over there. He caught people coming back and forth from Lebanon and Mercersburg going to the market and taking stuff in and on the way out there wasn’t but one other place like that in Nashville and that was in behind the--the post office downtown there. And Cohn’s I think was the name of it. But they was a bigger dog wagon there and he had been there for sometime. And I understood that--that was the only two dog wagons in town then.

Pie wagons and dog wagons?

And dog--yeah; they called that—was pie wagon and dog wagon. [Laughs]

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You were born in what year?

April 12th, 1923.

Okay; so you’re really talking about right at the start of Depression when you were an eight year old boy.

Oh yeah--yeah.

I mean this was hard times.

Sure was, yeah.

Did your Dad--was he able to maintain that--?

Well right along then he was feeding all those boys from the Dental School over there and then you had the fire hall down there and then the people that worked in that area became customers as he enlarged the place. So he called his brother in from up at Gladesville to come down and help him run the place. So as it grew, well he got his sisters--some of them that were living there in the country--brought in a couple of them to come down there. Well his brother bought the property right next-door to the house--I mean to the dog wagon and a doctor had built the home there. I don’t know whether he passed away or what but Uncle Wy later bought that home there and--

That’s another one of your father’s brothers?

Yeah; right that was the one that helped him build the dog wagon originally there. So then after business got good well he went over on 1st Avenue in front of General Hospital and I don’t know whether they had that place built or not but he had a big dog wagon there. It was just about as long as this room here, maybe five-foot shorter.

Up on blocks or--?

No; it was on wheels also. It was on wheels also. But it never was moved from there.

It was kind of permanent?

It was all stools except at the tall end he had one table there that seated I think six people there. That was kind of a family people. So all those doctors and everything from the hospital and nurses would walk down there to eat; and then on Saturday the reason I went over then was to sweep and clean-up and sort the Coca Cola bottles from the Dr. Pepper and Nehi Orange, so when the man would come in he didn’t have to do all that. And then when they’d call the nurses or doctors--call up and now they’re wanting a bacon and egg sandwich or what have you I would cut across through a house and take it up there to them. So that got to be a pretty good business running back and forth. [Laughs]

Yeah; and did you get tips sometimes from that?

No, never--no.

Nobody talked about tips did they?

And my brother which was older than I, well he also worked there too on the weekends. So that was how he wanted to be a doctor because in those days the emergency room there, they wasn’t so strict, so when they’d call for sandwiches or what have you well we’d run them up there and just go in the emergency room there.

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Did your Dad do all the cooking or--or fixing? Because what I’m getting at is did he start cooking hot food down there?

Well okay, on 1st Avenue--on 1st Avenue it started off strictly--it was a hamburger place there and then later you know they added--as they added onto the place they added the meat and three there pretty much, and the same way on 2nd Avenue. Now he cooked but we still did a lot of short orders over there because he was open--he was open 24-hours a day there for a long time then. The man that married his sister worked the night shift--he and another guy, just the two of them was at night-time. Dad would leave like 5 o’clock in the afternoon and Uncle Les and this other guy would come in and run it all night. They finally cut it back I think during the Depression to like 11 or 12 o’clock at night there. Seven days a week, yeah; all of them was open seven days a week, yeah.

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You were born in ’23; you were 18 years old when the War broke out.

Right, yeah. I went in when I was 19.

At the time you left your father and your uncle--those two places were still going?

Yeah, right; they was still--

And were they doing vegetables and hot meats and hot bread by then?

Yeah, right, yeah.

So it had become like meat and three type--

Meat and three, yeah; uh-hm.

Didn’t use that term; they just called it dinner.

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You went straight into that business when you came back from the War didn’t you with your Dad?

Not immediately; I went to the--went back to the Corps of Engineers for like two months--something like that but all the time I was overseas I got a raise; I’d get letters where I got a raise and promotion and each time the other employees got a raise there I got one too. But so anyway, Dad wanted me to go in business with him and so that’s what we did. So I resigned from the Corps of Engineers and went to work--

At that point in your life did you know how to cook?

Oh yeah ‘cause I come up in the--in the restaurant.

And so you always--you--you grew up knowing how--

I grew up yeah; I grew up cooking hamburgers and frying wieners and what have you and waiting on the tables and I thought it was great because when we was on 1st--1st Avenue over there and the big dog wagon, when he’d bring me over, well okay here comes these doctors and nurses down and Dad would fix the breakfast [and say] take that back there to Doctor so and so; he’s the fourth one down there. I don’t want to take that dang thing; I don’t know him. Then I was you know 10 years-old; well I’ll go back there with you. So he’d take me back there; Doctor Whitfield this is my son Beverly you know so and so. Well hi; nice to meet you.

He called you Beverly?

Yeah; right--

James Beverly “Hap” Townes--

Bev. So everybody--the customers they knew me as Bev and a lot of them would hear Dad calling me Bev and they thought he was saying Bill, so some of the customers called me Bill. [Laughs]

Yeah; but he [the father]--he was already Hap wasn’t he?

Yeah, right; yeah, right.

He was Hap from when he was a young person?

Right; down on--over there on 1st Avenue--2nd Avenue rather. One of the customers named him that. He said you’re always so happy--always so happy; he said I’m going to start calling you Hap. So he did and that name caught on there.

And when did it kind of transfer over to you?

Oh well when I was just a child working in the restaurant people didn’t know my name. They knew I was Hap’s son they’d go “Little Hap.” They’d say “hey Little Hap; come here and go get me a Coca Cola or go get me this” is what they did.

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And all the way to the end, all the way until you sold the business and retired, you would come in at 4--4 or 5 o’clock in the morning?

Four o’clock. I was there no later than four. I got up at quarter of three every morning. When I pulled up in front of the place there as a rule the milk man would be there, the donut man, and somebody else you know another one of the suppliers or what have you--Tillman would--might be there. There’d always be at least one truck there when I pulled up there, so I felt safe you know in doing that.

And you served breakfast in those days didn’t you?

Yeah, right; yeah, uh-hm.

A lot of--did you have a fairly good breakfast turnover?

Yeah; I had a real good breakfast. Yes; in fact the breakfast business got so good it was running into the lunch business. I had people coming in at 10:00--10:15; I started serving at 11:00. They said okay Hap, I’m going to sit down and read the paper now and we’re not rushing anybody. I said well okay; we’re working on it and as soon as I get it ready I’ll let you know. So it got where I’d have 10--15 people in there at 10:30 waiting on lunch and here five or six guys come in--truckers and what have you and they wanted breakfast. Well boy that really threw a monkey wrench in the thing ‘cause I--it takes time to fix--you want ham and eggs, you want steak and eggs, you want homefries; they want this and that, so finally just--I just cut it out there because the lunch business was all we could do to get that plate lunch ready by--I’d always try to have it ready by 10:30. And as soon as I got it ready I opened the door but already I had them in there anyway so I just took the sign down open at 11 o’clock. I go out there and take it down as soon as we--I started serving there.

And by 2:30 or 3 o’clock you’re out of food and everybody is gone and it’s time to clean up and get ready for the next day?

Well at 2:00--so--so many times I’d have the music people would be over there. They’d call over there like 2:30 and they’d say Hap, we’re in session now. We’re going to finish up here in about 10 minutes. Have you got anything left? Said--I said yeah; I said well you know pretty much--the meat is pretty much gone--beef but I can fry you some pork chop. Well can you go ahead and do it and we’ll be there in about--we’ll be there in 20 or 30 minutes at the most. So I’d wait on them and they’d come in there and--and sit around and talk business or what have you.

People like Chet Atkins and--

Yeah, yeah; we had a bunch over there.

George Jones and--

Yeah; they’d just sit and come in and sit.

Bradley Brothers and all those people.

Yeah; all those people and--who was the guy that did that--oh Wings of the Dove? I know he came over there. He and a couple of girls just like--. But they’d sit there ‘til about 5 o’clock. [Laughs] I couldn’t get out of there.

Yeah; what can you do if you had to get up and leave?

Yeah; that’s right I was sweeping the floor and everything trying to get out. [Laughs]

Huh; and you’d meet yourself coming back ‘cause if you’re getting up at quarter ‘til three in the morning.

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Let’s just talk about the food for a minute. You--it--it sort of evolved into this meat and three kind of thing. You--you would always have at least three kinds of meat and--and six or seven vegetables.

Vegetables right.

And iced-tea and soft drinks.

Yeah; right.

And hot bread--always hot bread.

Yeah; fried--fried cornbread, right.

And dessert?

Oh yeah; homemade peach cobbler and homemade banana pudding. That got to be that’s the only two that we ended up--that was so popular we cut out the pies. We used to make pies years ago; we cut all that out. It takes too long and like I said we cut out breakfast--the lunch business got so good.

Uh-huh; so what--what would be--if you--if you were just right now it was--you imagined that you were back at work and you’re in there and it’s 5 o’clock in the morning and you’re thinking about the lunch you’re going to serve that day let’s just talk about what--what would be a typical day of what you would prepare for--?

What I would do, okay; when I came in at 4 o’clock the first thing I would do was make coffee then. And then I’d put my roasts on and then I’d put the beans on and I’d get that stove pretty much cleared off to where when the cook come in at--at 6 o’clock well she could start frying and they could start making the slaw and the cottage cheese salad and getting those things ready. I had so many people that wanted to know--Hap, when do you cook all this food here? I’d point at that little stove, regular coal oil stove--we had to cook it right here on this stove. [Laughs]

Golly; and just having people back there in--behind the counter with you, you would have sometimes maybe four or five people at once.

Yeah, right; yes.

And it was tiny. It was--

That’s right; it wasn’t big at all in there. See and the oven was there so we’d fix the peach cobbler and we’d fix the steaks and everything--the country-fried steaks, well I’d always steam those for another hour after we fried them, but steam those and take them out. We’d make the gravy for that and then they’d put the peach cobbler in there and that had to cook for about 45 minutes to an hour and then of course the--the banana pudding. Let me see; I’m trying to think. I didn’t make any--I didn’t make those two items.

One of your cooks would do that?

Yeah; that’s right the cooks was making those.

Yeah; but you--you made the stewed tomatoes and you made the--?

Yeah; and sometimes I made them and sometimes the girls made them, just according to who was there that day and--and--

Real potatoes--had to peel those potatoes?

Yeah; that’s right. We peeled those potatoes and did that for years.

Fresh green beans?

Right; that took up so much time that I started buying the potatoes already peeled. Of course it cost twice as much but it--it--it took more time to devote to something else in the cooking and of course the people liked the--liked those real mashed potatoes and so many places--I didn’t know it but so many places was going to instant potatoes that--oh Lord, if you wasn’t a regular customer and come up to me and I’d tell you what we had there and they’d say--like we’ve got some good tender roast beef today and this is country-fried steak, these are real mashed potatoes, fresh cooked green beans, butter beans, stewed tomatoes and had turnip greens.

Washed those turnip greens.

And then we got cabbage over here on stove and I got stewed raisins up in the pot. They’d say those potatoes you said is real--real mashed--with real potatoes? I said yeah; I mashed potatoes myself with a big hand masher. Well okay; I’ll give them a try. And then a lot of them wouldn’t try them or they’d pass up the potatoes. I’d take a little saucer and I’d take out a couple of spoons full and put a little touch of gravy on there and I said this is on the house. [Laughs] So--so then when they’d come in after that they’d order them.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.