Cumberland Twp. – Everybody is someone at the Junction Deli.
“We know what they want when they walk through the door,” said George Lewis, who, along with his wife Annie, made the little breakfast and lunch diner an oasis for blue-collar workers at Bailey’s Crossroads on Route 21.
“We know them on a first-name basis,” he said of the deli’s patrons. “Everybody here is close knit. We want to keep it that way.”
On a wet and chilly morning in late February, Annie, his wife of 42 years, wasn’t feeling well and stayed home.
A disabled Vietnam veteran; he enlisted the help of their son and daughter-in-law, George and Misty Lewis, who were the cooks that day. They brought their children Kaitlyn, 12, and Dylan, 9, whose boundless energy added another element to days work.
“We don’t mind. We’re always here,” said Misty Lewis. Her husband George had the day off from his job as lieutenant in the township police department.
They got some voluntary help from friend Brad Ruse of Carmichaels.
“Ann’s not here. They need help,” Ruse said as he was carrying a breakfast order to a customer seated at a table and keeping an eye on Kaitlyn and Dylan as they played video games.
Upon opening at 5 a.m. on weekdays, the deli becomes a crossroads for a parade of area workers.
Miners, truck drivers, prison guards, gas well workers and state and local police who stop in to eat breakfast or buy a breakfast sandwich to take on the road and buy hoagies for their lunches cross paths with those looking to relax over a hot meal on their way home from working midnight shifts.
Other workers stop in throughout the day to buy beverages to take with them as they proceed with their charges. Area farmers are also familiar faces at the Junction.
“We’re here when they go through,” George Lewis said. “We know everybody and his uncle.”
Lewis and his makeshift crew chat with the deli’s loyal customers as well as the bread vendor without missing a beat during the fast-paced morning.
The breakfast bustle subsides just long enough for a short break before they prepare for lunch.
Fish sandwiches were the special that day, but customers had to ask to find out because someone neglected to write it on the menu board.
“When Annie’s not here, things don’t get done,” George Lewis said.
The unobtrusive exterior belies the pace inside the deli.
At first glance, a large red, white and blue Sept. 11, 2001, flag featuring stars and stripes that hangs on the back wall of the dining area seems out of place in the unpretentious decor.
A closer look reveals many other decorations that reflect the Lewises patriotic spirit, which they share with area veterans.
Vets and their spouses get free breakfast every Veterans Day.
He said donations from vendors, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3491 in nearby Carmichaels and the Wal-Mart in Waynesburg help make the giveaway possible.
Girls from a local dance studio help by volunteering as hostesses and waitresses, and others volunteer to deliver breakfasts to veterans who aren’t able to travel to the deli, he said.
“It means so much to the veterans,” said Annie Lewis, who was back at her familiar post in the kitchen after a couple days rest.
“Many of them don’t have anybody. If I was down to my last 50 cents in this store, I’d still find a way pull it off.”
The Lewises also invite veterans to fish in the pond on their nearby farm every Independence Day.
To an outsider, the affability the Lewises have with customers makes it seem like they have been running the deli for decades. However, they left their catering business five years ago to lease the property from the owners, the Kamenos family, she said.
It had been run as more of a convenience store by the previous operators and the operators were willing to wait for the Lewises to wrap up their previous business affairs to begin running the shop as an old-time diner. “That’s what they wanted,” she said.
The wooden floor in part of the building is from the original business, Joe’s Service Station, which the Kamenos family bought in 1947, she said.
They converted it into a diner, but the next operator used it as a small supermarket.
After that, it became a diner again — and that’s when the name Junction Deli first appeared on the building.
, Annie Lewis said.
She said the catering business was successful, but it required a lot of traveling.
“We were looking for something a tab bit simpler and we’re close to home. This is our community and we want to be part of it,” she said.
Under the Lewis’s watch, the deli is part convenience store with a handful of shelves of merchandise and a couple refrigerators for the soda and other bottled drinks they sell, but the diner business is the heart of the operation.
“I deeply care about what I do. If that egg isn’t perfect or I’m one (French) fry short, I feel bad,” Annie Lewis said.
“I still sell 50-cent coffee because I care. You have to learn that if you want repeat business, you have to care.
“Don’t look at the surroundings. I don’t care if you come in here in muddy boots.”