Customers have to squeeze in, too, often sharing a table with strangers and then parting as friends before the morning is over.
They call it the Bluegrass Saturday Breakfast, but the 10 or 12 local bands in the Prairie Winds’ rotation also play old-time country, folk, and gospel. You might even hear a little Cajun, Dixieland, or vintage rock ‘n’ roll.
“It’s been the funnest thing in my life,” says Dave Webinger, a 69-year-old barber and guitarist whose band, Cold Frosty Morning, was playing in Molt the Saturday before Christmas. “We all work, so we just play for fun.”
The bands also play for tips, their fiddle and mandolin cases slowly filling with greenbacks, and Fran treats them to breakfast and lunch.
Molt is 20 miles from Billings, the biggest city in Montana, but out on the empty prairie, it might as well be frontier days. The cafe, on Wolfskill Avenue, still features the building’s original pressed-tin ceiling and fir flooring.
Molt was a thriving grain-hauling hub until the railroad pulled out 30 years ago. Now the town consists of five houses, a church, a tiny school, a tire shop, a grain elevator, a fire department, and a community hall. The Prairie Winds put Molt back on the map.
The place is aptly named, too. It’s a rare day when the flag at the post office next door isn’t snapping smartly in a stiff breeze. It’s almost as rare not to find at least one dog snoozing in the shelter of the cafe’s entryway.
“This, to me, is America,” says the Rev. Bill Vibe, the Los Angeles-based interim pastor of the Congregational church in nearby Laurel. Vibe had come to the kitchen just before noon to compliment Fran on her cooking and tell her how much he liked the cafe. “We’ve sat here since 9:30 this morning, and I just had the time of my life,” he says.
Fran says people thought she and Jerry were crazy when they talked about opening a cafe in Molt, but now it’s not unusual to go through 20 dozen eggs on a Saturday morning, and every week she hears from people like Bill Vibe. “That’s what makes it worthwhile,” she says, “when people come in the kitchen and say things like that.”
The new “Our Towns” column features stories from top newspaper reporters across America. Watch for it regularly in PARADE.The Prairie Winds Cafe in Molt, Mont., seats 56, which is about four times the population of Molt itself. Yet on most Saturday mornings, every seat is taken, and another 15 or 20 people are standing in the hallway near the kitchen, patiently awaiting their turns.
It’s not just Fran Urfer’s pies that bring people in. Nor is it simply the setting–a tiny island of commerce in a sea of rolling grassland that runs to the foot of the Crazy Mountains in south-central Montana. What draws folks from miles around–and from every state in the nation and 42 foreign countries, according to the guest book–is the live music played there on Saturday mornings from 9 to noon.
Jerry and Fran Urfer opened the cafe in 2001, after spending three years remodeling Kepferle Mercantile, an old general store that featured hardware on one wall and groceries on the other. The music was Larry Larson’s idea. He lived just down the road and thought the cafe would be a fine place for his band, The Hogback Five, to get in some practice.
“The first thing you know, we had some other bands coming out,” Larson says. “Now, if you want to play here, it won’t be in 2010. They might squeeze you in by 2011.”
Customers have to squeeze in, too, often sharing a table with strangers and then parting as friends before the morning is over.
They call it the Bluegrass Saturday Breakfast, but the 10 or 12 local bands in the Prairie Winds’ rotation also play old-time country, folk, and gospel. You might even hear a little Cajun, Dixieland, or vintage rock ‘n’ roll.
“It’s been the funnest thing in my life,” says Dave Webinger, a 69-year-old barber and guitarist whose band, Cold Frosty Morning, was playing in Molt the Saturday before Christmas. “We all work, so we just play for fun.”
The bands also play for tips, their fiddle and mandolin cases slowly filling with greenbacks, and Fran treats them to breakfast and lunch.
Molt is 20 miles from Billings, the biggest city in Montana, but out on the empty prairie, it might as well be frontier days. The cafe, on Wolfskill Avenue, still features the building’s original pressed-tin ceiling and fir flooring.
Molt was a thriving grain-hauling hub until the railroad pulled out 30 years ago. Now the town consists of five houses, a church, a tiny school, a tire shop, a grain elevator, a fire department, and a community hall. The Prairie Winds put Molt back on the map.
The place is aptly named, too. It’s a rare day when the flag at the post office next door isn’t snapping smartly in a stiff breeze. It’s almost as rare not to find at least one dog snoozing in the shelter of the cafe’s entryway.
“This, to me, is America,” says the Rev. Bill Vibe, the Los Angeles-based interim pastor of the Congregational church in nearby Laurel. Vibe had come to the kitchen just before noon to compliment Fran on her cooking and tell her how much he liked the cafe. “We’ve sat here since 9:30 this morning, and I just had the time of my life,” he says.
Fran says people thought she and Jerry were crazy when they talked about opening a cafe in Molt, but now it’s not unusual to go through 20 dozen eggs on a Saturday morning, and every week she hears from people like Bill Vibe.
“That’s what makes it worthwhile,” she says, “when people come in the kitchen and say things like that.”
The new “Our Towns” column features stories from top newspaper reporters across America. Watch for it regularly in PARADE.
