Sunday, June 9, 2002
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
KINSMAN -- Even out-of-control cars can't stop the pies.
Times Square Restaurant re-opened a week ago with elderberry, rhubarb, coconut and six others, only three weeks after the most recent car crashed through the front window.
"People sometimes ask me when I'm going to quit," said Alice Blaemire, 81, watching the couple who manage her restaurant re-frame a doorway taken out by the errant car.
"I've been here 56 years. What would I do?"
Blaemire opened the restaurant in 1946, with a degree in home economics from The Ohio State University and a head full of recipes memorized on her parents' Gustavus farm.
Before the interstates, state Routes 5 and 7 were busy with traffic from Chicago and New York. For 40 years, Times Square, a small white building at the junction of state Routes 7 and 5, was decorated with a square clock and open 24 hours a day.
"We were not a truck stop, but trucks stopped here," said Blaemire, deeply aware of the difference.
She said she had 500 drivers stopping by on a monthly basis, until Interstate 90 diverted them to fast food and rest stops.
"Everything has happened here except having a baby, and we had that one night," she said.
All about the pie
From the start, Times Square was about the pie. Blaemire claims to have baked her first apple pie at 5 years old -- and she made the crust from scratch.
On a weekend the restaurant expects to be busy, there can be as many as two dozen pies listed on the board, from the commonplace (apple, blueberry, custard) to the curiously old-fashioned (grape, mincemeat with real meat).
"Give me anything, and I will make a pie with it," she said.
Over the years, Blaemire has developed local sources for gooseberries and elderberries and expanded her offerings with berry mixtures and chiffons.
"She can make any kind of pie," said Linda Deraway, 44, who started at Times Square as a 14-year-old dishwasher. She now manages the place with her husband, Tim.
Blaemire's life was even saved by pie. She had just rose from a seat at the counter to get the last slice of a graham cracker pie eight years ago when the first car charged through the Times Square dining room. The car took out the whole counter.
"It doesn't matter what kind of pie it was," she said. "I would have been run over."
Blaemire can no longer be found every day at the restaurant. These days, she uses a walker to get around and keeps an eye on her business from her home, Kinsman's historical 1821 Allen House. The Deraways stop by after closing the restaurant at 10 p.m. to discuss that day's business.
The second crash
Times Square was empty when a second car drove through its windows, shortly after midnight May 9.
The driver, Harold McCauley of Main Street, Kinsman, failed to appear for an arraignment May 23 in Eastern District Court on misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence, driving under suspension, failure to yield, ficticious plates and endangering a child with a vehicle. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Police say a 13-year-old was also in the car when it executed a 90 degree turn inside the restaurant, destroying everything in the front room.
Blaemire said she has not yet totaled or paid for all the repairs. She does not expect it to be covered by insurance.
siff@vindy.com