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We're going to miss our Grannies'
By Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
We can't go to Grannies' anymore.

That is, we can't go to the Two Grannies' restaurant in Glen Rose, where two Texas grandmothers served up hearty "granny hugs" and home cooking on the courthouse square.
For six years, the two self-described "widow ladies" have been working 14-hour weekend days dishing up skillet-fried chicken and grandmotherly charm.
But "Granny" Gloria Whitley has retired at 77, too tired to go it alone after co-"Granny" June Thomas retired because of illness.
The Grannies were lonely Granbury widows when they decided to open a restaurant and start hugging every customer.
They wound up on NBC's Today and in Texas Monthly magazine, not only for their cooking but also for their hands-on style.
Now, both Grannies are plumb hugged out.
"When you're older than dirt, it's hard to run a restaurant," Whitley said this week.
Officially, the name of the restaurant is Two Grannies' Down-Home Cooking. It's for sale, including the recipes, the handmade quilts that cover the walls, the piano where guests plunked out gospel songs -- everything but the grandmothers jokingly known as Glen Rose's "grabbin' Grannies."
A hug was not optional.
"My family is all huggers," Whitley explained. "When I see somebody, I just have to hug 'em.
"I hug 'em whether they like it or not. Some of these gripey old men don't like it. I do it anyway, just to ruffle their feathers."
Whitley had been considering retirement all year, then lost an older sister in October.
"I'm just worn out," she said.
Across the street at the Somervell County Courthouse, coordinator Linda Puckett said that residents had been worried but that they kept going back for chicken and dumplings or homemade pies.
"You could tell she was tired," Puckett said by phone. "She was always friendly. But some days, you could just see it in her eyes."
Puckett summed up the intrinsic appeal of Two Grannies': "It was just exactly like going to your grandma's house. It had everything -- the decor, the food. Those ladies are just precious."
When Today travel reporter Peter Greenberg visited in 2003, he braced himself for a huge Whitley hug.
She smiled sweetly.
"Why don't you come back down and bring your family?" she said.
In a town known for steaks and barbecue, Two Grannies' drew city folks needing a getaway and families needing a stop on the way to Glen Rose's outdoor Christian musical drama, The Promise.
Lunch cost $7. Dinner went for $11.
"Our goal was to make people feel like they were really at Granny's house," Whitley said.
The cafe was decorated like a 1930s kitchen. Even the plates and silverware were unmatched settings arranged on the table the way Whitley's mother, Anna Mae Sullivan, set the table at their family farm near Lipan.
Three younger cooks handled most of the kitchen work, and Whitley and Thomas handled the customers.
When the restaurant closed, Whitley was still making soups every Thursday and the pot roast every Saturday.
She and Thomas were sitting around Granbury one day in 1990, bored and complaining about restaurant food, when they decided to give up retirement and go into business.
Whitley had worked for 18 years in the front office of a Granbury hospital, then ran a senior citizens agency. Thomas, a friend from the Granbury Church of Christ, had run a dress shop.
"I had no idea what it was like being a waitress," Whitley said. "But we both lived alone. We had lost our spouses. I was bored. We said, 'Let's open a restaurant and serve the kind of food that we were raised on.'"
A friend suggested the hugs.
"At the senior citizens center, I always hugged everybody because some people never get a hug," she said.
She and Thomas made the hugs their trademark. Originally, no customer could be seated until each granny scored a big hug.
That's what we'll miss most.
Nobody hugs at Chili's.
"At most restaurants, you're lucky if they say 'Hi' or even 'Thank you,'" she said.
Once, a corporate restaurant executive pitched her about selling a franchise, saying, "You have something the world needs."
"I can't see it," Whitley said. "Where would you go to hire grannies?"
On a typical weekend night, the dining room was filled with the laughter of children, the sound of the rinky-tink piano and the voice of Jack Burnham leading singalongs of Amazing Grace or I'll Fly Away.
"That's a memory that I will always cherish," Whitley said. "That was the sound of happiness."
Dozens of children -- and adults -- who had lost their grandmothers asked Whitley to adopt them. She always did.
"There were kids who came every week," she said. "They wouldn't eat anywhere but Grannies'."
In six years, she saw some of them grow from toddlers nearly to teenagers.
She didn't get to tell them goodbye. After Thanksgiving weekend, she was just too tired to reopen the restaurant doors.
Now, she said, "I can't go anywhere without someone hollering out, 'Hi, Granny!'
"I smile and wave back. And I have absolutely no idea who they are."
They're just kids who miss their Grannies'.

Bud Kennedy's column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 817-390-7538 bud@budkennedy.com

source: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/columnists/bud_kennedy/16255677.htm