It didn’t take Abby long to make herself at home at Mom’s Kitchen.

The bright-eyed soon-to-be 2-year-old toddled behind the counter from the front door to the back of the restaurant. She found what she was looking for tucked away in a corner — her bright yellow child seat.

After a moment of maneuvering it out from below the counter and getting herself turned around in the narrow walkway, she carried her prize back to the table where her family was sitting.

Abby is Mom’s great-granddaughter, but the feeling of belonging is the same for everyone eating at the North Bend landmark: Everybody is family and almost everyone knows Ann Hazen as Mom.

Some of her regulars have been coming to the restaurant at 1603 Sherman Ave. (the first stoplight south of the bridge) almost as long as Hazen has been running Mom’s.

But Mom was Mom long before the restaurant ever came about. Hazen raised seven children in the Bay Area after moving from Wisconsin in the ’50s.

“My husband was going to be a pig farmer,” Hazen said. “We packed up seven kids — the youngest wasn’t a year old and the oldest wasn’t 10 yet — in a ’51 Packard with a trailer. It took us five days.”

Hazen now has seven kids, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, including Abby. Most are still in the area — Wally is on the Coos Bay School Board and owns a blueberry farm in Coquille.

Her second career didn’t begin until the house was almost empty.

“When my last daughter was in high school, my boys (Wally and Jim) bought me the restaurant and put me to work,” Hazen said laughing; “to keep me off the streets.”

The restaurant had been Uptown Lunch since the ‘40s, according to Hazen. But Wally and Jim wanted to change it appropriately to Mom’s Kitchen.

That was July 20, 1982. She’s been Mom to a generation or two ever since.

“One girl used to come in and bring books with pictures of wedding dresses in them,” Hazen said. “And then she brought in her wedding pictures. Now she has a daughter in high school.”

There are a ton of stories that percolate out of a restaurant during 26 years. Hazen remembered a few of them while sitting at the back table, looking down the long counter where the regulars are reading newspapers while waiting for their orders.

“Remember when the ship hit the bridge and the bridge was closed?” she said. “We had one customer who lived in Coos Bay and drove to the restaurant for breakfast. Ate, then turned around and drove all the way back to North Bay Drive, all the way around the bay, to get back to the mill.”

Another time, a group of cyclists stopped in for breakfast and then continued south.

 “When they got to Bandon, they wrote how much they liked it on toilet paper and sent it. I’ve got a letter on toilet paper.”

Another group from Germany took a picture with Hazen at the restaurant and said they’d send her a copy.

“They sat right there,” Hazen said pointing to the last four seats at the counter.

The group’s photo came to Hazen in a Christmas card dated December 2000.

Hazen, who did most of the cooking at the restaurant for years, wasn’t a big fan of the cook top originally.

“When I first started here, I was afraid of the grill,” she said.

As her customers will attest, she got over that fear, but has turned over the cooking duties the past four years to Bobbiy Noyes and her son, Brad.

“Now I just bug the customers,” she laughed. “They’re so nice.”

And many have become very close over the years.

Dave had just finished his patty melt (no onions) and a mound of fries and was heading for the door, when he turned to Hazen and said. “Don’t get too famous. You still have to come back to work tomorrow.”

“That’s Dave,” Hazen said. “He’s here around 11 a.m.  every day. When he’s not here we get worried, so we call his wife. Twice he was in the hospital. Now if he’s not going to be here, she calls us.”

Jim, a former Menasha employee, still finds his way to Mom’s on Fridays, despite working in Coos Bay.

“I’ve been coming here for 20-some years,” he said. “We used to come here before opening time, about 5 (Mom was in at 4 getting ready to open in those days). We got away with murder around here.

“It was a sad day when the specialty of the day went off the menu,” he joked with Hazen.

“What was that?” Hazen asked.

The response, “Milkshakes!” brought another round of chuckles.

Hazen explained that the milkshake machine took the cooks and waitresses too much time to make.

“There are those of us who believe those machines are still back there,” Jim said.

After 26 years, Hazen shows no signs of letting up.

“I just love getting up and coming in,” she said. “Jim asked me, ‘Mom, don’t you want to retire?’ I said ‘No. I get my two days off and I’m ready to go back.’  What would I do if I retire?

“I’m just going to keep going and going and going. I told the customers they’re not going to get rid of me that easy.”

Mom’s Kitchen, at 1603 Sherman in North Bend, is open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day except Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.