It’s enough to make an old buffalo soldier cry.

After 50 years in the same location in north Bend, a down-home diner that caters to locals and still serves burgers made with buffalo meat is feeling the crunch of changing times.

The Tom-Tom diner on North Highway 97 near Empire Avenue is still open for meals and smoking, still serves breakfast specials for as low as $3.25, calls many customers by name, and places orders for regulars as they walk in the door.

Unfortunately, recent months have brought fewer people through that door, said Steve and Michelle Gallant, who have owned the restaurant since 1996.

Sales over the last couple of months are down 46 percent from the previous year’s comparable months, Steve Gallant said. In fact, traffic is so low in the 84-seat diner that the Gallants sliced their employees from eight to four this summer and cut their business hours as much as four hours per day to close at 5 p.m. instead of 9.

”I’ve been 42 years in the restaurant business and 15 years in Bend and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Steve Gallant said. ”I took this business from being so-so and built it into a busy place where everyone knows each other … Contractors used to sit here and fill the tables with their work.

”Parking used to be tight in the lot during breakfast and lunch and to see that dwindle to nothing that is devastating.”

The reason for the sudden drop in business? The Gallants have their speculations, mostly which revolve around the changes taking shape as Bend grows.

The North Gate 76 Auto Truck Stop, one of the longest-standing fuel stations in Central Oregon which operated like a sister business to the Tom-Tom, closed at the end of June. Truckers who regularly filled their tanks for discount prices at the gas station also frequented the Tom-Tom next door, Steve Gallant said.

The Greyhound bus station, which operated five lines behind the truck stop, also moved out in June and relocated farther south on Highway 97 at a Chevron gas station, 1315 NE Third St.

The former bus stop and truck stop, which also operated a convenience store, have been razed. The property owner, Tosco Corp., a Tempe Ariz.-based independent oil refiner and marketer of petroleum products which acquired the land in 1997, is still trying to sell the property, said Dan Baldwin, a real estate manager at Tosco.

Meanwhile the bulldozers and heavy equipment used to tear down the businesses, and the erection of a chain-link fence apparently confused Tom-Tom customers.

”People have always associated the two together,” Steve Gallant said. ”If someone asks where are you going, they say ‘the Tom-Tom, it’s next to the 76,’ or ‘the 76, next to the Tom-Tom. All they saw was people knocking down buildings. They logically assumed we were next.”

At least 50 customers have come to the diner and said they heard it had closed with the truck stop, Michelle Gallant said.

”I was surprised,” said Mike McCallister, a utility contractor who eats breakfast at the Tom-Tom about three times a week. ”It made you wonder if the whole place was going to come down.”

The tight economy and the addition of the Bend Parkway is also a source of concern for the diner owners.

Steve Gallant said the city has not put any signs on Highway 97 or the parkway to direct drivers to the six major restaurants on Highway 97 between Butler Market Road and Empire Avenue. Northbound drivers could easily ignore the business route, Steve Gallant said.

And while many restaurants are losing sales during the tough economic conditions, the city doesn’t need to aid them in the process, Steve Gallant said.

”I can’t say the Greyhound station brought in X amount of business, the gas station brought in X amount of business and the parkway took away X, and economy has taken away so much, but from what I can see, the traffic counts are down astronomically. It’s summertime in Bend, and it’s supposed to be busy.”

Before June, business was growing, said Steve Gallant, who still remembered when the Tom-Tom opened next to the North Gate 76 in 1946 as nothing more than a drive-through restaurant with about six-booths inside.

Will business rebound? It’s hard to say.

”If they close, we’ll find out where Steve and Micelle go and we’ll follow them,” said Cy Keagy, a locksmith and 10-year regular at the Tom-Tom, along with his wife Evelyn.

The couple pledged their loyalty to the food and their friendship with the owners on Monday while eating breakfast there.

Whatever the case, the Gallants want residents to know the Tom-Tom is open, and that they plan to keep it that way.