BREEZEWOOD, Pa. -- The three women staffing the food lines and cash registers at the Post House Cafeteria one day last week have dedicated a combined 76 years of their lives to the place.

VWH Campbell, Post-Gazette
The Post House cafeteria and bus station will close tonight. The facility, built in 1964 for Greyhound bus lines, has been a main stopping point for charter buses traveling the turnpike.
Click photo for larger image.

They hadn't planned to leave the old-fashioned restaurant and rest stop for tourist buses -- where they can serve 300 students on a field trip in less than a half-hour -- until they retired.

Instead, the women and a few dozen other employees at the local landmark will be looking for work.

The Post House closes at 11 tonight after 41 years.

"I kind of figured I'd retire from here sometime, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen for us," said Sue Rush, 59, who's worked at the Post House for 20 years.

Aramark, the billion-dollar company that has operated the Post House since December 1998, has a lease that expires June 30. The property owners are selling the 48,800-square-foot restaurant, garage and surrounding 2.2 acres for $2 million, and Aramark isn't interested.

That leaves workers three days to empty the fountain-drink machines, trays, silverware, games and tables.

"We spend as much time here with each other as our own families," said Rush, who works mostly in the Post House gift shop, hawking candy, snacks and souvenirs. "It's like losing another family."

For the past week, as the women saw the regular bus drivers for the last time, they all hugged and said goodbye. Some of them, such as Nancy Gordon, who's worked at the Post House for 26 years, have been on the verge of tears.

At lunchtime on Wednesday, two buses stopped at the Post House. One was a charter from Fremont, Ohio, taking a church group on the nine-hour trip to Washington, D.C., for four days.

A Greyhound pit stop

The other was a Greyhound -- the company has 10 buses a day that have pulled in to the Post House.

VWH Campbell, Post-Gazette
Kenneth Samuels, driver for Coach USA, cleans the front windshield of his bus as his passengers eat and relax in the Post House.
Click photo for larger image.

"I'm kind of used to stopping here," said Edward Smith, driving a charter for Lakefront Lines. "A lot of drivers look forward to it after being on the road for a while."

One reason the Post House is so popular with bus drivers is its service garage. The buses can be refueled, washed and maintained while drivers grab lunch. On this day, the popular meal was fried chicken, whipped potatoes and gravy, corn, homestyle macaroni and cheese and spinach.

Shedrick Kye, the Greyhound bus driver, loves the Post House oatmeal cookies. He arrived there around noon Wednesday and would return the next morning at 9:30 on his way back through. "I haven't tasted anything in here that wasn't good," said Kye, of Cleveland. "It's going to be a real loss to the community and especially to Greyhound."

After the two buses cleared out Wednesday afternoon, there was no one left except the employees, who stayed busy using blue dishrags to wipe down counters, railings and tables.

"It's feast or famine," Rush said. There can be 300 students in the Post House at one minute, and the place is empty the next. "There's no place in Breezewood that can get them through as fast as we can." From March until June -- at the height of field-trip season -- she estimates they get 1,200 students per shift.

On Wednesday, a busload of children entered the Post House -- many stopping in the gift shop to buy snacks for the road.

One young girl stopped at the counter with a package of Heath Bites candy.

Rush turned to her: "$1.19, dear." A few minutes later, the same girl returned for another bag of the same candy. She said she was stocking up for the trip.

Rush likes waiting on children best. They're more apt to part with money -- they get it from their parents at the beginning of the trip and don't want to give any back -- and they're lively.

For the youngsters, popular items include toe rings, belly-button rings and T-shirts. For seniors traveling through on bus trips recently, the top items have been souvenirs related to the new World War II memorial in Washington, D.C.

'The Town of Motels'

Breezewood, with a faded sign proclaiming it the "Town of Motels" and the "Traveler's Oasis," boomed after the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940 with one gas station and the first traveler's stop, the Gateway Motel and Restaurant.

VWH Campbell, Post-Gazette
Jackie Howsare becomes tearful after receiving a pat on the back and farewell from Greyhound driver Chuck Allen, of Pittsburgh. Howsare, the Greyhouse agent at the Post House for 19 years, met her husband there. The Post House was built in 1964 for the bus line.
Click photo for larger image.

Now, though, "The Strip," as it's known to the 1,858 people in surrounding East Providence, has gone from a handful of motels and family restaurants to a constellation of chain hotels -- Holiday Inn Express, Comfort Inn, Econo Lodge -- and almost any fast food a person could desire.

James Bittner, assistant general manager for the Gateway Travel Plaza, attributes the boom in fast-food restaurants and the demise of family-style dining to modern travelers and their time constraints. "Family demographics are changing, and fast food is the norm," he said.

With 3.4 million vehicles exiting the turnpike through Breezewood in 2003, it's no wonder so many restaurants and gas stations were developed there. Travelers have to head through the town to get to Interstate 70 heading east into Maryland.

There have been attempts over the years to create a direct connection between the turnpike and the interstate, but opposition from residents and key politicians has kept it from happening.

The profusion of businesses competing to make their signs most prominent has overwhelmed the small Post House Cafeteria sign, with an arrow pointing up the hill.

From the outside, the red-brick, one-story Post House contrasts with the new, brightly lighted restaurants on the highway just below. It feels dated on the inside too.

Computer-generated, paper signs cover the doors and windows, announcing the specials for the day and the prices.

The dining room is divided into sections by large, stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the early days of Pennsylvania: a woman wearing a bonnet stoking a fire; a blacksmith in suspenders working a piece of metal.

Those walls separate rows and rows of wooden tables, many with slightly mismatched chairs and black plastic ashtrays. Smoking is permitted just about everywhere in the building, except a small area near the front door.

In an effort to entertain the children who pass through the doors, there's a room of arcade games, including the classic Ms. Pac-Man.

In an age of wireless communication, where it's sometimes difficult to find a single pay phone, the Post House offers a bank of them against the back wall.

Last-minute bargains

The only indication that the old cafeteria will close permanently tonight are the large "50 percent off" signs posted along the outside walls of the gift shop. In fine print, they say lots of items inside are not subject to the lower prices, including CDs, DVDs and some candy. Those can go back to the manufacturer.

Betty Lou Weicht, 47, has worked the longest inside the Post House Cafeteria. She started there at age 17 after she left a job at the Howard Johnson's because her hands were breaking out from the clam mix. She stopped at the Post House on a Wednesday, never expecting to be hired. She started two days later.

"We all said we wouldn't last," Weicht said. "You talk. You say you're going to go somewhere else, but you don't."

And all of a sudden, three decades have passed.

"We're not really mad," she said about the closing. "It's just a sad situation."

Debbie Albert, a spokeswoman for Aramark, said the Post House was hurt significantly by a lag in tourism after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "It just hasn't been profitable," she said.

Post House employees are hopeful a buyer could still come along and save the old place.

"They say anything might happen," Weicht said. "So we're sort of waiting it out."

First Published: June 27, 2004, 4:00 a.m.