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ORAL HISTORY
Hap Townes
Hap Townes Restaurant
In pretty much the same manner for almost sixty-five years, the two Hap Towneses of Nashville, father and son, served up Southern home cooking to a long line of faithful and appreciative customers. Hap the elder started the tradition in 1921 with a curbside eatery on wheels, literally a movable feast. Hap the younger took up the spoon and spatula when he returned from the war in 1946. Together they built a new café, a little stone diner with forty-nine seats, on a quiet back street in south Nashville and made it into a lunchtime institution. The father kept an active interest in the business until shortly before he died at the age of ninety. The son sold out and retired in 1985.
It is with great sadness that the SFA shares news that Hap Townes passed away in July 2012 at the age of 89.
