BLUFFTON – For a true son of Bluffton, the question was never, ``Do you like the Dutch Mill?'' It was simply, ``Why do you like the Dutch Mill?''
This cleaved the faithful into two camps.
One believed that no better food was obtainable in Wells County, and probably nowhere in northeast Indiana. In flights of excess, absolute loyalists might hold that no human toil at griddle or oven anywhere yielded better dining than the Mill's.
The other camp granted that the food was good. But they held that the true attraction of the Dutch Mill was its uncompromising quirkiness. Its menu sprang from its kitchen untrammeled by focus groups, untried in test marketing. An unescorted patron could get lost in its maze of a dozen little dining rooms, added one after another as the restaurant spread.
And until Indiana 1 was widened a few years ago, you'd never have trouble directing out-of-town friends to the restaurant. Just describe the sign.
``Look for the little Dutch boy, about 10 feet tall, who's standing under a giant wooden shoe, and the wooden shoe has a big windmill covered with light bulbs growing out of it, and the Dutch boy's holding a bright red sign that says, `A LARGE VARIETY OF GOOD FOOD.' ''
Goodbye, roadside attraction. About 5 a.m. Monday, a fire began in the Dutch Mill. A few employees already were on the job when a passing motorist stopped and told them their roof was on fire.
Only one person, a firefighter, was hurt. His was a minor injury, treated on the spot. Six hours later, flames were gone but for brief reignitions of hot spots in the rubble. Bulldozers were leveling it.
Firefighters haven't figured out why the fire started; they're not considering arson. They haven't fixed a dollar figure on the damage, but the building and its contents are a total loss.
The Dutch Mill stood fast through half a century of changing tastes and proliferating restaurant chains. In hours, the fire left the Mill a blackened shell and Bluffton a diminished town. Eighty-five workers lost their jobs, and the town became a little less distinctive, a little more McAmerica.
Certainly, even those who overdid small-town pride on the subject of the Dutch Mill had some cause to boast. The Mill's pies were widely admired. Bringing one to a family dinner was never a disgrace.
The rest of its menu was a time capsule containing the idealized Hoosier table of 1950. Steaks. Burgers. Meatloaf. Mashed potatoes. Rhubarb pie. Deep-fried fish fillets.
``They served comfort food before it was fashionable,'' said Betsy Leonard, a Fort Wayne native who moved to Bluffton in 1983 and came to love the Dutch Mill.
``It just wasn't a place that surrendered to trendiness. On the menu, it said, `The Pizza-burger. It's New. It's Delicious.' That's what it said when I was in high school,'' her husband, Craig Leonard (Class of '68) said.
The secret behind the accomplished home-cooking seems obvious to David Moser.
``The average age of the cooks is incredibly high,'' he said. ``All together, they have hundreds of years of experience cooking.''
Moser's father, Glen, bought the Dutch Mill in 1948, when it was a lunch counter with a dozen stools. Over the years, he built it into a landmark with room - frequently filled - for 500 customers, plus a drive-in and a separate carry-out shop.
``He was a Christian man,'' David Moser said of his father. ``He worked hard. They didn't sell alcohol. They didn't sell cigarettes. The food wasn't highfalutin. It was old-fashioned.''
For much of the 1980s, David Moser worked at the Mill with his father while attending college. Finally he chose a doctorate in mathematics over the family business. But when he heard about the fire early Monday, he took the day off. He spent much of it watching the smoking remains of his dad's work.
He remembered that as the Mill grew more successful, his father kept it open less and less. First he closed on Sundays, before David, 36, was born, so that he could spend more time with his family. About 20 years ago, he closed on Saturdays, too. His longtime employees wanted weekends with their families. His young short-timers wanted time for ballgames and dates.
Even open just five days a week, the business thrived. It thrived on Glen Moser's instincts. Surely he never spent a nickel on product-naming consultants.
What leads a restaurateur to stack together baked ham, a fried egg, cheese, lettuce and tomato and christen it ``Dutch Girl''? There were more: Nature Boy Sandwich. Dutch Oven Sandwich. Dutch Boy.
The origins of these names are likely lost to time.
But some seemed self-evident. Surely Spaceman and Spacelady (steak and fish, respectively) were giddy 1960s tributes to space exploration.
David Moser explained that to prepare a Spacelady, a cook coated raw fish with butter, tucked it in plastic wrap and popped it in a microwave. As it cooked, the plastic expanded into a large dome, and it looked like the steaming fillet was wearing a space helmet.
``They didn't serve it like that, but the cooks saw it that way, and that's what they called it,'' he remembered.
A few years before he died in 1993, Glen Moser sold the restaurant to Kenny Steffen, who started working at the Dutch Mill in 1950, when he was 13 years old.
In a hundred small ways, visiting the Dutch Mill was a gentle nostalgia ride. Things never changed so slowly as at the Mill.
For 30 years, they sold the same views of Bluffton in postcards beside the cash register. Customers rarely swore, at least not loudly. The women's restroom was stocked with tiny bottles of drugstore perfume for odor-wary ladies. Men's rooms were devoid of the usual racial and sexual vulgarities of grafitti. That rough element who did write on bathroom walls there never got any coarser than ``Jesus Loves You!''
No small part of the restaurant's appeal were the many long-timers on the staff. About half of the employees seemed to be lifers.
Rita Moore, who started working there in September 1967, still doesn't feel like an old hand; many of her co-workers have been at it 35, 40, even 45 years. At first, she said, their affection for Glen Moser built their loyalty. Steffen kept both Mill traditions and loyal employees intact.
When she heard about the fire Monday morning, she didn't go see it right away. She had open-heart surgery five years ago, and she doesn't go out in the cold more than necessary. By 10 a.m., she couldn't stand it anymore and drove as near as she could.
She thought of the co-workers who stuck together better than most families. She thought of her regulars, from Decatur and Marion and Portland as well as Bluffton, of the regulars who came from the south side of Fort Wayne two or three times a week.
``Tears were rolling down my cheek. I thought, `There goes 30 years of my life,' '' she said.
Late Monday morning, Steffen and his wife, Roberta, were surrounded by family and employees. They circled the remnants of the building, going inside where firefighters deemed it safe. Their son, Toby, videotaped the charred rooms they toured. They were trying to jog their memories and build an insurance inventory.
The job seemed overwhelming. How many tables? How many ovens? Which antiques in which rooms? Which paintings had hung where? Everyone wanted to know whether Steffen would rebuild. He couldn't say.
``We really don't know where we're going after this,'' he said, standing on a concrete slab at the south end of the building. A dining room had just been wiped off the slab with an earthmover.
He looked into the nearest room of rubble, just past the charred upright piano he used to play for his guests. He gestured around the space where the dining room had been, around the shrinking perimeter of his restaurant.
``There'll never be another Dutch Mill, not as it stands today,'' he said.