Choked Up

I sat in the diner this morning, an alien. I was doodling concept sketches onto a stack of white paper while referring to a brainstorming list on my shiny Mac laptop.

I ordered tea instead of coffee. Yet another extravagance like drawing and portable electronic devices. Most folks at the Red Oak Diner (or the Red Choke as it is known to insiders) make liberal use of the endless pot of coffee. Tea, which costs the same price, 65 cents, is limited to one bag. My breakfast came to a whopping two dollars and ninety-five cents and consisted of four pieces of toast, an omelet and a generous dose of breakfast potatoes with the tea.

I had gone to the diner to think. Get out of the house. Get some work done away from the desk and chair I spend half of my day at. But instead of working I found myself ease dropping. The hostess at the diner is an older Russian woman. It is well known that most of the kitchen staff there is "right off the boat" but she is the only visible out-of-towner in the joint, a relative, from the old country of one of the owners. The hostess is endearing. She manages a certain softness and feminity despite her cascading affectations of American diner talk.

"Wvat can I geht you drink swveety?"

She is thin and easily 55 to 60 years old. But she wears a well cut designer shirt with a wrap-around print. Her hair is professionally colored and cut with freshly modern but relatively conservative lines. The color suits her, as does the well matched makeup and it isn't until you look at her closely at the check out counter that you notice the marks of years of hard living.

Today I sat across from two older gentlemen. They seemed to have gone to high school together. They were talking about football the way men that are well beyond the years of playing will. The one man lamented that now a days the boys are just picked for their physique, their brawn, that the scrappy hero of their childhood teams would never have been considered for the team today. They talked a while about their gym class and a particular boy who was unathletic and got picked on by the teacher. The second man kept saying, "I have to go and pick up my daughter." But the two of them were still sitting there, chattering away when I left.

Most of the tables were filled with men. Specifically, two men. Old pals.

My waitress was a middle-aged woman with soft features and a polite demeanor. Every customer who walked through the door was greeted as "honey" or "sweetie" except for a few ornery regulars who the staff privately refer to as "buster" or "buddy."

My waitress and the hostess were sitting at a table with another gal, who only had enough money for toast and coffee, a dollar and fifteen cents. Her name was Helen and I heard the hostess say, "Helen, wvaht Hellen? I have naht seen Helen." Which is Russian hostess for "the toast and coffee are on me."

It is raining outside. The sky is dark and the colors are alive and rich. The tables at the diner are covered in an odd creamy finish and they seemed to glow.

This diner was once famous for a stuffed deer head that sported a gold chain with an amulet. As a child I was alternately terrified and fascinated by the deer and I remember vividly the day I worked up the courage to pet the deer. My mother held me up and I timidly patted the dry coarse hair with my sweaty, plump diminutive hand. It was so shiny and demure that I had expected it to feel soft and fluffy. That amulet made it seem to have once been the king of the forest. I had assumed that only a most skilled hunter could have captured such a fine creature. After I touched it I couldn't get over the discrepancy between what this semblage of a living thing appeared to be and what it actually was. For years the feeling of dry dead hair would sneak up on me in the palm of my hand.

The table under the deer's head was a seat of honor. In high school my band of merry diner goers would choose that booth over all others for sitting at and eating and talking away the small hours of the morning.

As I sat at my table today, alone, sipping tea and watching the flat screen television that has replaced the deer I couldn't help but feel as though I had lost something.

I wondered how quickly we would disappear, the generations of deer petters.

My grandfather and I used to sit in this diner and eat breakfast together on Sunday mornings. His old pals from the old neighborhood would come in and say things like, "Hey hey billy-boy." And he would reply, "Well hello there you old scoundrel, you."

Say it. Say it.

As a young boy that is what I thought it should be like to become an old man. All your friends from around the way. Everyone, a friend from one adventure or another, who came together on a Sunday to eat and give thanks for being alive and eating.

Now I, with all of my childhood friends scattered to the wind and no one to sit and reminisce about childhood valor and conquests with, I with no scoundrels or heroes, plan my next move to an almost home. Where I will speak with an accent and care for my new friends the best I can having no shared history to make our eating and living momentous.