Isabel Gilmore, Salt Flat Cafe, Salt Flat, Texas, 1988
Story and photograph by Bruce Berman
There were people who grew up along two lane highways who had, at most, radios to connect them to the outer world. They lived in quietude. A car would occasionally pass on U.S. 62/180. Some would stop.
I stopped.
She put down her local paper (from Van Horn, I think it was). She made eggs, fried some hash browns and made toast. Everything she was and did was from a past time. These were moments of grace.
She was far from being a receding type, had lots of questions, and I think her main form of being informed was interviewing anyone who stopped at her cafe. She had been doing this for a long time and I think her parents did it before her.
She was a woman of the “old world,” a child of The Depression.
She wasn’t “stuck” in an era past, but rather, I got the impression she chose to be in a time most of us are unable to hold onto. She had integrity.
We spent an hour together. It has stayed with me for a lifetime and I have wanted to hold onto her quiet and strength in a world of noise and weakness but, have mostly been unable to.
I do have this photograph. I’m grateful that I have this photograph.
Somehow I think I’ll see her again.
