toledoblade.com --

FORT WAYNE, Ind. - Cindy's Diner is not what you'd call a spacious restaurant. In fact, with an interior of less than 400 square feet, there's no room for tables, and the only seating is the vinyl-topped stools along its L-shaped red Formica counter.

But that seemed to matter not a bit to the breakfast crowd that was perched elbow-to-elbow at the counter on a recent Sunday morning. Only a few of the 15 stools were unoccupied.

As the three of us entered, several people seated on the stools looked up at us, then checked for vacancies along the counter. Without a word, they grabbed their plates, silverware, and coffee cups and scooted down a seat or two so there would be room for us.

"Hey, thanks a lot," I said to no one in particular.

"No problem," replied a young man in a denim jacket. "We've all been on the other end before."

"Yeah," chimed in an older gentleman a few spots down. "One time I started in the middle of the counter, and by the time I was done I was all the way down at the far end, around the corner."

"You could have kept on moving, right out the window," joshed a genial gray-haired man in a white apron who was bent over the grill across the counter. Our fellow patrons chuckled.

The wisecracking short-order cook turned out to be John Scheele, who with his wife Cindy owns and operates the cozy little eatery, which has been an institution in this mid-sized northeast Indiana city for more than half a century. A few years back, the city even declared it a historic landmark.

The restaurant's current location at the corner of Wayne and Harrison streets is the third spot it's occupied in Fort Wayne since being purchased in 1952 from a Kansas factory that specialized in building "portable steel sandwich shops" - a.k.a. diners.

These narrow, prefabricated, easily moved structures could once be found in thousands of cities and towns across the country, before the advent of franchised fast-food restaurants. They were often Mom-and-Pop operations whose personalities reflected those of their owners and patrons, and there are precious few of them around any more.

The diner that's now called Cindy's was initially owned by a man named Noah Clauss, who dubbed it Noah's Ark. Over the years the place changed ownership and names several times before finally closing in 1987, when it was known as Marge's Diner.

After standing empty for a few years, the diner was put up for auction in 1990. Scheele, who at the time owned a local construction company, thought his wife might like operating the place. Cindy had owned a fabric store, but sold it to care for her ailing father. A small diner, thought John, would still allow her time to look after her dad.

"He told me his idea, and that he thought the diner should stay in Fort Wayne for nostalgia's sake," Cindy recalled. "I said, 'Why don't we talk about this later?' But we never did talk about it. We just went ahead and did it."

Three days later, the couple bought the diner at auction, and John had it moved temporarily to a location owned by his construction company. He soon moved it to its current downtown corner, and on Oct. 1, 1990, the newly re-christened Cindy's Diner opened for business, serving breakfast and lunch.

Initially it was open only on weekdays, but patrons soon asked for weekends too, and the Scheeles obliged. It wasn't long before the couple realized that their idea of hands-off ownership wasn't going to fly.

"We hired people to run it," Cindy said, "but that didn't work out so well. We were coming in every morning at 6 a.m." John eventually closed his construction business and took over primary cooking duties, while Cindy ran the counter. Now, he said, people know him as "Mr. Cindy."

Most of the diner's small staff these days is made up of family members. With 3 children, 20 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren, there's a steady supply of labor available.

The dcor at Cindy's is all stainless steel, chrome, and porcelain, and the retro atmosphere is bolstered by the jukebox consoles full of '50s and '60s tunes that are spaced along the counter. On the wall near the grill is an autographed photo of Fort Wayne native Drake Hogestyn, an actor who has starred for more than 20 years on the TV soap opera Days of Our Lives and who drops in for a bite whenever he's home for a visit.

Wonderful scents of bacon, coffee, French toast, and sausage fill the air. There hasn't been a whiff of cigarette smoke in Cindy's for close to a decade. The place went nonsmoking in 1998, a full two years before the city enacted its own restaurant smoking ban.

The menu includes such staples as omelets, biscuits with sausage gravy, fried bologna, breaded pork tenderloin, and the diner's signature dish, a breakfast entre inelegantly labeled "Garbage," which is a big pile of eggs, potatoes, ham, cheese, and onions all raked together on the grill, then shoveled onto a plate.

Other customer favorites are "Mr. Cindy's" freshly baked pies and the doughnuts that are made in a vintage machine that the Scheeles salvaged from a landmark downtown department store when it closed several years ago.

A large number of the diner's patrons are regulars - "Probably 85 percent of them we know by their first names," Cindy said - and they include students, businessmen, cops, lawyers, construction workers, and researchers using the nearby library's world-class genealogical collection.

Plenty of out-of-towners find their way to Cindy's, too. A dog-eared guest book has been signed by patrons from every state, as well as foreign countries from China to Iran to South Africa to Russia.

It isn't just the hearty and inexpensive food that keeps folks coming back to Cindy's - dropping by the diner is like visiting the home of some favorite relatives. Patrons swap news, rumors, and jokes with John and Cindy, and with each other. Packed in so tightly, it's next to impossible not to eavesdrop on nearby conversations, and people don't hesitate to jump right in.

When I had trouble deciding what to order, a man in a camouflage jacket seated a few stools down helpfully made up my mind for me. "If you've never been here before," he said, "you've gotta have the Garbage."

The motion was seconded by his companion. "It's not your basic health food," she said, "but it'll sure keep you full 'til dinner."

Over the years, Cindy's has been much more than a place to eat for the people of Fort Wayne. "We've had parties here, people get engaged here, a movie made here (a 1997 indie film called In the Company of Men), even had a wedding here," Cindy said. For the nuptials, 25 guests managed to squeeze in, along with the minister and the bride and groom.

I asked John how many customers he serves in a week and, after pausing a second, he replied, "All of them."

When the laughter from the customers who overheard this exchange died down, John clarified his answer a bit for the visiting writer. Cindy's goes through about 90 dozen eggs a week, he said.

"But not everybody orders eggs," he added.

The diner's slogan, printed on a sign that hangs from the ceiling, might only be a bit of an exaggeration: "We serve the Whole World … 15 at a time."

Cindy's Diner, 830 South Harrison St. in Fort Wayne, is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Neither credit cards nor checks are accepted.

Mike Kelly is a retired Blade travel writer.

Contact him at: kelly.writer @yahoo.com

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