Wayne, an early Mexican-American, traveled North on the Underground Railroad pretending to be a fugitive from a plantation. He first fought his way to becoming respected by the African-American-dominated slave market. Once in the fabled land of Indiana, he traveled freely as an Irishman with a speech impediment as far North as he could, stopping in the fugitive slave hotbed, St. Joe County.
Tired after a long journey, he stopped in the local feed bag just off the main road of Mishawaka (coincidentally later known as "Main Street"). The dirty little kitchen served two things: Steak and sweat, and the sweat was free. Wayne had ordered quite a bit and ate half of it right away. Soon afterward he fell into a deep sleep.
He awoke only to find a bar wench standing over him requesting a large amount of money. As he stumbled upright in his seat his arms flailed into several piles of dishes, all empty with food drippings all over them. It seemed as if several people sat down and ate while he slept, telling the woman who brought the food that the sleeping man was buying.
Now fully awake and shocked, he reached into his pocket only to find he had also been robbed. A Mexican in Mishawaka circa 1870 was as good as dead with an outstanding debt and severely soiled clothing. However, as an Irishman he was able to negotiate paying off his debt through work without even saying a word.
Chained to the sink in the back just past the dining area, Wayne washed dishes. It was estimated to take Wayne 350 years to pay off his debt. Being a man who is good on his word, he made a contract that enslaved his offspring well into the twenty-third century. This figure did not include inflation, cost of living, or the rise in the minimum wage. He, in fact, paid it off by 1943 by working day and night and only taking breaks when songs of Spanish origin were played by the piano player. Eventually, the piano player was traded in for a radio, and in the 1950s they bought a jukebox. Unfortunately for unknowing Wayne, he was taken advantage of. Being the best dishwasher the place ever had, the owner left the whole place to Wayne in his will. When he died, the owner's son took over and to fool the general public who knew about the will he changed the kitchen's name to "Wayne's Place." Around this time Wayne's first son was ten years old, and had just been chained to the sink.
When old Wayne died at the age of 104, his bastard child, Wayne Jr., had been sufficiently trained to take over. With a day to mourn the loss of his father, he washed dishes for the rest of his life. Some say young Wayne's mother was a drunken lass who wandered into the kitchen unknowingly expecting to find the wash room. Our knowledge of Wayne doesn't support that theory. While we are forced to believe that the young woman was just another victim who was unable to pay her bill, we would like to think otherwise. She was, we would like to hope, a woman of privilege escaping from her rich parents in disguise. After becoming a regular in one the seedier bars along the main road, she started to notice and yearn for what was then a young, vile, 94-year-old Wayne.
Although romantic moments were far and few at the suds-filled sink, they managed to crescendo their love into a child. When it came, he told her the awful truth and for the first time she saw how he was bonded to the basin. It hurt her so deeply that after the birth she gave possession of the child to the owners. Tears filled her eyes as she walked to the bridge not four hundred feet away and threw herself into the mighty St. Joe River.
So, if you venture into Wayne's Place, just off the West side of Main Street in downtown Mishawaka, you just might notice a man of Southern dissent working behind the sink. Please don't bother him; he's got a lot of work to do. Pay him homage merely by playing "The Macerena" on the jukebox.
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