July 2006                                                         The Megaphone                                                      Page 3

Nick's Place

by Chris Pantos 

  Nick’s Place or Nick’s Coney Island Café was a small “hole in the wall” restaurant in downtown Elwood patronized by many WLWHS Panthers during the town’s heydays of the 50’s and 60’s. Nick, or “Nick the Greek,” as many preferred to call him, was my father and he owned and operated the place for nearly two decades. Nick immigrated to this country alone from Greece in 1916 at the age of 18 as a World War One refugee. He passed through Ellis Island and ended up staying in the New York area for some time. He spoke no English and had little, if any, formal education so he took a job working on the areas railroads driving spikes on a rail repair crew.

  He learned English a word at a time as he toiled and a few years later ended up in Crawfordsville where he took a job in a local Greek owned restaurant and candy kitchen and learned the trade of making hand made candies as well as short order cooking. He met and married my mother in Crawfordsville and they both moved to Elwood in the late 1930’s where they joined other Greek immigrants in the Elwood/Tipton area to include the Mangas family who owned the cafeteria on the corner of Anderson and Main and the Sweet Shop then located on West Main down near the Vogue Theatre and the Paikos family in Tipton who owned the Diana theater there.

  Nick took a job as a cook and barkeep at George’s Place, a tavern and cigar store owned by George Bisias yet another Greek immigrant. George’s Place was located on the East side of South Anderson Street, between Main and South “A” street and about three or fours doors North of Louis Sullivan’s Golden Gardens night club. The place served soup and booze, sandwiches and booze, cigars and booze, and lots and lots more booze -- plus the place also catered to the gambling set with a card room in the back and “numbers jars” and “punch cards” out front -- and even more booze. All in all, not exactly one of Elwood’s more “prestigious and reputable” business establishments in those days. Nick worked at George’s Place until the late 1940’s when he left and opened his own place, minus the booze and gambling -- Nick’s Coney Island Café, on the Southeast end of Chamness Avenue.

  There were several other businesses on Chamness Avenue during those years to include the late Frank DiPaolo’s Barber Shop, Reynolds Electric Shop, a pool hall, and a livestock feed store. A portion of the parking lot to the East between Nick’s Place and what would later become Vest Cleaners, was at that time, occupied by Joe DiPaolo’s (Frank, the barber’s older brother) used car lot. Rumor had it that Joe would often come in to Nick’s and ask for used coffee grounds from the coffee urns that he is alleged to have used to seal up radiator leaks in the cars that he sold from that lot for many years. Nick operated his restaurant at that site for a little over ten years where he served up soups, sandwiches, French fries, and deserts. The hamburgers (15 cents), and fries (10 cents) were all fried in pure lard so there can be little doubt that his burgers could have well been dubbed some of the original “cholesterol bombs” by today’s standards -- but hey, was that stuff ever tasty. Nick’s place could easily have put a whole new meaning to the term “greasy spoon café.”

  The décor was pretty “hip” for the time -- painted concrete floors, cinder block walls, 1950’s so called “art deco” style chrome legged Formica topped tables, lime green vinyl covered chairs and stools with pink trim, lots of neon signs, a juke box with Gene Vincent wailing “Be Bop A Lula,” a chalkboard menu, and a large illuminated Coca Cola clock -- all right out of “American Graffiti.” Some of the older customers were known to have objected to the juke box because they didn’t want to be subjected to this new found “rock and roll” music that according to them would soon lead to the downfall of American youth. He cooked and my mother waited tables and between them they served thousands of sandwiches to a generation or two of WLWHS students and townspeople while at the Chamness Avenue location. The place was frequently standing room only on Friday nights and Saturdays when the local area farmers came into town to shop. In the early sixties, he moved his restaurant to an East Main street storefront across the street from the old Elwood Theatre. He remained in business there until the late 60’s when he sold out and retired. Nick passed away in 1973 at the age of 75 from colon cancer. 

  Both the building on Chamness Avenue and the storefront on East Main Street are gone now, two more remnants of Elwood’s prosperous past -- gone the way of the wrecking ball. 

Chris Pantos '59