Lauderdale: Jody, once the sassy face of Hilton Head Island, takes her order to go

Say goodbye to Jody Caskey, who is moving from Hilton Head Island to her hometown of Hendersonville, N.C., this week.

For 20 years, she was a sassy face of the community at the cash register of her popular greasy spoon, Jody's Fine Foods.

From 1976 to 1996, Jody offered a pinch of the real world in Hilton Head's sea of world-class poshosity.

She had Tater Tots for weary Sheetrock hangers and stressed-out reporters. She had sweet tea over perfectly crushed ice in red, white and blue cups with the snappy line, "You've tried the rest, now try the best," and we ran it through our sweaty bodies at the rate of 20 gallons a day. And she had a little side room where Charles Fraser could feed his audience while spreading out endless rolls of plans for an island that was erupting around her so fast it could have been called Dozer Head Island.

From behind her oversized glasses, with a phone dangling from one ear and your order for the famous Garbage Burger going in the other ear, Jody saw the island as a parade of interesting people.

She saw marriage proposals and business deals, tennis stars and lots of first-responders, who always got a discount.

One woman almost had her baby at Jody's, but they managed to get her all the way to go.

And the man who slipped Jody a note saying it was the best fish sandwich he'd ever had was "Broadway" Joe Namath.

Before cell phones, wives called Jody with instructions for their husbands.

She stayed open until midnight, but in the mad rush from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Jody's was the place you had to go if you needed to find somebody.

Jody's parents ran a restaurant in Hendersonville, also called Jody's. She and her husband built their island version off Pope Avenue, with living quarters upstairs. Today, that building is home of The Sea Shack restaurant.

We watched Jody raise her daughter, Jamie -- a karate star who is today a pharmacist in Hawaii.

"I knew everybody who came in the door," Jody said. "I knew their children, their husbands, their parents. Whatever they had going on, sooner or later they'd tell me."

Bill Gardner Sr. loved her iced tea. When he got cancer, she took him a gallon.

Rescue crews out searching for a capsized boat knew they could get revived for free, day or night, at Jody's.

On Saturday afternoons, she had water-gun fights in the parking lot with bigger-than-life islanders we knew as Cowboy and Mountain.

One day a crook snatched Jody's pocketbook from her car parked out front. A chase ensued. A 22-year-old waitress fired warning shots. The crook escaped without the wallet, and the waitress was ticketed for firing a gun in town.

After the restaurant, Jody was a familiar face as a cashier at David Martin's Piggy Wiggly at Coligny Plaza.

For the past year, she's been chauffering David's father, Gene Martin, around the island because he's losing his eyesight. Gene Martin ran the store for years. Everybody knew Gene Martin, not because his place was a palace but because he knew us, and he gave something to everybody in town.

We might say that we're safer with these two pillars off the road.

Or we might wince to think that their island is fading in our rearview mirror.

Follow columnist and senior editor David Lauderdale at twitter.com/ThatsLauderdale and facebook.com/david.lauderdale.16.

This story was originally published August 4, 2015 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Lauderdale: Jody, once the sassy face of Hilton Head Island, takes her order to go."