Joy Young Cafe & Grocery

8/22/2019 Joy Young Cafe & Grocery

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June Law is a life-long native of Augusta, Georgia. She grew up living over her familys JoyYoung Caf and Grocery with her parents, brother Jerry, and sister Eileen. June and Eileen became

educators and spent their entire careers as teachers devoted to their students and their families.

My grandfather, Charles Yee, came from China around 1900. After working in a

laundry in Atlanta briefly, he moved to Augusta, Georgia, where he opened a grocery

store in a black section of town. My father, Loo Yee, emigrated from Guangdong to theUnited States in 1921 at age 13, arriving in Seattle using the paper name, Law Hin Yee.

He first worked in a laundry and also as a cook in LaGrange, Georgia, before coming toAugusta to join his fatheraround 1930.

Figure 1 Left panel: Charles Yee, June Laws grandfather (third from left) and nephew

Hing Sec Loo (second from left) in front of original location, mid 1930s. Right panel:Charles Yee in front of Joy Young Caf. Courtesy, June Law.

Around 1934 they opened a restaurant on the second floor above their street level

grocery store at 801 9th

Street. My grandparents and father lived on the third floor above

the restaurant. During this period Augusta had four to five Chinese restaurants, most ofwhich were located in black neighborhoods. One of the businesses, Four Sisters, near ourrestaurant, was a black beauty parlor across the street. Often when my parents were verybusy in the restaurant and market, some of the ladies at Four Sisters looked after us when

we were small. I still remember watching them use hot curling irons that were heated on

gas holders. Sometimes they took us to their church on Sunday evenings on WashingtonRoad. On other occasions we would go with them to the black Lenox Theater.


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Joy Young, the name of the caf refers in Chinese to a place where all bright,intelligent and good persons are gathered in harmony. Behind the restaurant,

grandfather built a coop to house the chickens raised to serve in the restaurant or sell inthe market. Each week, he would sell fresh chickens, which were popular with local

Jewish people who came to buy them before sundown. A rabbi came by to bless thechickens, and grandfather learned kosher rules for slaughtering the chickens.

Figure 2. Grandfather in Joy Young grocery store on the first level of the building.

During World War II, grandfather Yee operated the Joy Young without the help

of father who was in the Army Air Corp and served in Italy with the 557th Air Service.After the war, father returned to China to marry my mother, Thew Lee, through an

arranged match. As a veteran, he was able to bring her to Augusta in 1947 under the War

Brides Act. My parents, and their four children, Chuck, Eileen, Jerry, and I, lived abovethe restaurant on the third floor. By the time we were 8 or 9, we were helping with the

work of the restaurant performing kitchen chores or operating the cash register.


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Figure 3 Father holding my sister Eileen, mother, and Uncle Joe at 801 9th

St.location around 1949.

Figure 4. Older half-brother Chuck, father with my sister Eileen, and mother Thew Lee.


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Figure 5 Thew Lee serving soldiers from nearby Fort Gordon. c. 1950. Courtesy, JuneLaw.

Augusta civic officials dined so often at the Joy Young Caf that people started

wondering if decisions affecting the city businesses and political elections were madewhile they enjoyed eating our chop suey and chow mein.

When grandfather Yee retired around 1947 or 1948 and returned to China, my

father took over the operation of the business. We continued operating the Joy Young at

its original location until the mid-1950s when we moved to a downtown location at 506Ninth St. Father was resourceful in saving his money. He wisely invested in commercial

real estate, acquiring three storefronts that were next to the restaurant that housed theGeorgia Whole Florist, a beauty and barber supply store, and a dry cleaning business.


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Figure 6 Loo family in front of new location of Joy Young at 506 Ninth St.

Figure 7 Father Loo Yee cooking in the new location of the restaurant in 1957.


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Most southerners at that time had little or no experience with Chinese food andgenerally ordered only traditional American dishes. Standard American dishes such as

steak, pork chops, jumbo shrimp, hamburger steak, fried chicken, and salads werepopular with customers. A few American Cantonese dishes such as chop suey, chow

mein, egg foo young, several types of sweet and sour dishes, and fried rice weresuccessful but there was little demand for other Chinese dishes. We tried to educatethem about Chinese food by printing some nutritional information on the menu.

Figure 8 Guide to Chinese Food printed on the menu

Because of the Jim Crow segregation laws of the period, sit-down dining rooms were

racially segregated. We served whites only, although blacks could buy food for takeout.

Mostly white, but occasionally black women, worked as waitresses at Joy Young. It wasnot until the 1960s that civil rights activists successfully sued to enable blacks to receive

service in all restaurants.


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Figure 9 Joy Young Menu Selections


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Operating a restaurant was a time consuming business, with long hours each dayit opened. There was little time for vacations or trips out of town so it was a welcome

event whenever visitors came from out of town. Chinese from laundries or otherrestaurants might visit on their day off. Mother was related to the original owners of thewell-known Joy Young Restaurant in Birmingham whereas Mrs. Loo had relatives that

ran a dry cleaners in Atlanta who would drop by when they came to visit Augusta.

Figure 10 L-R: Loo Yee, Thew Lee holding Grant, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Herman

Toms son who was named after nearby Fort Gordon where Herman Tom was stationed.Mr. and Mrs. Hing Sec Loo are in the center. On the right are Mrs. and Mr. Herman

Tom.

The Joy Young Caf also served as a social center where Chinese relatives,friends, and overseas Chinese visiting Augusta could gather to socialize over a meal of

Chinese food. After the restaurant closed for the day, several Chinese would sometimescome to play mah jong or enjoy a Chinese domino game late into the night. Over the

years, father hired several older Chinese bachelors who had retired from years of work

in laundries or restaurants in the region. They needed a place to reside briefly while theywaited for their grown children or grandchildren to arrange to send for them. Space on

the floors above fathers four stores provided lodging for them. In return, they helpedcook or do other chores in the restaurant. Loo Wai ended up staying for years, and

became part of the family. We helped care for him during his old age.


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Figure 11 Vietta Anderson, waitress, who gave Bibles to the children, with father Loo

Yee in front of Joy Young in 1960. On the left is a nephew, Grant Loo.

A danger of running a restaurant was that they were easy targets for robbery, andJoy Young was no exception. Two young blacks tried to rob my father at gunpoint in

1987. Mother was in the kitchen cooking an order at the time. A gun was discharged, but

fortunately it missed my father. The would-be robbers panicked after the gun went offand they fled without actually getting any money.

Business for the restaurant was declining over the 1980s as downtown Augusta

was dying with the increasing popularity of suburban shopping malls but we managed to

hang on for a few more years after mother died in 1990 and before father died in 1998.However, after over 60 years of operation, we finally closed the Joy Young Cafe in 1997

or 1998 when Augusta exercised the right of eminent domain to purchase fathersbuildings to rebuild the area around the Federal Courthouse. It had served our family well

and enabled us to provide delicious food and a community social gathering place in

downtown Augusta for many decades.

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Joy Young Cafe & Grocery