Johnny’s, bobby soxers, raging river mark Indian life By George W. Aguilar for The Chronicle Life at Celilo, 1920s – 1950: Almost half of a century has passed and Johnny’s Café of The Dalles finally went out of business in spring 2006. My visit to the restaurant was hampered by falling debris caused by construction workers; I soon learned it was being converted into a different retail business. The establishment finally succumbed as a casualty like the death of Celilo Falls 49 years prior. This restaurant catered to the Indians’ trade during the bustling days of the Celilo Falls era. The seating capacity of the café was filled daily; often there was a waiting line for a table. One time, a friend and I were in this restaurant. My friend made mention, “Watch them two guys over there, after they get through giving the impression of reading the menu, they will order a hamburger steak and a bottle of Pepsi Cola.” Unquestionably, that was the order. Abe and Minnie Show-a-way came to this restaurant every day, and even during the off season. On Feb. 5, 2007, while conversing with an elder about the remodeling of the building, Adeline Moses Miller remarked, “Whenever I was in The Dalles, that was the only place I went to eat.” It was the Indians’ eating place for many of the older people, even 49 years after the dam created the Celilo Lake. On the western side of the Celilo Falls Village, there was Hemlick’s general store, located on the Highway 30 that went right through the center of the Celilo Falls Village, and it was very busy during the fall salmon season. The featured menu special was the Columbia River Chinook salmon. In the late 1940s, the blaring juke box in this store attracted the Indian teenaged bobbysoxers with white T-shirts and their tight Levi pants, ruffled up a couple of times to expose the bright, white socks, They kept a toe-tapping beat to the big band music of Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. During the 1950s, Indian girls were often heard in a sing-along with the jukebox and car radios, singing through their noses to the recording of the cowboy singers Hank Williams and Ernie Tubbs. Incoming and Outgoing messages protected by Trend Micro PC-cillin program