When the customary liver pate and kraut are served, all seems right — except that Anna Mae Carpenter is missing.
Annie, whose smile was part of the decor for 42 years, died Oct. 4 at 83. Not everyone saw her obituary or knew her last name. So customers still ask about her, as they will this day, and Hagenbuch can’t look anywhere without thinking of her.
In 50 years in the food business, “I never had anybody dedicated — not family, not anybody — as much as she was,” Linardos said.
Carpenter was with Ungerleider’s when Linardos bought it 41 years ago.
“She had two years and was about ready to quit,” he said. “But managing a bar was new to me. She knew every customer (and) what they drank.”
So he talked her into staying, and soon the barmaid was a hostess, too. “Never had a bad word to say about anybody,” Linardos said. Plus, “she took over hiring the girls and training them. She was more on my side than with them. Otherwise, I would have been in trouble.”
Carpenter would arrive before 11 a.m. for lunch, leave at 2 p.m., then return at 4 and stay until closing. And she always called him Mr. Linardos, never John.
“I had full trust in her,” Linardos said. So when Carpenter, while raising seven children, needed occasional help, Linardos helped her. “I bought her used cars. She earned it.”
Linardos’ wife, Sandy, smiles about the many times people assumed Carpenter was John’s wife, just because of the time Carpenter spent at work. When asked to give “Mrs. Linardos” their regards, the real Mrs. Linardos just passed the message along.
Twice divorced and having lost both her parents in 1991, she confided in a News-Sun story that yearthat “right now may be the loneliest time, and I’d like to have a companion, but I come in the door here and see the smiling faces.”
Illness finally led Carpenter to retire last March.
“She didn’t come in for three or four weeks,” Linardos said. When she finally did, “she was crying.”
“I think greeting people she knew was essential to her,” Mrs. Mitman said. In turn, being greeted by her became essential to eating at Linardos.
For the many who miss her, Carpenter left some advice: “There’s no sense in going around with a big frown on your face. That only makes wrinkles.”
In contrast, even in death her memory makes the faces of Linardos regulars wrinkle into a smile.
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