You'll hit a home run at the Home Plate Cafe

If you’re looking for a place that serves a slice of pie with a helping of Midwest hospitality, it’s the Home Plate Café in Seneca, Kansas. Located along the Pony Express Highway, the Home Plate Café has the old-time feel of TV’s fictional Mayberry, or perhaps it’s more akin to the film, The Last Picture Show. Indeed, within the grease-stained walls there seems to be a fragility of life now dissipated to modern times.
Motorcycle enthusiasts might enjoy the location, which nestles conveniently along Highway 36. The trek begins in St. Joseph, Missouri and extends all the way to San Francisco near the Sacramento River. A lone rider on a westbound trip forged the route on April 3, 1860. The rider’s name is speculation, and not much remains of the contents he delivered, but the route itself has survived: an open road with miles of uninterrupted sky. Seneca has taken advantage of the legend by converting a corner shop into a museum.
Across town there’s a modern high school, hospital and pool. But don’t let the new amenities fool you, it’s the familiarity of small town living that is the real draw. A lit marquee showcases two features, one in the main theater, one split off into a makeshift room. It’s this kind of ingenuity that makes a traveler’s experience unique. You feel as if you might know something about these people when you sit amid what seems normal to them, completely foreign to you. A high truss down the road has the same affect of cutting Seneca into dual entities: ‘town’ and ‘out of town.’ Someone sprayed a girls’ name along the metal bracing in black paint.
Miles away a gothic spire cuts the sky. St. Mary’s in St. Benedict, Kansas, is about as archaic as you can get. Imagine prairie folk in their best duds going there every Sunday for forgiveness and prayer. Stained glass and high-arched ceilings offer an oasis of the European sort, yet perhaps it’s the intricate Michelangelo-style paintings that deserve a visitor’s high praise. Both out of place and larger than life, St. Mary’s will leave you inspired.
But the thing is, if you go to Seneca you must stop at the Home Plate Café. Around noon the restaurant buzzes with farmers, construction workers, grandparents and children alike. They’re there to get a plate of chicken fried steak and a side order of pie. The trick is, you order the pie before you order your lunch. If not, you’ll miss out, and that would be a shame. The pie may cost you, but the talk, and people that go with it, are priceless.