Sibling Assignment # 78: An Awful Awful and D and D at the Brunswick Cafe

courtesy of Orange TV at Remember the Roxy which you can find here.


Silver Valley Girl gave the sibling assignment this week. "Pick a business in Kellogg where you used to "hang out" in junior high or high school and tell a story about an incident that happened at
this location that was really memorable." Soon you will find Raymond Pert's here and Silver Valley Girl's here.

I am going to break the rules a bit this week and talk about a place we would hang out in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho called The Brunswick Cafe. In high school we had pep club buses that traveled to games to cheer on our Kellogg Wildcats in football and basketball. Often the pep band also traveled on these long bus trips. I think back to those poor bus drivers during those years on those buses. We screamed, sang "Hey Jude", "99 Bottles of "Root" Beer on the Wall", and " I Think We're Alone Now" a hundred times a trip, and always yelled cheers for our hometown team. Probably all those bus drivers that are still with us are deaf!

It seems like we always stopped in Coeur d'Alene for a restaurant stop on every trip. I am sure we didn't do it every time, but we always stopped at the Brunswick Cafe. I don't know why that was the only place we stopped. It sure is a place I always remember. The big deal at the Brunswick was to order an Awful Awful. It was this big messy hamburger that had about everything on it. It was messy to eat and very filling, but we all ordered them with fries and Pepsi. If there are any of you out there that remember Awful Awfuls... it seems like they were more in the shape of a French Dip in a poor boy bun. I may have that part wrong. Let me know.

Many a late Friday or Saturday night during the early seventies this cafe was filled to the max with rooters from Kellogg High School. It actually seems like sometimes the team was there also sometimes. I always remember not spending all my money at the concession stand during the game so I could order that great Awful Awful.

The memorable incident that happened at The Brunswick Cafe was when I first learned about D and D. This stood for Dine and Dash. One late night some of us were getting ready to pay as we were heading out the door to find the bus again. Some girls from the bus just walked out. Once outside they were cracking up hysterically! When I left the cafe I reminded them they didn't pay. More explosive laughter as they screamed, "We just dined and dashed!"
That was my introduction to D and D and that night I was taken aback by my fellow pep club members. Thoughts raced through my head. They broke the law. It was such a risky act while traveling with a school group. It wasn't like them. I don't know how often they dined and dashed after that night, but the rest of the ride home that night I was bothered. I wondered if they would be caught. I thought the police might stop the bus going past the Rose Lake exit and come and arrest them. I don't think they ever gave it another thought except to brag it up on other trips.

To this day I have still never dined and dashed, but I do remember well how tasty those Awful Awfuls were during those stops that broke up our long, late night bus rides.