Shirley Simmons, seen Wednesday at her cafe on U.S. Highway 56 in Overbrook, has decided to close shop after being in business since 1963, when hamburgers

Overbrook ? More than 45 years after opening her own cafe along the highway just across the Douglas County line, Shirley Simmons plans to make her final hot-beef sandwich Friday.

That’s a promise.

“Once I go home, I won’t make ’em. I don’t like ’em. I don’t eat beef,” said Simmons, who lives just outside of town and plans to spend plenty of time there, now that she’s closing Shirley’s Cafe.

Too bad. Seemingly, everybody else in town does.

The cafe on U.S. Highway 56 has been serving up homemade pies, breakfasts, milk shakes and, yes, hot-beef sandwiches since Feb. 13, 1963 – back when, as she says, “hamburgers were six for a dollar, breakfast was 50 cents and I sold gas for 17 cents a gallon.”

And now all the folks who normally line up around the corner of Eighth and Maple streets for breakfast, lunch and dinner will be searching for new places to eat. All the coffee klatches, social groups, Rotary gatherings and chamber of commerce functions already are in search of new places to meet.

Change is coming, just as it has been for years now in the small towns of rural America.

Now it’s Overbrook’s turn.

“I’ve seen it all across Kansas,” said Jon Wilhite, retired vice president of Kansas State Bank in Overbrook, who’s been attending weekly Rotary meetings at Shirley’s since 1966. “The little bitty places like this are the heartbeat of the community : and that’s disintegrating out there. The whole era is leaving us.

“McDonald’s and Burger King and Taco Tico and places like that are taking over. And Wal-Mart and Kmart and Target. : There’s going to be a lot of good ol’ laughs and good times and that sort of things missing. We’re in a new era.”

Part of the new era in Overbrook is just down the street: a convenience center with a new Wheat State Pizza restaurant and a BP fueling station, featuring the latest in technology and services: from E85 fuel to, once Shirley’s closes, breakfast seven days a week.

The pizza place, with seating for 100 upstairs and 100 down below, hopes to attract Rotary’s weekly meetings and those of other organizations. Rotary plans to meet two weeks at Overbrook’s newly expanded nursing home, two weeks at Conrad’s bar – also now serving breakfast – and two weeks at Wheat State before settling on a new home.

“People will really miss Shirley and her establishment because it’s been here so long, and it’s been such a landmark for so long,” said Sherri Rhodes, who co-owns the new pizza and fuel place with her husband and another couple, Mike and Roxane Fawl. “But people are ready for a change.”

So is Shirley herself. After 45 years without a real vacation, and employing all five of her children and many of their children and even some of their children, she’s ready to hang it up.

The place is for sale: $125,000 for the joint, minus the antique cash register, cookie jar, plug-tobacco cutter and any of the other nostalgic items lining the walls, counters, cabinets and shelves in the place.

She’ll also leave with plenty of memories, of friends made over sandwiches, coffee, pies and just plain talk. Family, friends and customers will get a chance to celebrate the good times during a public gathering at Shirley’s from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Friday.

She’s sure she’ll miss them.

“They’ve been in the family for a long time,” she said.