Member-only story
My Sister’s Spa From Two Views
By Linda Shogren Prejean and Mary Lea Yeomans
Linda’s Perspective:
My first job was as a car hop at the Country Kitchen on 5th and King in LaCrosse, Wisconsin when I was in high school. I wore glasses then, and wore my hair in a shoulder length flip. A big responsibility when I wasn’t busy was taking the tops off the strawberries to be used in the restaurant’s famous strawberry pies, although in the 1960s, this was often the busiest place in town. I loved working there. One fortuitous day just after high school, Jim roared into town with California plates on his ’58 Chevy and after seeing me at my senior party would come to the Country Kitchen every day. The girls that I worked with would say, “He’s here for you, Linda, you go wait on him.” We hadn’t met yet, but we would meet soon after his arrival and seven months later, elope over the Mississippi Bridge to La Crescent, Minnesota where we could legally marry as teenagers.
Today, 56 years later, Jim and I live in Los Angeles. I come back to LaCrosse often to visit my older Sister, Mary Lea and drive by my favorite haunts. So when I sip coffee at The Cabin looking out onto the street on 4th and Jay, the memories come flooding back.
The older I get the busier I am. I’ve been a flight attendant, trained as a Marriage/Family Therapist and…
