By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer
The eatery served as neighborhood rallying point; charitable efforts fed many on holidays.

AUBURN – A lonely pink pig stands sentinel inside the locked entryway to The Slamma.

Gone are the crowds: Coffee club members, Bates students starving for a fix of fried comfort food, businessmen and women, and friends just out for a meal.

Gone too are the people who did the cooking, the serving, the dishes, and most of all, who provided the sense of family that became a hallmark of The Slamma.

A simple note taped to the front door explains why.

“We are unable to stay in business,” it reads over the names of Tammy and Tory Hewison.

“Due to circumstances beyond our means, we will be closing the doors at The Slamma for the last time on January 22.”

Visitors who hadn’t heard about the closure earlier learned of it by reading the note when they showed up for coffee on Monday morning.

The circumstances beyond the Hewisons’ control, the note continues, include the soaring price of heating oil as well as “the large amount of overhead in the restaurant business.”

Tammy Hewison’s home telephone number is disconnected, so the woman likened by some to an angel couldn’t be immediately reached for additional comment.

A contact number on an adjacent invitation to patrons to join the Hewisons and their workers for “our final goodbye” – a roast pork dinner set for 5 to 9 p.m. this coming Friday – is the number for The Slamma itself.

No one answered there, at the door or the telephone.

Hewison opened the 67 Mill St. eatery seven years ago. She named it The Slamma as a reminder of her days serving as a guard at the Androscoggin County Jail.

There was nothing dark about The Slamma, though.

It became a rallying point for people in New Auburn whenever a need arose. Hewison and her crew would throw open the doors to their neighbors when fires struck.

Not too many years ago she took in members from six families who lost their homes to an apartment house fire, serving them and firefighters coffee and providing a place for them to get warm during the January blaze.

Then she set out to collect clothes, toys and other necessities to replace the stuff that her neighbors had lost in the blaze. She was able to raise a fair amount of cash to help, too.

The Slamma was something of a home away from home for scores of people on the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hewison would again open the doors to anyone needing or wanting a place to go to be with other people on those holidays.

She and her crew, along with a few volunteers, would serve up turkey dinners with all the fixings for Thanksgiving, then add hams for the Christmas menu.

The holiday meals were always free, often to the surprise of newcomers.

Hewison, in a January 2003 interview, said the free meals were just another of her “many harebrained schemes.”

Andrew Marsh, a Slamma regular, called Hewison then “a kind soul. She’s an angel.”

The Slamma nearly closed in January 2003. Hewison had her back to the wall after her insurance company told her she needed to invest more than $5,000 in a fire-suppressing system and new grill hood.

When her customers learned of her predicament, one brought in a bucket for donations. It was something Hewison herself had done in the past, to help others. Then it was a time for others to help her.

Over time the donations started to add up.

Then one day, a stranger walked into The Slamma.

He handed Hewison a check for $5,000.

“I never saw him before,” Hewison said at the time.

“It’s a loan,” she said the man told her. “You pay it back whenever you can.”

She staged fundraisers to help repay it.

Later, she said, “We’ve worked hard to keep this restaurant going. I can’t see myself closing. I’d handcuff myself to the front door first.”

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