Cafe stands as testament to town, time.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

SHEDD - I'm only halfway through my breakfast Friday morning at the Shedd Cafe when I realize it: I've stumbled upon a lost tribe.

There's no suit-and-cell-phone crowd here, cramming down franchise specials while racing off to palm-pilot appointments. Instead, a handful of 70-plus men in plaid shirts and farm caps sit at one table. Mostly 70-plus women sit at another, each group melded by stories thicker than biscuits and gravy.

"This place is a cross between `Ozzie & Harriet' and `The Twilight Zone,' ' says John Huddleston, who runs the lone restaurant in this unincorporated town on Highway 99 East, about 30 miles north of Eugene.

For starters, these folks own the place. Yep, a few years back, when the cafe owner died and the locals were faced with no place to go for coffee, 21 of them pooled their bucks and bought it for $60,000, then leased the restaurant to Huddleston.

"We had to," says 78-year-old Darrell Dannen. "This is all that's left of Shedd."

The cafe is a vanilla box decorated in vintage-car models, Coca-Cola posters and American flags: heavy on ryegrass farmers and Beaver believers; light on ties, heels and Ducks.

"It's like an old whittlin' bench where guys gather to talk," says Lee Chandler, whose husband, Richard, is known as "The Colonel."

She's virtually the lone Duck fan. "We let one in just to say we're integrated," quips Don Wirth, a farmer in knee-high rubber boots.

The history in the Shedd Cafe lingers like the smell of bacon. "They bring in pictures of themselves when they were in fifth-grade together," says Huddleston. "Or talk about the time a barnstormer came through town and they got free rides."

Most grew up, and still live, within a dog's bark of the cafe. Dannen's house was built by Frank Shedd himself, a Union army captain in the Civil War whose land claim gave birth to the town named in his honor.

"Do I live around here?" says 95-year-old Vernon Roberts. "Oh, no." But time and distance mean different things to these folks than to most. "I'm from Peoria." That's five miles away.

In the same way, Barbara Lewis calls herself a newcomer. "I've only been here 40-some years."

A while back, a customer was lamenting that he was feeling his age - 73. "That's nothin'," said Roberts. "I've been married long as you've been alive." It's true. He met his wife, Ruth, in one-room Shedd High in 1924. "Sat right behind me. Smiled every time I turned to look at her."

Ross Sprenger, 83, arrives; he has built his own carousel and railroad (2-foot-wide track). "Well, here he is, right on time - it's the colonel," says 80-something Grant Lindsay as in walks Richard Chandler as if cued by a stagehand. He flew more than 100 missions in World War II and Korea.

"We get a lot of real heroes here," says Huddleston. "Folks who survived the Depression. People who worked hard all their lives and didn't ask anything of anybody."

As the Elvis legs swivel on the clock, the stories pile up like a trip through a buffet line: Hunting. Fishing. The time Roberts, in the '30s, rode a motorcycle through town while standing on its seat.

Some are about people no longer here. "We've lost a lot of folks," says Wirth. "Hank, Hazel, Ross Sprenger's wife, Lucille ... ."

Ruth, the wife of 95-year-old Vernon, is no longer behind him as she was back at long-gone Shedd High. Instead, she's in front of him, chatting with other women about everything from ag auctions to this Saturday's barbecue fund-raiser to raise money for library books.

A waitress, seemingly out of nowhere, begins passing out pineapple upside-down cake.

"Linda made it fresh last night," she says.

Soon, they go their separate ways. And I go mine - back to the city, back to the world of convenience stores, tailgating drivers and fast-food restaurants where conversations don't often get beyond "for here or to go?"

The Shedd Cafe, I realize, isn't the lost tribe. We are.