With the sun low in the sky and an afternoon train meandering down Fifth Street, downtown Augusta has started to quiet as the workday winds down.

But inside Luigi's - the almost 60-year-old Italian and Greek restaurant on Broad Street - small crowds begin to gather at tables in the eclectic restaurant as Frank Sinatra plays on the jukebox.

Toward the back, past the small bar and several bass mounted on the wall, Chuck Ballas Jr. sits in his office, the din of customer chatter in the background. While most people are ending their day, the 56-year-old owner is just getting started.

Switching between his e-mail, the security camera and a football game, he starts going through paperwork in the cramped office.

Restaurants. They're tough businesses many don't survive. Every night is unpredictable and in a family enterprise, there's no group health insurance or hefty bonuses. There are inventory counts and staffing shortages and equipment failures.

Despite growing up in the business, Mr. Ballas hadn't always planned to get into the business started by his grandfather six decades ago. But he now realizes his family is part of what makes the restaurant.

"As long as (customers) see a member of my family, they're OK," he said.

Broad Street was much different in 1949, when the small restaurant opened. Even as downtown has evolved - the demise of major department stores, the construction of the artsy-looking Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce and the opening of Riverwalk Augusta - little has changed at Luigi's.

And to most customers, that's just fine.

Labor of love

Luigi's served its first plate of spaghetti in 1949, when Chuck Jr.'s grandfather Nick opened the small, old-world-style restaurant.

By 1954, he had created a rather successful enterprise. Despite his Greek heritage, few people knew anything about Greek food, said Penny Ballas, Chuck Jr.'s mother. So instead, Nick served his own Italian creations.

That same year, Nick Ballas had a heart attack and his son, Chuck Sr., who hadn't seen him in some years, came down from Massachusetts to help out. Not long after that, Nick had a second heart attack.

It was then that his doctor warned Chuck Sr. and Penny that the restaurant was ruining his health.

His siblings didn't want the place, Chuck Sr. said, and by then, he had already fallen in love with Augusta. He started looking over the books at Luigi's and he liked what he saw.

It wasn't an elaborate operation, but it was profitable, Penny said.

"There were two tin cans," she said. "One for the money, one for the bills."

For the Ballases, the passing of Luigi's from one generation to the next wasn't exactly convenient. Chuck Sr. had a good job as a mechanical engineer and he and Penny had just bought a home in Massachusetts.

Still, the pair liked Augusta, so Chuck Sr. asked Penny how she felt about moving. As long as the water was clean, the schools were good and there was a Greek Orthodox church, she was there.

It was a good place to rear kids, there was less traffic and a cleaner environment.

"It was the best move we ever made," Chuck Sr. said.

The couple went to work, starting by adding their own decorative touches, such as the rather large collection of golf memorabilia dotting the walls.

Work wasn't easy with young children to rear. The hours were long, the job was demanding and hours could run late into the night.

The Ballases weren't always given the red carpet around town.

Penny said she can remember a time when Chuck Sr. wasn't allowed into certain country clubs, which also barred Jews, blacks and women.

One of her daughters was kept out of a sorority at the University of Georgia because her parents owned a "greasy spoon," she said.

Downtown revitalization projects during the 1970s, including the construction of the Chamber of Commerce building, tore up the streets and made it difficult for customers to get in.

Slowdowns such as those sometimes forced Chuck Sr. to do roofing work during the day and run the restaurant by night in order to make ends meet.

On any given night, a staff member might not show, equipment could break or any other number problems could appear.

"You have to love the restaurant business," Penny said. "I used to say I'd burn it down so my son couldn't work there."

But the business survived and has become an Augusta institution. Penny keeps a stack of thank-you letters written by customers, and old newspaper and magazine articles that have featured the restaurant.

Third generation

Chuck Jr. said he was in the restaurant, sweeping floors and helping his father from about the age of 11.

"I would stand on a Coca-Cola crate, rolling pizza dough," he said. "I liked being down here."

In those days, he said, the streets were packed and he more or less grew up on Broad Street.

"If you stepped out of line, your neighbor would spank you," he said.

By 1973, Chuck Jr. was a student at Augusta College. While accompanying his sister to a Greek event in Miami, he met his future wife, Debi, a young singer from Hollywood, Calif., who was performing at a hotel.

As it turned out, she was reared in Boston and their families knew each other in Massachusetts.

They dated and within a few weeks were engaged. Within months, they were married.

"It was right," Debi said. "It doesn't always take years of dating to know."

Being from a large Greek family herself, the culture "wasn't foreign to me."

But Chuck Jr. later realized that attending school wasn't going to pay the bills. He left and took a job selling insurance at Metropolitan Life, something he didn't enjoy.

He left after a year and worked in construction at Underground Utilities for a year before realizing he was kidding himself - he knew the restaurant business inside out and knew he ought to give it a shot.

At the time, however, downtown was hurting from the arrival of Augusta Mall and Regency Mall, which drained downtown of major department stores and left smaller shops to founder.

Business had slowed significantly and Chuck Jr. knew there wasn't enough to go around if he came to work for his father.

He decided instead to open Lil' Luigi's in Big Tree Shopping Center off Washington Road in 1978.

It was similar to the Lil' Luigi's his parents had once run in North Augusta, where soldiers from Fort Gordon would drink beer and play songs on the jukebox.

He used his savings, buying used equipment and furniture and doing all the work himself.

"Of course I was scared," Chuck Jr. said. "It had to work. I was dead meat."

It meant long hours doing everything from sweeping the floor and hand-washing dishes to preparing the food.

It was a few years before he could afford waitresses and other help, "but it was mine," he said.

There was a real learning curve, he said, because they don't teach you how to get licenses, loans or other everyday banking needs in school.

Times could be tight, even with Debi - who is the executive director of Augusta Players - singing in local bands such as Vanilla and working at Lil' Luigi's.

But Chuck Jr.'s pizza and sub venture brought another positive side effect - it reminded him about his father's restaurant and sent them downtown to Luigi's.

Building business

Chuck Jr. and Debi continued running their restaurant for the next 10 years and rearing their three girls, Penelope, Claudia and Bebe.

By 1987, Chuck Sr. knew it was time to hang up his apron. Chuck Jr. initially didn't want to come back, but his father worked out a system where he could run both restaurants.

After a year of that, "I just threw my hands up. It was just too much," Chuck Jr. said.

He sold Lil' Luigi's in 1988 to his cousin (who ran it for a few years before it closed) and went to work full time at the Broad Street restaurant where he grew up.

He started with basic facility upgrades and trained the waitstaff to turn over more tables each night, which was necessary because the restaurant had no room for expansion.

Other factors help keep Luigi's in the black, such as the fact that Chuck Jr. can repair most of the equipment in the restaurant, with the exception of the refrigerator.

It also doesn't hurt that his cooks make everything, except for the pasta, themselves.

"It's a lot more trouble and time," he said. "But it's cheaper and it's better, too."

Penny still rises early to make baklava from scratch for the restaurant. Most of the restaurant's waitstaff have worked there for years.

The combination of loyal customers and those who followed from Lil' Luigi's helped build up the clientele even more.

It wasn't long before Chuck Jr.'s daughters were helping in the restaurant.

"My whole life has been growing up in the restaurant business," said Penelope, his oldest daughter, who swept floors from a young girl and started busing tables as a teenager. "It was never even a question of whether we'd work here."

She graduated with an English degree from Augusta State University, but continues to work at the restaurant.

"I think it's just in my blood," she said.

Working at a family business has its drawbacks. You can't call in sick unless you're truly ill; scheduling a family vacation usually means closing the restaurant; and when the family decides to "eat out," they usually end up going to Luigi's.

"If (nonfamily employees) didn't show up, the restaurant depended on us and we would have to go in regardless of our plans," said Claudia, the youngest daughter. She works as a physician's assistant in Waynesboro, Ga., but still helps out at the restaurant.

Claudia met her future husband, Wesley Latch, in the mid-1990s when he worked at Luigi's a busboy.

Wesley said he enjoyed his time at Luigi's because the customers - and Chuck Jr.'s sense of humor - never made work boring.

"He fired me about once or twice a week," Wesley said of his father-in-law. "I always just came back the next night. It was always a joke. If there was ever a time I didn't take his side, I always got fired."

Penelope said working at the restaurant allows her to be at home with her children during the day because she works three nights a week and trades off with Bebe on hostess duties.

"I work hard, it's stressful, but it's fun because I'm with my Dad," said Bebe, who once worked for a bank but quit because of the stiff corporate environment.

All in the family

Then, one night in 1999, Chuck Jr. found out he had Hodgkins disease.

"He's the one we all really depend on," Debi said. "For him to have cancer ... was unfathomable."

Fortunately, Chuck Jr. said, he was young enough to handle aggressive doses of chemotherapy, but his sickness kept him away from the restaurant most days.

"It brought all of us to our knees," Penelope said. "Your dad is supposed to be the one who is strong."

The atmosphere began to change. Bebe decided to leave the University of Georgia and went to school nearby at Augusta State. Chuck Jr. soon began closely working with Penelope to position her for eventual ownership of the business.

"Dad had always been grooming me, but he put me into high gear," she said.

Getting chemotherapy on Mondays allowed Chuck Jr. to recover in time to be at the restaurant on Fridays when supplies were delivered - the only aspect of the business he refused to miss.

Work also gave him something else to focus on besides the cancer, which was necessary at times given what his body was going through.

"Before my ninth treatment, I was so sick, I was ready to give up," he said.

Debi, worried, called his doctor, who called Chuck Jr. while he was at Kmart and talked him through it for 45 minutes.

"It reset my brain," he said.

After that discussion, he was ready to finish battling his disease.

At the 10-year mark, Chuck Jr. will be declared cured. He said he still wonders whether it will return, but it would be easier a second time, if only because he would know what to expect.

Still, he said, he's feeling much better these days.

"I don't plan on going anywhere," he said.

Don't go changing

As the face of downtown changes, customers seem to love that Luigi's never does. The mounted bass is Chuck Jr.'s touch. The bar was added at the suggestion of his sister, Cynthia, in 1984.

Chuck Jr. still arrives about 6 p.m. to greet customers. The neon Luigi's sign still lights up the little section of Broad while customers mill around on a Saturday night, waiting for a table.

Penelope and Bebe work as hostesses, with Penelope planning on taking over for her dad one day.

Many of the same faces show up at the same time to drink Bell'agio Chianti wine and chat with their regular servers.

In 2001, Chuck Jr.said, he and the staff began asking customers what kind of renovations the restaurant needed.

The 50-year-old booths were falling apart, the carpet was worn, but that didn't matter to his customers.

"Don't change anything," was the overwhelming response, he said, shrugging his shoulders. "They didn't like that at all."

Instead, they rebuilt the dark wood booths and searched high and low for carpet that would blend in with the red walls and antique brass lighting fixtures along the wall (easier said than done, Penelope said).

"They come here because of the ambiance, the ... tradition, the way it looks," Chuck Jr. said.

And come back they do, in good times and bad. Things are stillgood, Chuck Jr. said, with single-digit growth each year. It's not as good as it was before Sept. 11, 2001, when hotel convention business was strong. But that's rebuilding, he said.

For a time, he considered moving his restaurant to Columbia County, but he realized how much a move like that would cost.

And he's settled where he is. "I'm 56. I'm not ready to sign another note," he said.

It seems Luigi's isn't going anywhere. And to most customers, that's just fine.