Dorothy Gabriel, owner of the former Office Lounge, “died peacefully in her sleep” on June 15, according to her obituary. She was 85.  

Dorothy, which is what everyone called her, was one of a kind. 

For more than 30 years, her Office Lounge was where reporters, photographers and editors of the Des Moines Register and Tribune gathered between editions and after deadlines to rehash their work and occasionally get into fights.

Dorothy got the Office as part of a divorce settlement in 1967 and, along with her daughters, ran it until 1991. 

When I joined the Tribune in 1975, the Office was in the Royal Union Building at 710 Grand Ave. with a side door on the alley behind the R&T building. 

Reporters could dash out of the newsroom, down the back steps and order a drink in the time it took a copy kid to carry a story to the city desk. If you were quick, you could finish the drink and be back on the fourth floor before the city editor finished reading your story. 

Copy desk editors gathered regularly at the Office for “a bowl of soup” between editions.

Editors put up with it, because they knew they could always find enough bodies at the Office to cover anything from a late-night murder to the F-5 tornado that wiped out much of Forest City in 1966. 

When the Royal Union Building was demolished in 1978 to make way for the Downtown Marriott Hotel, the Office Lounge moved across the street and operated from the basement level of the Seventh Street parking garage for another dozen years. It was at that location that much of the newspapers’ unofficial planning for coverage of the pope’s 1979 visit to Living History Farms took place. 

In the old days, Iowa’s liquor laws forbade tavern owners from extending credit to patrons, but that never stopped Dorothy from running tabs for many of the city’s best-known news men and women. It was a matter of convenience, just like it was to pull the shades and dim the lights when closing time neared. 

Chopping rice: My wife made an interesting observation the other night as we drove by the former Dahls store on Ingersoll. Two “Ps” in the new name were unlit, making it the “RICE CHO PER” store.

Folks in our neighborhood were optimistic last year when a Kansas City grocers group took over the Dahls chain with promises of better products and lower prices. 

Some of that has come to pass, but continuous makeovers have created a bargain-basement feel with canned goods heaped in wooden crates. It’s an odd fit for what many consider an upscale neighborhood. 

Plus, no one can explain how the store’s Rewards cards translate into lower gasoline prices. It was all pretty simple when Dahls was in charge, but the system has changed more than once since Price Chopper took over. 

It doesn’t really matter, because the last time I tried to use my card, the 5-cent-a-gallon discount was more than offset by Price Chopper’s price, which was 14 cents a gallon more than other nearby service stations.