xxxx@perkins.com – Dear Steve,

When Susan and I were working in the TV room, cleaning it, I came across your business card, and it set me to thinking.  Where are you now?  And, where are all of the other wonderful people who worked at the Perkins Restaurant – the restaurant that so many of us loved to frequent.  It’s been months and months since they (the big giant THEY) decided to raze your building and those close by to build multi-storied residential buildings to house the thousands of people inundating our state.  Mostly – I’m supposing – from the West Coast.

I drove by your building, the other day, and it is not gone; just boarded up.  Along with the La Quinta building behind it.  Looking forlorn with no cars in front driven there by hungry customers who entered the restaurant.  And, there was a chain-link fence all around.

 So many of your customers are people of a certain age; my age.  There were several restaurants (most are now gone) that were comfortable for us to patronize.  The atmosphere was comfortable.  The food was good; food that if we were making it at home was food that we would make at home.  No fancy “new” cuisine that costs incredibly more than we can afford.  Food with ,enough in each serving that some could be taken home for another meal.

 Larry and I frequented Perkins, often, which of course meant that I did not have to cook.  When he was diagnosed with chronic lymphacytic leukemia, I had been cooking for about forty years.  As I remember, I didn’t cook much before I got married.  I was too busy going to school, going to work at the library, and going home to study.  I knew that the only way I as going to be able to afford attending college to be a teacher was to accumulate dollars to pay for tuition and such.  Mom cooked¸ and Sister Clara and I would help with dishes, sometimes.  But, when I married, cooking was in my future – almost sixty years of it.

 Clara and I talked about the diagnosis of a cancer; she said that one problem she believes about patients with cancer is that they don’t eat properly.  Taking that thinking to heart (whether it is right or wrong), I’ve often wondered if Larry and I ate out so often was because I wanted to be sure he ate properly (because he would eat everything at a restaurant), or if it was because I just had had my fill of cooking.  And, in fact, he often did not eat all of the meals prepared at home.  At any rate, many, many of our meals were taken at Perkins.

 Perkins’ two separate gathering rooms allowed space for our retired teachers’ organization to meet, once a month.  Perkin’s staff were wonderful at providing service for our group in one of the rooms.  And, because we met on Mondays, free pie was a bonus!  Of course, when Perkins closed we had to search for a new place to meet.

Where do people my age eat out, these days?  Perkins is gone.  The close-by Village Inn is closed.  So is Denny’s, also close by.  Where are we to comfortably eat out?  We have to search further and find a new restaurant.  We do have some excellent Mexican food restaurants in our area.  But, sometimes, we want plain, old, American food.  It’s hard to find.

 Steve, I do hope that you and the cooks and the dishwashers and the bakers and the servers have found other satisfactory employment, if you wanted it.

 No matter what, I really miss your brownies.

____________________________________________________

Part Two, This week:  Autumn Leaves

I just couldn’t leave without showing the beauty of our Indian Summer.  This year the trees outdid themselves all of their glory.  So, what follows here is a series of photographs that I’ve taken in and around our neighborhood.  Almost over night, the leaves began to change from their summer green to Indian Summer colors.

Curiosity caused me to look up the definition of “Indian Summer.”  This is what Google has to say:

“Weather Historian William R Deedler, of the National Weather Service, describes it as ‘any spell of warm, quiet, hazy weather that may occur in October or even early November.’

“An Indian summer is typically caused by a sharp shift in the jet stream from the south to the north. The warm weather may last anywhere from a few days to over a week and may happen multiple times before winter arrives for good.”

I’m wondering why it doesn’t also refer to the glorious color that we see during this time! 

Be Safe and Be Well

The Cranky Crone 

Thoughtful comments are appreciated.