Niam's Parkette: Now only a happy memory

The newspaper photos of the demolition of the old building on Locust Street was a melancholy epilogue to the colorful Niam Era in downtown Akron.  The imposing red brick structure that housed Niam's Parkette  - a Runyonesque daytime eatery that lured   characters from across political, social and class lines simply because the food was decently prepared even if one was not always prepared for the next intense encounter ignited by heart-felt disagreement over whether the coach or an official had contributed to a loss by the Notre Dame football team.

Ed Niam, pater familias of all things sports in his circle  of patrons, was not easily persuaded by those who questioned his authoritative version of the game since he had long  adopted the Fighting  Irish as one of its scouts after his childhood buddy
Ara Parseghian was named the coach. Soon afterward, an overhead glass  case stretching the length of the booths began displaying  the team's memorabilia. A Notre Dame headgear, suspended from the ceiling, wafted above the  cash register.  You get the picture. Ed Niam was not a man of modest loyalties.

As one of the diner's  regulars,  I met my dentist there.  I met my urologist there. I lunched with physicians, lawyers, bookies, politicians, coaches, cops and guys that I didn't dare ask their lines of work.

But by the mid-1990s, after nearly a half-century  of serving as a highly informal  lunchtime  showplace  for people needing a boisterous break from the office, the diner began to constrict the pace, the humor, the old-time theatrics.  Ed Niam, 75 and stricken with a failing heart, died just before Christmas, 1996. His tireless wife, Gerrie,  who labored at the grill for ages to guarantee the customers a hot meal, hung on for awhile with the aid of a son  but the end came for her last July. (By then the diner had already  housed two other tenants,   Meeker's Kitchen and Wally Waffle.) The building's owner, Paul Salem,  Gerrie's brother, sold the building  to Children's Hospital,which will replace it with a Critical Care Tower.

But the memories will persist with the ghost of Ed Niam thumbing through his football "spot cards" to pick the winners of the week end football games  while people waited at his station at the cash register to pay their bills.   Somewhere in the hospital's new digs, there ought to be a tribute to what went on in an earlier life.

Niam's Parkette - memories remain vivid

The recent word that Wally Waffle  was moving from its Locust Street  home to a  spot in Highland Square would hardly have deserved more than a passing glance in the ways of Akron eateries.  Restaurants seem to open and close somewhere every day.  But even as routine as it sounds, Wally Waffle's departure will mark the epilogue of the story at the old place that, for some of us, at least, was a hometown landmark  that began more than a half-century ago as Niam's Parkette.

The place, as nurtured by Ed and Gerrie Niam,  was a breakfast -and-light-lunch haven that opened at dawn, a shrine to Notre Dame, a hangout for some of the town's most colorful characters with improbable stories,  bookies, cops, business types, Amishmen, lawyers, and if I'm not mistaken, urologists,  dentists and a guy who made all of the orange barrels that we are forced to navigate on Ohio's highways. Other than arriving in Eddie's presence at the same time with the same sworn-to truths  every day, the Parkette denizens were not a homogenous group of human beings.

It was a place that would have qualified for one of  A. J. Liebling's loving essays on  the assembly of New Yorkers who could be encountered at any number of out-of-the-way storefronts in the 1930s.  Casual, often with matters in dispute, it was a retreat safely out of the way  of buttoned-down social niceties,  a place where you could talk to somebody by raising your voice from several booths away.

But over the years, the little restaurant was turned over to a series of managers and Ed and Gerrie passed on.  A few years ago, the long-time owner of the building, Paul Salem,  Gerrie's brother, sold it outright to Akron Children's Hospital , which wanted it  for its expansion plans.

It's  said that nothing lasts forever -- unless you were part of the thinning  Parkette gang.   It's not only the stories we could tell about the place.  It's the stories we still want to tell.



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