When I arrived in Ashfield in the summer of 2005 for a two-week stint as signwriter for the Green River Festival, I had no grand ideas for a 180-degree turn in life; I was just happy to be out of the Louisiana heat, celebrating the coincidence where a festival that wanted my assistance danced so close to the town where my longtime friend Anna lived, and I’d get to stay with her for a few weeks.

Nothing about the outset of that trip had to do with restaurants, moving, or even the future, as the producers of the festival said they’d keep my signs and re-use them every year.

My work-life in those days centered around events, yet, 20 years in I was tired of an over-produced life. In those pre-pandemic days when I worked festivals, toured with literal rock stars, and designed inaugural events for United States presidents, if you needed an aardvark at 3 a.m., you figured out which store out in the suburbs carried them and sent your runner to pick it up. My whole world was production and making miracles happen and, while it was absolutely thrilling, I felt a little hollow. I wanted to touch my life again. To feel it from the ground up, to be more in contact with how things work beyond just saying, “Make it happen!” and moving to the next idea.

Ashfield had no producers, nor had it a single aardvark. It had a friendly gas station/convenience store, an energizing hardware store, an outstanding pizza restaurant, and the town hub: a celebration of community in a restaurant that overlooked the lake.

And slowly I recognized that I had found something a lot more exciting than a 3 a.m. aardvark.

What Ashfield also had was a little building called Elmer’s Store, a community staple in various forms since 1835. In 2005, it stood empty, owned by someone from away who did not understand how community works. She thought it was all about her power, I was hearing, and had chased the last business out with her bossy, non-neighborly ways.

That empty building wrapped itself around my heart and dug in, shooting out another line that staked itself in Ashfield’s fertile soil, the soil where people grew their own food and sold it at the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market on the town common.

That’s what I was talking about, and I hadn’t even known it! I actually said, “Wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to go back to New Orleans right away?” And God heard my words and said, “Let me get my runner on that.” And that runner came back with a giant hurricane named, “Katrina” that he unleashed in Louisiana where it took out my house and everything in it, and then sat down and said, “Next?”

And “Next” turned out to be a lot of insurance money that enabled me to buy that little store called Elmer’s and turn it into … I wasn’t sure what. Being absolutely from away, I knew that Ashfield, linked through the generations back to the creation of this country wasn’t going to welcome any outsider with open arms, so I put a survey in the Ashfield News asking people what they’d like their little store to be, and they answered! What they didn’t have was a place to eat breakfast, and that was what they’d be willing to give a try.

I’d never worked in a restaurant, I don’t even cook, preferring to go to the Lake House and Country Pie Pizza for my nourishment, but what I also said out loud was, “I don’t know restaurants, but I’ve lived long enough in New Orleans that I surely know how to show people a good time!” and that’s what we did! For 13 years until I sold it in 2018 to some other folks who did what they wanted to with the place.

You’ve been hearing about how the other folks recently decided it was time to move on to new adventures in life, and how a group in Ashfield got together to try and buy Elmer’s, preserve the building and restore it to a community-owned and welcoming restaurant. There was a fair amount of money standing in the way of that plan, but I am absolutely thrilled to say that WE DID IT! We raised the $300,000 needed to buy the building! And we did it in a few short months in a town of only 1,700 residents!

The money was handed over on May 5 and we have that building back in our pocket, ready to rebuild, re-create, re-open and to just say, “Wow.” That’s me saying that; I’m so honored people cared enough to turn “my” little restaurant into a whole town project. Makes me grin just to think about it.

I’ll keep you alerted as we get those good times and pancakes rolling again, just like we had in the good old days!

Nan Parati lives and works in Ashfield, where she found home and community following Hurricane Katrina. She can be reached at NanParati@aol.com.

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