Freestone County, Texas
History - Select Businesses in Fairfield

Submitted by Wanda Willard Smith on 17 May 2006:

Loper’s Cafe

In the early 1940s many Fairfield folks who worked downtown ate lunch (and
sometimes supper) at Loper’s Cafe, a small restaurant on the east side of the
square about half-way between the bank and the picture show. There were no
tables or booths, only a row of bar stools in front of a long counter.

The menu was simple and prices low:  hamburgers and hot dogs (10¢), plate
lunches (25¢), home-made cakes and pies (5¢ a slice), coffee, iced tea, and
soft drinks (5¢). 

A juke-box with the popular records of the day stood just inside the front
door. A nickel would play a selection. Strange how music has the power to
recall a time and place. In later years I never heard Margaret Whiting’s “My
Ideal” or Glenn Miller’s “American Patrol” without remembering Loper’s Cafe.

      
Cook’s Cafe
      
Another Fairfield restaurant, long before Sam’s, was Cook’s Cafe, a
truck-stop/filling station on the northeast corner of the crossing of the
Wortham road and Highway 75. Too far from the courthouse square to walk to for
lunch, we often ate at Cook’s on the weekends. Locals and travelers alike
enjoyed the plain fare in a friendly place that pulsed with the music of
wartime America.