THE JOKE AT Ranch Coffee Shop on Sunday was that owner Dorothy Clare had injured herself in a fall so she was taking “early retirement” — after only 68½ years.
Clare, 92, slipped and broke a leg last October at The Ranch, the Mariposa Road café and south-side community nucleus she has operated since 1955. She’s on the mend, but still — 1955, okay? Eisenhower years. Campbell’s Soup, 10¢ cents a can. “Rock Around the Clock.”
“I know I’m going to be bored silly around home,” Clare said. “This is all I’ve done all my life. This is all I know.”
She’s not kidding. Clare went to work waitressing at a diner in her hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1950.
“The cook came by and said, ‘Go to California. They make big money out there.’” With hindsight she added, “Ha, ha.”
But being young and optimistic she sold her horse and saddle and bought a bus ticket to California and married the cook in a Carson City chapel in 1953. She waitressed at Henry’s Rolling Pin, a donut shop and lunch joint on the Miracle Mile where Henry made donuts by the front window. Her husband worked across the street at the Miracle Drive-In.
In 1955 they took over the Ranch, a 7-stool diner perched along sparsely populated Mariposa Road across the street from a grain field. In 1963 they moved into their larger building a stone’s throw to the south.
Where everybody knows her name
Believe it or not, there were people at Clare’s March 3 farewell celebration who knew her from the first diner. Like Paul Sanguinetti, a customer from his 1950s boyhood and onward for seven decades.
“It’s like Cheers,” he said. “You want to go someplace where they know your name.”
A Cheers for 70 somethings. Younger members accepted.
“It seems like friends gather here,” said Bill Luce, customer since only 1968. “It’s a good place for an exchange of ideas and B.S.”
Clare worked seven days a week, waitressing six days and on Sundays prepping food and cleaning. ‘It makes me feel good. But I think the activity is what kept me healthy. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning.’
“It’s like therapy to me,” Mike Mundell, a customer for 10 years, said of the Ranch’s wholesome vibe. “There’s so much anger in the world. That’s why I keep coming back.”
Customers look out for each other, too. Sunday morning when everyone was gathering, three thieves, two men and a woman, skulked into the crowded parking lot to burgle vehicles. Seeing them, a Ranch customer yelped, and half the customers swarmed out, capturing the thieves, and holding them until Sheriff’s deputies hauled them off to the hoosegow.
“I hope they got some licks in on ’em, too,” said Mundell, who just a minute before was decrying the anger in the world. But how dare those lowlifes spoil dear Clare’s celebration.
For most of her career, Clare worked seven days a week, waitressing six days and on Sundays prepping food and cleaning. That may sound like drudgery but, Clare said, “It makes me feel good. But I think the activity is what kept me healthy. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning.”
Typical food at the Ranch is, well, typical food. Sunday’s lunch specials were Meatloaf with Mash and Corn, and Fish & Chips or Fried Shrimp, both with Fries and Coleslaw.
But an equal draw is the Ranch’s success as a gathering place for old acquaintances, as a gaggle of politicians and candidates attested on Sunday.
Congressman Josh Harder sent a proclamation: “Your unique cuisine and hospitality will be dearly missed,” it read in part, possibly marking the first time Cod with Home Potatoes & Peas has been called “cuisine.”
“What you provided over the years is home,” said supervisorial candidate Chris Rouppet. “This is family.”
“This is the heart of south Stockton,” said Vice Mayor Kimberly Warmsley, whose district comprises the Ranch.
“I’m a northsider,” admitted Council Member Michael Blower, cueing a laugh line. “After that breakfast, I feel stupid. This is my first time here.”
A record run
As best I can tell, Clare is the second longest-working Stocktonian in living memory, and possibly in the city’s entire history. Her run is surpassed only by King S. Lee, a Chinese immigrant who worked at Yet Bun Heong Bakery for a staggering 75 years. He began in 1934, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, Bonnie and Clyde died in a shootout, and one of Lee’s delivery stops was a Chinatown opium den.
But Clare has worked long enough to see Stockton grow from a town of 100,000, to outlast two husbands and 13 U.S. presidents, to pour, by a highly unreliable calculation, upwards of 400,000 cups of coffee.
And to warm a corner of this cold ol’ city.
“She’s been good people to everybody,” said Jeff Hachman. “You don’t find people like that.”
Clare said her run at the Ranch is not entirely done.
“I’m still going to come down once a week and talk to people,” she said. “I feel good. I’m just a little slower now.”
Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com.
