Rosie Always Sunny Side Up At Casey’S

She’ll never win the Nobel Prize. But who among us would suggest that Rosie Brunner hasn’t served humanity with award-winning aplomb?

A chuckwagon of chicken fried steaks. A simmering sea of soups du jour. A jolly green valley of veggies.

Coffee? Forget about it.

Rosie’s poured enough java to make a small nation jump, jive and wail.

For 37 years, this rail-thin woman with her trademark gawdy earrings and Grand Canyon smile has been the real main course at Casey’s Bar and Grill, 2126 N. Monroe.

“Oh, Lord, I’ve probably carried several million coffee cups,” says the 74-year-old Spokane waitress. “I’ve walked halfway to someplace. Timbuktu, maybe.”

Years ago, Rosie strapped one of those little mileage counters to a leg. At the end of an eight-hour shift the thing showed she had walked 15 miles.

But though Rosie can still sling hash better than pups a quarter her age, her long run ended Friday. The landmark business, opened in 1946 by K.C. Oxrieder, closed its doors.

It should be mentioned, however, that this isn’t Casey’s first finale.

The restaurant shut its doors back in 1986. Then it reopened two weeks later under the management of an employee who took a lease.

Union members cried foul. They picketed the place, claiming the arrangement was a “sham” designed to oust them. The protest eventually fizzled and Casey’s carried on.

This ending looks like the real deal.

A glum Frank Lewis, who bought Casey’s lease in 1991, believes his meat-and-taters restaurant was done in by surrounding fast food joints and the altered habits of the eating public.

“The area here has changed,” he says. “People just aren’t coming and sitting down in a family restaurant like this.”

In its salad days, Casey’s was a hopping concern. Rosie remembers Easter Sundays when customers would be lined up, fidgeting for a table.

Friday morning’s last hurrah was about as well attended as a derelict’s funeral. But the melancholy few who came to breakfast had nothing but praise for Rosie and the grub.

“All of the old people who used to come in with me have passed away. We lost three or four of them this year,” says Maury Haines, 64, a Casey’s customer for four decades.

Rosie plans to take the summer off and rest her overtaxed feet. She hasn’t ruled out another waitressing gig somewhere else.

Like bartenders, waitresses see it all: the slobs and saints of humankind. Rosie, her fans claim, has greeted them all with a wink and a smile.

“I started out as a dishwasher,” she explains. “Then I decided I wanted to get out and meet the people.”

Rosie is a throwback, one of those extroverts who loves to banter with the customers. With fondness she recalls one joker who poured ketchup on her arm as she passed him a plate.

That’ll get you a salad fork stuck in your ear in most places.

Kidding was always a give-and-take with Rosie. Once when a regular kept complaining his bacon wasn’t hot enough, Rosie obliged. She brought him bacon doctored with Tabasco sauce.

“He didn’t complain again,” she says.

While walking to work one day, Rosie slipped and hit the pavement hard. After she finished a six-hour shift, she went to a doctor who told her she’d fractured her knee.

“If I ever put an all-Madden team together she’s the starting linebacker,” says the owner’s son, Jason Lewis, 21, who helped manage Casey’s.

Yes, there is no joy on this corner of North Monroe. Mighty Casey’s has struck out.

“We all have our problems, but I never came to work to talk about mine,” says Rosie on her waitress philosophy. “I liked the people I worked for. I liked the customers I served. I could never think of a reason to leave.”