Gulf War Effort Playing Well on Main Street : Santa Paula: The Chili Hut has become a gathering place for those with loved ones in the Mideast. Patrons are almost all supportive of the war.

Talk of war mingled with the sizzle of frying burgers Tuesday at the Chili Hut Cafe in Santa Paula.

Outside on Main Street, American flags flapped from light poles and yellow ribbons fluttered on the antennas of cars cruising by.

The names of Santa Paula soldiers in the Persian Gulf adorned two huge yellow ribbons painted on the window of the Chili Hut, a sort of unofficial town hall that opened in 1943.

Old-timers long have swapped gossip over plates of chicken-fried steak at the eatery, but since the start of the Gulf War, the restaurant has become an anchor for Santa Paula residents whose sons and daughters are overseas.

The day before the war began, only three names were painted on the window. On Tuesday, there were 38. New names go up nearly every week as more Santa Paulans ship out for the front, said Connie Hanks, the restaurant’s owner.

“It has been very emotional,” Hanks said. “People come in and cry, and go, ‘Oh, thank you’ ” for putting the names on the window, she said.

While artist and part-time waitress Bathsheba Rabago added another name to the glass Tuesday, a shadow of the painted message “GOD BLESS THEM ALL”--cast from the window by the afternoon sun--crept across an inside wall of the cafe.

On the third day of the U.N. coalition’s armored push into Kuwait and Iraq, cafe customers praised President Bush and castigated Saddam Hussein, saying he should be ousted and punished as a war criminal.

“I think the President’s doing a great job,” said Tina McDaniel, 29, of Santa Paula, who waited near the door for a table. “He’s just getting in there and getting right to the point and letting them know we’re not gonna take any more flak.”

As for the U.S. casualties, she shrugged. “People are gonna die,” she said. “It’s a war.”

Her husband, Todd McDaniel, jiggled their 3-month-old daughter, Ashley, in his arms and asked her, “What do you think of all this?”

Ashley smiled. Her father kissed her fine hair, crooning to a Beach Boys tune, “Say, ‘Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb Iraq.’ ”

Over a forkful of chicken-fried steak, Sinclair Osborne of Ventura hailed the low U.S. casualty rate--55 killed by Tuesday afternoon out of nearly half a million American troops.

“I don’t know how it could be any better,” said Osborne, 70, wounded in combat in World War II while serving with an infantry unit in Belgium. “They kill more people in South L.A. in a month.”

Bob Fields, 65, a Santa Paula inventor who flew Navy planes in World War II, said he is proud of Operation Desert Storm’s apparent success. “I love it, ‘cause they’re kicking ass,” he said.

As the leader of troops who have pillaged Kuwait, Hussein should be tried for war crimes, Fields said.

His son criticized anti-war protesters, calling them uninformed.

“The people who think they know more than George Bush . . . I feel sorry for them,” said Craig Fields, a 30-year-old artist.

The Chili Hut’s customers are “all pro-war,” Hanks said. “They want to get rid of Hussein. They’re very supportive of the President. They say, ‘If we’re gonna do it, and we’ve gone this far, let’s go all the way. Let’s get rid of that guy.’ ”

However, one couple at the cafe said they disagree with such pro-war sentiment. But they declined to be interviewed.

If not for his wife and infant daughter, Kerry Schreffler, 37, said he would have re-enlisted. Schreffler of Santa Paula served in 1979 as a paratrooper in the Army 82nd Airborne Infantry, which was reported in Kuwait City on Tuesday.

“I’m glad everything is going as well as it is, and I support everything that’s going on,” Schreffler said, fingering a plastic-coated menu. “I’ve got about 23 friends who are in Kuwait City right now.”

Hussein’s grip on the world’s oil supplies must be loosened, he said.

“The Kuwaiti people are suffering horribly under Saddam Hussein,” said his wife, Terry, 35, bouncing their daughter, Silver, on her knee. “I think they need to be freed from this tyrant.”

Patricia Garcia of Santa Paula said the war has affected her personally. Her son, Cpl. Steve Thorpe, 23, is assigned to an Army engineering battalion supporting the 2nd Armored Division in the Persian Gulf. He was scheduled to be discharged on Jan. 13, but his enlistment was extended and she has not heard from him since.

“It’s real easy to say, ‘Go and get ‘em. Just do it,’ ” said Garcia, 42, an administrative assistant at the United Water District. “But when your son’s the one doing the goin’ and gettin’, it’s a very personal thing.”

Garcia said the Chili Hut has become a source of strength for her.

The window “makes me feel good,” she said. “I think a lot of people do not want to see what happened to the guys who came home from ‘Nam happen here.”

Just before the war began, Thorpe mailed his mother a letter on his birthday, Jan. 10. “He’s got a sense of humor,” Garcia said. “It said, ‘Just think, Ma. What a birthday present, an all-expense-paid trip to Iraq.’ ”

Unless one of the Santa Paula soldiers dies, Hanks said, the color of the ribbons will remain unchanged.

“My biggest goal is to not have a black ribbon on any of these boys,” said the owner of the Chili Hut.