On Sunday, Ladyman's Cafe cook Jack Covert will rise at 4:30 a.m. and head to work. He will arrive at the restaurant by 5 a.m. and light the stove, heat up the sausage gravy and prepare what he will need for the breakfast rush, the same way he has for years.
But when Covert's shift ends at 1:30 p.m., he will hang up his apron for good after 49 years in the Ladyman's kitchen.
Now 72, Covert has worked at Ladyman's, a Bloomington landmark, since it first opened in 1957. On Dec. 10, a little less than a year after Walnut Street Development purchased the building housing the restaurant, Ladyman's Cafe will close for good. Ladyman's building will be torn down next spring to make way for Finelight Strategic Marketing Communications offices. And Covert, for the first time in nearly 50 years, will be out of a job.
"I'm going to be fighting for unemployment," he said. "They tell me I should have no problem, but I don't know."
A part-time job is not out of the question, Covert said, but at this point, he wants to stay home and take care of his ailing wife, Pat.
"I don't like to go into places I don't know," he said. "I'd have to learn a new routine and new people. I'm too old to go through that again."
Covert says he is not much of a talker, gesturing with a long, serrated knife he used to cut up ham for ham salad. Most of the customers know the man by his food, not his face.