Chapter 2 - The Blockade
The first blow fell at exactly 2:14 p.m. on Wednesday.
I was behind the counter, wiping down the laminated menus, when the double doors of the diner swung open. It wasn't a customer. It was Pete Miller, the regional driver for Midwest Dairy Co.—the company that had supplied our milk, butter, and heavy cream since the day my husband Richard opened the doors in 1999.
Pete didn't carry his usual clipboard. He looked small, his eyes darting toward the floor as he stood near the cash register.
"Evelyn," Pete said, his voice barely louder than the hum of the pie cooler. "I can't drop the shipment today. I’m sorry."
"What do you mean, Pete?" I asked, setting the rag down. "We’ve got sixty pounds of butter and forty gallons of whole milk on that invoice. The weekend prep starts tomorrow."
"I got a call from the corporate office in Rosemont," Pete whispered, leaning over the counter. "Holloway Select Markets is our biggest account in the tri-state area. They buy ninety thousand cases of dairy a week from our parent company. Grant Holloway’s logistics manager called our VP this morning. He told them if a single Midwest Dairy truck backs into the alley behind Carter’s Table, the Holloway account is canceled by Friday."
I went cold, but my hand remained steady on the counter. "Evelyn, I have three kids in school," Pete pleaded, his eyes wide with a genuine, desperate apology. "If I lose my route, I’m done. They told me they’d fire any driver who unloads here."
"It’s okay, Pete," I said, reaching over to pat his hand. "You go on. Don't get yourself hurt over a grocery bill."
Before the door had even fully closed behind him, the phone on the wall began to ring. It was Sloan's Bakery. Then Chicago Premium Meats. By 4:00 p.m., every single one of our primary ingredient suppliers had called with the same story. The Holloways were using the massive, suffocating weight of their forty-store supermarket chain to choke the life out of my tiny twenty-three-seat diner.
Hannah sat in the back booth, her face pale as she listened to me take the calls. "Mom, they’re doing it. They’re going to shut you down. All of this... for me. I should just go back. I can handle him, I can—"
"You're not going back to that house, Hannah," I said, my voice cracking like a whip. "You think this is about a grocery bill? It’s about control. If we let them take you back, they’ll know they own you. They’ll know they can do whatever they want to you behind those stone walls, and nobody will ever come to save you."
Frank stepped out from the kitchen, his heavy white apron stained with soot. "We don't need their corporate meat, Evelyn. My cousin runs a local butcher shop on 87th. He buys direct from the farms in Indiana. And Artie’s got a brother-in-law with a commercial egg coop in Kankakee."
"We’ll pay double," I said. "We’ll pay in cash. But we will not miss a single breakfast service."
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"We won't have to pay double," Artie’s voice boomed from the front door. He walked in, carrying a heavy cardboard box filled with fresh loaves of sourdough bread. Behind him, three men from the local longshoremen's union were carrying crates of fresh eggs and five-gallon buckets of milk.
"The boys from Local 303 heard about the blockade, Evelyn," Artie said, setting the bread on the counter. "They decided to do some shopping of their own. This is from the independent distributors down by the canal. They told us to tell the Holloways that if they don't like it, they can come down to the docks and discuss it with the night shift."
