The cafe's one of four places in-village where I can sate my tapeworm when I get hungry.
For breakfast?
It's always Sandy's Book Nook & Bakery, where on any given morning I can sing the praises of one of Sandy's freshly-baked blueberry muffins.
If I'm really, really lucky, she'll plop down a warm blackberry & black strap molasses bundt cake onto the counter for me to drool over.
On the infrequent occasion I wander into the village for dinner, I alternate between Doc Huntington's or The Porch.
Both restaurants (each one does a land office business for a town of less than 1500 people by the way) prepare locally raised meats and locally-grown produce.
Doc's New England Chicken Pot Pie has stolen my heart while The Porch's rack of lamb is, well, to die for. (There I go again. lapsing into Valley Girl parlance and ending a sentence with yet another preposition.)
But let's return to my fave lunch haunt, The Rochester Cafe ...
Steve and Sue opened The Cafe about eighteen years ago with a notion to vend ice cream, sundaes, and soda pop -- again featuring dairy and soda products manufactured by Vermont artisans.
I won't bore you by laboring the point, except to say that their ice cream is excellent.
Plus the varieties of soda flavors they offer boggles my imagination: peach, blackberry, birch beer, root beer, boysenberry, strawberry -- you get the picture.
By and by the couple kicked off their luncheon trade featuring an eclectic menu of sandwiches and salads which Steve prepares in combinations heretofore unknown to man or woman.
On this particular lunch day, I decided upon the Daily Special, the Reubin Pannini.
I opted for all the fixings -- grilled, caramelized onion, fresh field green topped off by a slice of Big Boy and melted Swiss cheese. I requested that they hold off on the thousand islands sauce.
I also ordered up a peach soda to wash everything down.
The Cafe occupies space in one of the village's oldest Victorian-era commercial buildings. Back in 1878, a pharmacist named Swain ran an apothecary within the premises.
A bit later, he expanded operations into Dry Goods and Sundries.
As is in the case of many local families, sons and daughters kept this enterprise going over the years. Then, one day in the early Spring of 1947, someone in the Swain Clan saw an ad for a Soda Fountain in a trade mag.
He or she must have believed that a nice soda fountain was just what the Village of Rochester wanted and needed at the time.
This particular soda fountain, in addition to having the usual stainless-steel soda jerks and cherry trays, featured a black, marble counter top and six patron stools upholstered in ebony vinyl.
The Swain's soda fountain quickly became a habitual morning and noon gathering place.
The town clerk, village elders, the sheriff, plus the local business community, lumbermen and farmers who eked out their existence in this neck of the White River Valley, elbowed their way to the counter for their morning cup of coffee and dose of gossip.
Time passed. Then one magically warm and humid day, according to local lore, in mid-afternoon in the Month of July, 1947, a black Ford pulled into an open space on Main Street.
A man in his early 50s with well-cropped and whitening hair, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, entered the soda shoppe. He plopped down in the fifth stool from the left.
He then ordered a Coke -- which, according to the Old Timers, disappeared in a gulp.
He ordered another, and sat there in his silence, on the stool. He sipped at this one and he seemed as though he was lost in a mind-world of his own making.
The stranger's contemplative side did not go un-noticed by the handful of villagers who idled away their time on that particular sultry, mid-summer afternoon.
They concluded that this Flatlander must have been a lawyer, or a newspaperman, thirsting, cruising through town on his way back to White River Junction or points beyond.
Being Vermonters, the regular crew left the stranger to his musings -- that is, until the high school-age kid working behind the fountain decided to strike up some polite conversation.
"Where're you from," he asked.
"Oh, New Hampshire -- I mean, right now, I'm staying over at Bread Loaf for the next few weeks. I'm one of the writing instructors that Middlebury College brings in each year, to teach young folks like you how to write."
"Ah, the Writing Conference. I've heard lots about it," the kid said.
Noticing that his cup of Coke was about drained, the stranger said to the kid:
"Would you be so kind as to pour me another Coke, please?"
"By the way, my name is Robert Frost."
Thus began a mutual admiration society. Once word got around town that one of America's greatest poets enjoyed a twice-a-week, 16 mile drive from Bread Loaf to the village, the locals did all they could to make him feel right at-home as he sat at the counter, alternating between the stools on any given day.
On his part, Frost used the occasions to connect with ordinary, common folk who pride themselves in the Vermont-style sense of independence, infused by a love for the valley and a fierce appreciation for the ruggedness of the land.
A member of the Harvey Clan (7th generation Vermont) seemed to remember that Robert Frost stopped coming into Rochester when he ended his affiliation with Bread Loaf.
Age and infirmity caught up with him.
That would have been, say, after the Summer of 1963... eh-yough.
Yet, today, if we are to recall anything about the poems penned by Robert Frost, we must remember "The Road Not Taken."
I re-print it for your enjoyment herewith:
| TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, | |
| And sorry I could not travel both | |
| And be one traveler, long I stood | |
| And looked down one as far as I could | |
| To where it bent in the undergrowth; | 5 |
| Then took the other, as just as fair, | |
| And having perhaps the better claim, | |
| Because it was grassy and wanted wear; | |
| Though as for that the passing there | |
| Had worn them really about the same, | 10 |
| And both that morning equally lay | |
| In leaves no step had trodden black. | |
| Oh, I kept the first for another day! | |
| Yet knowing how way leads on to way, | |
| I doubted if I should ever come back. | 15 |
| I shall be telling this with a sigh | |
| Somewhere ages and ages hence: | |
| Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— | |
| I took the one less traveled by, | |
| And that has made all the difference. | 20 |
The Harvey I mentioned earlier claims Robert Frost grew weary of the Middlebury crowd.
So, on one warm July afternoon in the year of 1947, he steered his Ford to the left to Rochester, instead of to the right in the direction of the Town of Middlebury.
That made all the difference.
POSTSCRIPT
The Pastrami that graced my Reubin Pannini came from a locally grown, organically-fed steer free-ranged in a part of Rochester known as North Hollow.
Not one trace of fat got in the way of the inch-thich mound of beef's succulent flavor which, I am surmising, was infused by a mysterious concoction of garlic, gill, herbs and just a hint of pepper & salt.
Yes, it actually melted in my mouth.
No, you will never find anything equalling it, in quality, served in a New York deli.
PS #2
If and when you're in this neck of the woods, you, too, can sit in a stool where Robert Frost enjoyed soda-jerked Cokes many years ago.
If you want the fifth stool on the left at the soda fountain within the Rochester Cafe, take it -- that is, if I'm not sitting there.
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