If you want to experience a bit of old Portland before it vanishes, get to St. Johns and take a seat at Pattie’s Home Plate Café, which is closing this month after a 21-year-run.

Owner Pattie Deitz said she’s turning off the lights because the family that owns the building has it up for sale. Deitz said she has been operating on a short-term lease, and the news was not unexpected.

Portland was once filled with such places, neighborhood establishments where people came not only for the food, but for a bit of politics, sports and gossip, about what you’d find in a small-town hangout. Most of these places have vanished, pushed aside by chain restaurants or fancy-food spots that cater to sophisticated tastes.

That wasn’t Pattie’s, which features two curved Formica counters with stools for 12, what you’d see in a 1950s luncheonette. Sit there for your food, and you get to watch the cook work the grill.

“This was never a restaurant,” she said. “You know, steak dinners, blah, blah, blah, blah. We serve breakfast all day, have homemade biscuits and gravy, and hamburgers that are so big that at my age – I’m 74, by the way — I can’t finish one.”

She’s always been a walking-talking advertisement for the café.

“Our milk shakes are made with hard ice cream,” she said. “Our sodas are made with soda water and flavoring. And let me tell you, our banana splits are made the way they should be. That means three different flavors of ice cream.”

Deitz sought to create a café where everyone in the neighborhood was welcome, an establishment where someone could linger over a second, or third, cup of coffee.

She did all the cooking until 2004, when she suffered a stroke, forcing her to get some help at the grill. Even so, she couldn’t stay away from the place that is her home away from home.

She greets anyone who walks in the door, willing to stop what she’s doing for a good conversation. She keeps a community jigsaw puzzle set up on a table for anyone to work on. Pattie’s had a loyal clientele with some coming for breakfast each morning.

“Quite a few of the regulars have died,” she said. “But I still have 24 left.”

Deitz, who was raised in St. Johns and lives blocks from the café, bought it with her first husband in 1998 from the owner who had closed the operation because she had cancer. The place brought back memories. As a small girl, Deitz spent Saturdays at the counter where she enjoyed a soda. Given her background in food service – she’d managed restaurants and bars – buying the deli seemed a natural fit.

“It grew from there,” she said.

That it did.

Initially, she shared the space with two other small businesses in an open floor plan. When they closed, she took over the space. Not to expand the café operation, but to add what might best be politely called “stuff.”

She has VHS tapes, DVDs, books and magazines for sale. So, too fabric, sewing equipment and just about anything a person might want. To wander the space is to be reminded of a basement packed to the brim with things long forgotten. Starting in 1973, she sold Avon beauty products for women, making deliveries in St. Johns until it got too difficult.

“I have a section for Avon here now,” she said. “But I don’t push it much.”

Deitz is now selling everything.

“Ten cents on the dollar,” she said. “Then I’m going to get someone to haul it all away.”

Since Deitz announced the closure, customers have told her how much they loved the café.

Terry Jimenez has been coming to the café since it opened, calling it nostalgic and a “blast from the past.”

Denise Dawson said she came to Pattie’s to eat when her father shopped up the block.

“When I heard it was closing, I had to come back for one last burger,” she said. “Things came full circle.”

Dawson said in the past St. Johns wasn’t considered part of the heart of Portland. It was a world within a world, filled with people and places – like Pattie’s – that made it special.

“That old St. Johns is getting swallowed up,” she said.

Deitz senses it, too.

Her plan is to go out in style – serving meals from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 13.

“We will gather for one last hug,” she said. “One last cry.”

Pattie’s Home Plate Café is at 8501 N. Lombard St. in St. Johns.

--Tom Hallman Jr

thallman@oregonian.com; 503-221-8224

@thallmanjr

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