Riiiing.
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Lavender's. What you want, babe?
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Cheeseburger and fries?
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Anything else?
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Mayonnaise?
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I got you. We'll have you ready in a minute.
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But those minutes are winding down for Lavender's Barn, a nondescript restaurant at the edge of town that has been slinging burgers, omelettes and Southern fare for 45 years. When the lights are turned off on Thursday, it will be for the last time.
Charlotte Lavender Hardin, who took the order for a cheeseburger from "babe," which is a customer's name unless she knows better, says it's time to move on.
"I'm 73, and I'm going to try having a life," she said. "My husband and I have never traveled."
It's easy for Hardin to get a little choked up about closing the doors, but she may have missed her calling as a stand-up comedian because it's just as easy for her to toss in the zingers as she's wiping away tears.
"This may not work out," she said. "By the time my husband and I drive to the house after work, he has gotten on my last nerve. He has two speeds: stop and go. Before it's over with, I may be a greeter at Walmart. This is going to be a big adjustment."
Hardin's family, the Lavenders, owned the land in the area around the intersection of Highway 65 and what is now Highway 425. There was a sale barn there, meaning that Hardin was raised around horses and cows and learned how to work hard at an early age. There was also a truck stop that didn't amount to much, as Hardin recalls.
At the time, Hardin was single and had two young children.She was working multiple jobs to make ends meet, including one as a teller for Simmons Bank. The idea then struck her that if she was going to work that hard to make a living, it might as well be for herself.
"I talked my dad into letting me take over the lease," she said. "I caught him at a weak moment. My two wonderful kids, my daughter Traci Pharr and my son Ricky Hall, they grew up helping out in the restaurant, in between fist fighting with each other."
Pharr, known as Baby Tray to many, raised her own child in the restaurant and still works part-time helping her mother run the place.
In the early days, the restaurant was open 24-7, the same as the truck stop. Over the years, the hours have shortened to 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., although it continues to be open seven days a week.
"When we were open all day and night, well, there were a lot of late Friday and Saturday nights when we would be sobering people up," she said. "That may be why I don't drink. I found out there's nothing that happens around here after 5 o'clock that I want or need."
Over the years, the restaurant has seena lot. Truck drivers who come hours out of their way to eat there. Road crews working in the area. Construction workers coming in from "out at the mill," meaning International Paper Co., which is just down the road, and is now Evergreen Packaging Co.
And there have been celebrities as well. Willie Nelson has dropped by on more than one occasion. Comedy acts Justin Wilson and Jerry Clower have also been through. And Pauly Shore filmed one of his MTV segments at the restaurant.
But it's the everyday people that have made the restaurant a "family affair," Hardin said.
There was the woman who used to stop in periodically and then quit coming for awhile.
"When she came back through, she told me that she would always stop here before heading to the prison to visit her son," Hardin said. "She had tears in her eyes when she told me that her son had died there. 'This place was my rock before I went down there,' the woman told me."
Another woman dropped in recently and also started crying.
"I hate to hear your news," Hardin remembers her saying. "This is the closest thing to my mama's table I've been to in a long time."
Hardin told her not to get started crying or she herself would be boohooing.
"It's hard to leave," Hardin told the woman. "You're going to have to get your own case of tissue because I'm going to be needing it."
Not surprisingly, Hardin and her husband, T.C., have grown close to some of their customers, and some of those friends have died along the way.
"We drove to Mobile awhile back to go to one's funeral," Hardin said.
Like many longtime restaurants, certain tables are "reserved" for morning gatherings of old- and young-timers who want a little spirited conversation with their eggs and grits.
"In the early days, it was farmers who raced to get here," she said. "My dad would always say that this should have been a beauty shop because so much gossip went on."
The food is decidedly Southern. Beans cooked to perfection. Mashed potatoes with butter. Turnip greens. Cheeseburgers and fries. Fried cornbread, like your grandma used to make.
"We buy fresh and local, so our greens and purple hull peas are from around here and our lettuce is fresh for our salads and doesn't come out of a plastic bag," Hardin said.
One customer, after hearing the place was closing, said he was sad to see it go but then added "I feel like I'm already losing weight just thinking about it," Hardin said.
Different days of the week have their own special entree. And the most anticipated day is "Pork Chop Tuesday," Hardin said.
In preparation for that weekly event, Hardin goes to a local grocer's meat market and buys the featured meat.
"John in the meat department at the grocery store has gotten to where he calls me Ms. Pork Chop," Hardin said. "I'm glad it's not Boston Butt."
Flora Price, who has been in the kitchen preparing all of the delicious offerings for almost 40 years, said the customer favorites are those pork chops "and my chocolate and coconut cream pie."
Price is 65 and she too is ready to retire -- at least for a bit.
"I may travel some," she said. "I've got a sister in Memphis and another sister in New York and brothers in Atlanta and Kansas City."
Asked if she would miss the job, Price sighed, and said that after that many years, leaving will be hard, but that she won't miss having to get to work at 6 a.m. and doing it seven days a week.
As many hugs and hanky moments as Hardin has had out on the restaurant floor, Price is getting quite a bit of attention as well.
"I want a hug," hollered customer Allison Stephens on a recent visit. "Flo, can I have a hug?"
Whatever Price was doing, she paused and came out of the kitchen and the two embraced.
Stephens, who is 44, said she had been coming into the restaurant "since I was a little girl." She also briefly waited tables there 15 years ago. Asked how she was taking the impending closure, she just shook her head.
"Oh, my God," Stephens said, pausing to maintain her composure. "It's a legacy. Me and this place go way back. They make you feel like family."
Another longtime employee is Patti Priest, who has been waiting tables, off and on, since she was 16. She's now 56.
Asked what she was going to do, she said she was unsure.
"You don't have to write it down because I don't know," she said. "I don't know if I'll stay in this line of work or do something a little lighter."
For now, she said, she would spend time with her ailing father.
"I'm going to give it to God, and he will tell me where to go. I guess everything changes whether we're ready or not. It's hard to say goodbye."
The fact that the restaurant has workers who can count their years of service in decades is, perhaps, a testament to how they have been treated over the years. When covid struck in early 2020, the restaurant, like all others, closed.
"At 2 p.m. on March 13, we locked up and walked away," Hardin said. "And we were closed for nine weeks."
But over those nine weeks, workers didn't miss a paycheck. And when the doors did open for carryout on June 3, business was quickly brisk again, even if customers weren't quite sure what to do with their food.
"I remember telling them, 'Honey, you've got to take it somewhere, but you can't take it inside here,'" Hardin said.
That "somewhere," in many instances, became the restaurant parking lot where customers would drop the tailgates on their pickup trucks and dine right then and there.
The relationship between the restaurant and many of its customers went beyond the simple ordering of food and the pleasantries along the way. When Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans in 2005, many people fled north, and Lavender's ended up feeding them and giving them gasoline, even if they had no money or no access to a bank. Months later, "thank you" cards came rolling in with testimonials of how much the help had been appreciated.
"I bought their meal," Hardin said. "We did that quite a few times. God led me to do that."
And then there are the older regulars.
"I call them my geriatrics," Hardin said with a laugh. "They come in here, God love 'em. One was on a walker."
What about the sausage? one of the seniors asked Hardin. How was he going to survive without the restaurant's good sausage?
"I said 'here's five pounds,'" Hardin said. "'That'll tide you over 'til you die."
The restaurant's motif, not surprisingly, plays off the elements of living in the country. There's a sign that advertises eggs for sale. And nailed to a rafter is a big saw one might use to cut down a big tree.
Not often, but occasionally, Hardin gets serious about the end of the era she created. The building is already sold to a business in Little Rock, and although Hardin said she wasn't sure what it will become, she figures it will likely be a convenience store.
The fact that it's not going to be a continuation of her restaurant "has gotten me a few cussings over the past few days," Hardin said, adding that she had tried to sell it to someone who would carry on her business.
"Restaurants around here are a thing of the past," she said. "One has to be here all of the time. And that's just too hard for most people. For us, it's time to start a new life."
As for her customers she's leaving behind, she said she wanted to express how much she cared for them.
"I want everybody to know what everyone has meant to me," she said. "They are like family, and they have meant a lot more than a dollar bill."
As Hardin finished her sentence, she reached into her pocket for a tissue.
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As a thank you to the restaurant's customers, the public is invited to a reception at the restaurant from 10:30 to 2:30 on Friday.
