Editor’s Note: Jack Becker is the editor of Caprock Chronicles and is a Librarian Emeritus from Texas Tech University. He can be reached at [email protected]. Today’s article about Mrs. Bromley’s Dining Room in Clarendon is by frequent contributor Chuck Lanehart, Lubbock attorney and award-winning Western history writer.
“I love ya for comin.’” —Ruby Mae Bromley
I was among a trio of Texas Panhandle teens who spent a sizzling 1970 summer afternoon at Greenbelt Lake in Donley County, swimming, boating and unsuccessfully looking for girls. Hungry, we headed to the nearby town of Clarendon for something to eat. It was well before franchise fast-food joints occupied every corner of even small towns, so everyone knew there was only one choice for dinner: Mrs. Bromley’s Dining Room, located in her boarding house on Carhart Street.
We appeared in cutoffs, swimsuits and T-shirts, sweaty and smelling of lake water, but Mrs. Bromley welcomed us at her front door like we were long-lost nephews. There was no maître d, no waiter and no menu. We found our way to a large table in her living room and sat with strangers, some of whom were her boarders. Soon, huge platters of comfort food appeared: fried chicken, chicken fried steak and every variety of homegrown veggies—green beans, blackeye peas, squash, corn, salads—and her special dinner rolls. Dessert was obligatory: strawberry shortcake.
Each of us paid about four bucks for the meal—a fortune for kids who were accustomed to ten-cent Burger Chef lunches—but 55 years later, my buddies still talk about Mrs. Bromley’s delicious homecooked feast.
The town founder of Clarendon (1878) was a Methodist minister who envisioned a “sobriety settlement” in contrast to typical wild west boomtowns of the era. No saloons or brothels existed in the little town disappointed cowboys called “Saint’s Roost.” Clarendon seemed destined to produce one of the best cultural locations in the Panhandle.
Ruby Mae Bromley, born in 1906, operated a boarding house in Clarendon – population about 2,000 – from the mid-1950s through the early 1980s. Boarding houses, once common in Texas and elsewhere and offered weary travelers a clean bed, a warm bath and companionship. Boarders might stay a night or six months, and those who stayed enjoyed home-cooked meals. Diners sat in the first available chair at the first available table. There were no menus, as meals varied according to the cook’s preference and the availability of fresh food products. Every dish came with a handy spoon, and guests served themselves home-style.
Ruby—grandmother of six—arose every morning at five o’clock to bake 40 loaves of bread, her famous cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls, biscuits, cornbread, pies, cobblers and pound cakes. Everything was fresh, and all ingredients were locally sourced, mostly from her garden. She ignored the possibility calories mattered. There was no chance Mrs. Bromley added a single chemical, stabilizer, coloring agent or flavoring ingredient to her fare, something impossible to find at a 2025 restaurant.
At first, her delicious meals—served three a day, seven days a week except Sunday dinner—were reserved for her boarders, mostly Clarendon College students who occupied five upstairs bedrooms and shared a single bath. Their compliments prompted her to open her dining room to the public, and Mrs. Bromley’s parlor became a local culinary destination. “Why don’t we go eat with Ruby?” was often heard in Clarendon.
Soon, Mrs. Bromley’s became one of the most famous of boarding house diners. She served visitors from across the country and beyond.
The little eatery became legendary. Well-heeled Dallas foodies reportedly landed a Cessna near Clarendon’s city dump and hitched a ride on the back of the town garbage truck for a meal at Mrs. Bromley’s. It was said the runway had to be lengthened to accommodate bigger planes.
“Chances are if you were eating at Mrs. Bromley’s, you were eating with a big-wig or someone famous,” said an observer.
“She was the original farm-to-table cook,” remembered patron Becky McKinley of Amarillo. “She was the quintessential ‘celebrity-chef’ . . . in a day where there was limited communication, yet everyone found her. There were no great media giants back then, but she was that good.”
Ruby published the popular “Mrs. Bromley’s Cook Book” in 1970, now a rare, coveted out-of-print publication. Later in the 1970s, Texas Monthly and the Ford Times named Mrs. Bromley’s among the best Boarding House diners in the US. When roaming food lovers overate, Mrs. Bromley offered them a nap in one of her upstairs bedrooms.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Bromley’s was an anachronism, one of the last remnants of lost American culture. Modern travelers came to prefer motels over boarding houses and took their meals at fast-food joints and franchised diners offering standardized efficiency, anonymity and indifferent food.
So, Mrs. Bromley’s closed in the early 1980s. She died at age 93 in 2000, and her home is now a single-family residence. But at the Clarendon Enterprise, editor Roger Estlack says travelers still stop by his newspaper office asking for directions to the iconic eatery, Mrs. Bromley’s Dining Room.
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