When Living History Leaves

Lamb's Grill, 169 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, Utah

Things change. That is just the way life is with us and the things around us. We are in continual “flux” in regard to the world. The result is that history is made; both personally and communally.

Writing this article has been one of the most difficult I have ever written. I am not completely sure why it has been, but I have started, scrapped, restarted, and scrapped it again. I have left it alone for days and come back to it with fresh eyes only to stare at the screen unsure of what to say.

Then I remembered something. When writing, always lead with the head and the heart will soon follow. It is the ultimate resolution to conflict.

The academic part of my brain says to me that history is not an emotional thing. It is just a set of factual happenings strung together by circumstance and time. The emotional part of my brain, however, says that I am to feel my way through what I discover about the past in my surroundings. Especially when I have an attachment to it.

That last is the case with this particular writing. At the heart of my desire to know the past that surrounds me are places where I have experienced living history. Yes, living history, where the past can be touched, breathed, and taken in.

Recently I walked south on Main Street in downtown Salt Lake City and came across a very sad sight. It seemed strange to me that my breath would be taken away by a change like this one, but it did. A long-time establishment, Lamb’s Grill (Lamb’s Cafe to some), which opened in 1919 in Logan, Utah, and moved to Main Street in Salt Lake City in 1939 (Lamb’s Grill Closes — but not forever, owners hope, Kathy Stephenson, The Salt Lake Tribune, May 1, 2017), was closed and the space up for lease.

A piece of me broke when I took in the darkened cafe behind the large storefront windows. Two very prominent signs, “Sorry, We’re Closed” and “Available”, sent me into a type of mourning. I was broken, because it was in this place that I discovered that pieces of history could be lived. I doubt I will ever find another place such as this to relive those historical pieces and parts of Salt Lake City. It was a place where change and time appeared halted and history seemed accessible. And now, it was gone.

That is the way it is with change. All things must come to an end, but in some things, we hope they last much longer than others. It was sad to see, and I think for those of us who frequented Lamb’s Grill, something of the city we love died with this particular change.

My first experience with Lamb’s Grill came in 1989 when I was just learning that I loved the study of history. From the first moment I entered the cafe I knew it was a very special place. Not because of its food, or drink, or desserts, but because of its atmosphere, and service, and history. No doubt the food was good. I long for their liver and onions, and I truly dislike liver and onions.

Many times, I sat at the long hardwood coffee bar, ate and drank, thinking about the long past the place held for the City of Salt Lake. It was a complete throwback to an earlier time when people dressed up to attend breakfast, lunch, or dinner. White linen table clothes and napkins adorned the tables complimenting the white porcelain coffee cups and saucers; the cups turned upside down, their lips nestled to the grooves of the matching, fitted saucers.

Small crystal vases usually held a single flower set neatly on the tables, and near the wall in each booth. In each booth, the table was lit by a small single lamp attached to the wall inside them. It made the small space, where two or four could sit, intimate as a bulb glowed a warm yellow through an ancient, frosted glass lamp shade. The booths had a brass hat and coat rack attached to their backs completing the look of what once was — only displayed for us in the here and now.

For me, it always seemed I was stepping back to a place and time when men showed others respect by removing their hats when they came in from outside. When those same men helped their ladies out of a coat and allowed her to sit first, even pulling a chair out, so she could sit with ease.

How many times did I imagine Cary Grant or Bing Crosby or Fred Astaire types, “dressed to the nines”, breezing through the front door after pretty ladies they acted, danced, and starred with in those films of old? Too many. It was Lamb’s Grill that brought these images alive in my mind.

Too much imagination in the realm of the fake and made up? Absolutely. But, at the heart of what I imagined every time I sat down in Lamb’s was the reality that those types of people and scenes really existed in a bygone age. Lamb’s really was a piece of living history harkening back to what long ago was like.

More than this, I believe, the place inspired me to want to know more about the past — more about our history. A past founded in reality and not those fanciful thoughts I had sitting at the coffee counter.

There were many times when I sat at breakfast or lunch watching local businessmen and women enter the place. Sometimes I knew them on sight from a television commercial. Sometimes I did not know who they were, but I knew the price of the suit, outfit, or shoes they were wearing. These were enough to tell me that deals were likely to made that day.

Even a Latter Day Saint (LDS Church) authority, or two, was spotted there on occasion. I always thought that odd, because Lamb’s was not just known for their dining experience, but drinking experience. But, why I would be surprised by that? Even people who run churches have to eat. I will say this, I do not remember ever seeing one of those authorities there when I dined for dinner. The lounge scene came alive some nights and the bar served quite a variety of cocktails.

I cannot begin to imagine the list of historical deals that may have been made as people dined there since 1939. At least, I cannot outside of my own experiences. More recently, I did not see the usual power suit attendance at the old place. It may be that I just was not there when they were. It could be that the place did not hold the same power lunch attraction as it neared the end of it’s life.

According to a Salt Lake Tribune article (noted above) new ownership recently mismanaged their liquor license with the State of Utah, and I assume they may have mismanaged other things too. Whatever the cause, Lamb’s Grill was not able to stay open.

It is a sad thing when living history like the Lamb’s Grill leaves us. We long for it when it is gone and wish we would have spent more time exploring and experiencing it when it was available to us. With change, sometimes a part of us dies and we are left with just the memories of a thing. That is a part of studying history too. Without memories, and access to those memories, there is no history.

There is always hope that Lamb’s Grill will reopen, but if it does it will not be the same place it was. Apparently, it will not occupy the same space either. As I said, it is up for lease. Pieces and parts of it are being sold off and I believe it is almost impossible to recapture those pieces and parts that history touched once they are in the hands of collectors.

I had to walk north on Main Street to return the way I came. On the way, I lingered a little longer than I did on my walk south. I took in all I could as I stared into the darkened cafe and then looked up and down the street around me. There was so much change to the Main Street I have known in the time I have lived here. I know it to be a place in “flux”, and I fear it ever will be.