How long I dozed I can’t say but I awoke marveling at the endurance of the man of the road. While I pondered thus a man jumped to his feet and hastened out. He was cursing the bugs and saying that he knew an engine room that had this “place beat all hollow.” I felt better. Someone else had weakened first. I got up and started home. It was two-thirty.
RESTAURANTS AND LUNCHROOMS
Hobohemian restaurants serve meals for a half or a third of the prices current in the Loop. In some of these lunchrooms the charges are so low that one marvels. However, the food is coarse and poor and the service rough and ready.
The homeless man is as casual in his eating as he is in his work. He usually gives all the restaurants a trial. If he has any money when meal time comes he generally does a little “window shopping.” He meanders up and down the street reading the bills of fare in the windows. The Hobohemian restaurants know this and accordingly use window displays to attract the roaming patron. Food is placed in the windows, cooking is done within sight of the street, but the chief means of attraction are the menus chalked on the windows. The whole window is sometimes lettered up with special entrées of the day. Some of these bills of fare are interesting.
Gus’s place on South Halsted Street near the Academy Theater, July 28, 1922, displayed the following:
| Pig’s Snouts and Cabbage or Kraut | 15c |
| Corn Beef Hash | 10c |
| Hamburger Roast | 10c |
| Liver and Onions | 15c |
| Hungarian Goulash | 20c |
| Pig’s Shank and Cabbage | 15c |
| Spare Ribs and Cabbage | 20c |
| Pig’s Feet and Potato Salad | 15c |
| Beef Stew and Kraut | 15c |
| Sausage and Mashed Potatoes | 15c |
| Roast Beef | 20c |
| Roast Pork | 25c |
| T-Bone Steak | 30c |
The same day the James Restaurant on Madison Street near Desplaines advertised the following under the caption, “A Full Meal for Ten Cents”:
| Veal Loaf | 10c |
| Sardines and Potato Salad | 10c |
| Hamburger and One Egg | 10c |
| Baked Beans | 10c |
| Liver and Onions | 10c |
| Corn Beef Plain | 10c |
| Macaroni Italian | 10c |
| Three Eggs any Style | 15c |
| Kidney Stew | 10c |
| Sausage and Mashed Potatoes | 10c |
| Brown Hash and One Egg | 10c |
| Liver and Brown Gravy | 10c |
| Salt Pork Plain | 10c |
| Salmon and Potato Salad | 10c |
| Corn Flakes and Milk | 5c |
| Four Eggs any Style | 20c |
One eating-house on West Madison Street is “The Home Restaurant, Meals Fifteen Cents and Up.” This is a popular appeal. Restaurants frequently advertise “Home Cooking,” “Home Made Bread,” “Home Made Coffee,” “Doughnuts Like Mother Used to Make.”
