JUST IN TIME
‘Like a mother’
}} Remembering the Olympia Tea Room’s Eudoxia “Ma” Tozios
The late autumn of 1945 has ushered in the usual changes in scenery and weather, with scarlet maple leaves and blustery days once more becoming the norm throughout Ontario. Since the return of peace in Europe and other parts of the world a month or two previous, the citizens of Lindsay have happily gone about their business on Kent Street; the burden of wartime anxieties are lifted. Shopkeepers and restaurateurs alike are looking forward to what this new age of postwar prosperity will bring. Halfway between Cambridge and William Streets, on the north side of Lindsay’s main drag, is the Olympia Tea Room — a favourite haunt of Jim Mackey and his chums from Lindsay Collegiate Institute, as the town’s high school is known. They have gathered around a table and are awaiting one of the famous David Harum sundaes, so named after a popular American novel. Jim has happily parted with two dimes in exchange for the chocolate David Harum; one of the other chaps has settled on the fruit David Harum, also 20 cents. A third has selected the ostentatious club house sundae, a delectable-looking affair which costs a whopping 40 cents! Yet another friend of Jim’s can’t seem to make up his mind, weighing the merits of a bottle of Coke and a cherry-flavoured ice cream soda. From the kitchen wafts the sizzling smell of grilled lamb chops (65 cents) and other entrees. A colourful Wurlitzer jukebox fills the restaurant with the strains of Till the End of Time, Eleven Sixty P.M., and other
IAN McKECHNIE
popular hits. Through the large picture windows, patrons watch a 1928 Ford navigate its way into one of the angled parking spaces in front of the Olympia. Stepping out of its rumble seat is yet another couple of Jim Mackey’s friends from L.C.I. They are bound for an adjacent table. A few more orders for David Harums and ice cream sodas will be written up. A real party is taking shape. Presiding over this scene from her place behind the white counter is a dark-haired woman in her late thirties. Clad in black and white, she is taking orders, ringing cash through a register, answering a persistently-clanging telephone, and glaring disapprovingly at two waitresses busily chattering to
“Ma” Tozios and son, Tom Tozios
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