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Big Elmer's View From the Porch
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March 2008 Nan Parati: I’m standing backstage at the Eilen Jewell concert at Ashfield’s Town Hall with Nan Par—(is it . . . . Parity? Or . . ) Nan Parati: Pa-RAT-i. NP: (Oh. Thanks.) Nan Pa-RAT-i, owner of Elmer’s Store in Ashfield. Nan, you, or rather, Elmer’s is the producer of this concert, are you not? NP: Yes we are! NP: What made you decide to do that? What makes you decide to any of the stuff you do? You do a lot of stuff and . . . . sorry—where did you get the idea to produce an Eilen Jewell concert in the middle of winter in Ashfield? NP: I had seen Eilen twice before, both times at the Green River Festival in Greenfield. I just love her and her band, and knew that, even if people didn’t know who she was, if they just heard one song they would want to come. We played her CDs at Elmer’s and people who heard it bought tickets. She’s also quite on the rise here on the American music scene and there were lots of people who knew her music already and bought tickets as soon as they were announced. NP: Huh? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. What’s that food you’re serving downstairs? I just ate something with a claw on it or something. NP: Well, because it’s Mardi Gras, we’re serving up New Orleans style food. That was probably a shrimp tail. We took the claws off the crawfish for this event. NP: That brings me to my next question: An awful lot has been made over your coming up here after Hurricane Katrina and your New Orleans connection. Don’t you think you’ve gotten just about enough milk out of that cow? NP: Well . . . wow . . . um, I mean, I did end up here as a result of Katrina—I really did lose my house there and all. I mean, it’s still standing, but it’s not livable. . . and, had it not been for Katrina, I would probably still be in New Orleans. But, um . . .-- NP: Whatever. Now, at the beginning of the second set, Jim Olsen, the announcer made a huge deal about all of the events you do and how you’ve “changed Ashfield with Elmer’s.” What do you think about that? NP: I think that people are very nice to say that, but I think that Elmer’s would never have worked and people would never have come to concerts if Ashfield weren’t just that kind of town. Lots of places like Elmer’s are opening all over Western Massachusetts, but many of the towns they’re in don’t support the stores or the events. I am so lucky that Ashfield and the surrounding towns are so open to doing stuff! NP: Well, Jim Olsen then went on to say that you should be the Mayor of Ashfield! My God! What were you thinking? Who do you think you are??? NP: Yeah. When Jim said that, I was standing at the back of the room by the mix pit. At first he thanked Elmer’s and that was cool, and then he thanked me, and that was okay, but then he starting talking about how Elmer’s had changed the town and then he said that thing about being Mayor. NP: Hell-ooo! What went through your head? NP: In my head at that very moment I was doing a slow-motion leap from behind the mix pit, over the crowd’s heads, flying toward the stage and then I was doing a full-body slam into Jim Olsen, knocking him off the stage, yelling, “Nooooooooooo! Don’t say thaaaat!” But that was just in my head. I didn’t really do that. The “Mayor” thing was just in Jim’s head. I don’t see myself that way and I would hate for anyone else to think I did. I don’t see myself as anything beyond a goony girl who likes to do stuff. NP: Yeah--Hey, who’s that cute tall guy who works at Elmer’s? NP: Um, Rob? NP: Yeah. Does he have a girlfriend? NP: Um, no, I don’t think so, but I don’t think he really wants me to— NP: Never mind, I’ll talk to him myself. So what do you hate about working at Elmer’s? NP: I, uh, don’t hate anything about it. NP: Sure you do! What is it? NP: Well, I guess I wish my feet didn’t hurt all the time from standing up so much. NP: That’s stupid. Tell me something real. NP: That’s all I got! I really like working at Elmer’s! NP: You know, you suck as a waitress. NP: I think I’ve been pretty up-front about that. And besides, I have gotten better at it. NP: I thought you were going to be interesting. I don’t even know why they gave me this assignment. You’re really boring me. NP: Uh . . . I uh— NP: Okay, thanks! This has been great! You know, all the photos we took of you for this look kinda, well, we can’t use them. Is that okay if we run this without photos? NP: Sure. Sure. I don’t care. NP: Damn cell phone, what’s wrong with it? It hasn’t worked all day up here. Okay . . . thanks, Um, can you call me a cab? |
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February 2008 The State of the Elmer Message 2008 My fellow Americans: So here’s where we are. Can y’all up in the balcony hear me alright? Okay. Well, you know how we were going to do great big things ‘round about last September? We were going to expand and get us a liquor license and be open more nights and things? Well at the time, when our new inspiration for all of this, Susanne Hynes was thinking we could do those things right away, she had not yet started working at Elmer’s. So she started working there and then she invited her friend Jim the Chef to work there, too, and between the two of them, they took a look around and said, “This isn’t a real restaurant! This is a pretend restaurant!” Now, I thought hard about taking umbrage, but decided instead to find out what a real restaurant was and here’s what I found out: A real restaurant has a kitchen big enough to serve more than one meal at a time in. A real restaurant has enough refrigeration to store a whole cow in, horns and all (if you wanted to.) And a stove big enough to cook a blue whale on (if you wanted to do that, either.) A real restaurant has a kitchen and an oven big enough to serve a meal in AND bake enough cookies and muffins to keep the bakery case full on a daily basis, all at the same time. Me, I got a Playskool restaurant. So all of our grandest plans had to be pushed back a little bit. They are not dead plans, my fellow Americans, they are just temporarily-delayed plans while we look into ciphering out how we’re going to turn our little tiny kitchen into a big one in a store the size of a little baby shoebox. So that’s what I do all day now: I look at Elmer’s from the front and from the back and from the outside and from the top and every day I have a new plan about how to do this. So I am working on that and thinking about Loaves and Fishes and Little Engines that Could and Miracles of Lights and all kinds of initiatives that turn out just amazing in the end and make it into the books of Things No One Ever Thought Could Happen, But They Did. So that’s where we are. In the meantime, we still have our daily breakfast, we serve lunch on the weekends, we have a new chef in the kitchen working with Mary (and the two of them laugh themselves silly all day long so that I now I have to upgrade our slogan to: “Fabulous Food, Hilarious Staff.”) We’re promoting a big-time Mardi Gras concert this year on February 9th at Ashfield’s Town Hall with Eilen Jewell, a huge talent who, with her band sings kind of Roadhouse/Honky-tonk/Country/Folk music. She’s getting named all over the place as one of the up and coming artists to watch for in the whole-wide country and she is just great! Since it’s Mardi Gras, we’ll be serving New Orleans food: Shrimp Etouffee, Muffulettas (vegetarian and non) and our own Crawfish Pasta downstairs with the concert upstairs. Call us about tickets! We’re also throwing a special reservation-only Valentine’s Day dinner on February 14th where we’ll be serving Prime Rib or Salmon to you and your loved one(s.) Call us about that, too! So we’re working on it! We’re making life as special as we can while we stand with our arms folded across our chests and pencils behind our ears murmuring, “Well, we could put the walk-in cooler over here . . . . and the convection oven over here . . . no, how about over here . . . ? No, wait—the door’s in the way.” In the meantime, the economy is good: we created 2 new jobs and so unemployment is down by that much. We have no beef with any other establishments in town, so we can sleep at night without worrying about terrorism or anything. We pretty much welcome anybody who comes in so we’re not too upset about aliens sneaking in over the borders between here and Goshen or Buckland or Conway, so that’s good. So all in all, we’re doing pretty good, just a little behind in our plans. We’re instituting a Plan Surge, however, and that should take care of it. Thank you, good night and God bless us, every one! I’ll be out shaking hands while Country Pie delivers the North-Side-of-Main-Street Response. |
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January 2008 Of all the resolutions I’ve considered for this year, the one I think I’m going to stick to is the one in which I don’t think I’ll be having any children this year. I got three of them for Christmas: an eight year old nephew, a five year-old niece and an eleven year old visitor and . . . you remember the old Pollyanna movie (from 1960) where indominatably happy little Hayley Mills goes to live with (and I quote here from the plot synopsis) “her cold, spinsterish aunt” who won’t let her do anything fun and generally makes Pollyanna’s life a living Hell? I have figured out that the poor aunt wasn’t cold and spinster-ish; she just didn’t want to let Pollyanna download a bunch of Hannah Montana songs to her computer and what’s wrong with that? All that aunt wanted to do was to eat her dinner in peace without having to coax perfectly good macaroni and cheese into a child who identified it as an alien substance that would poison him. She wanted to get up and arrive some place before the promised event started, without having to wake Pollyanna up seventeen times and dress her like a rag doll while the child crouched under the covers screaming, “I’m cold! I’m sleepy! I don’t wanna go!” though it had been Pollyanna’s idea to attend the children’s church service in the first place. All that poor, cold, spinsterish aunt wanted in the whole world was to be able to hear the nice Christmas music over the Pyow! Pyow! Hatatatatatatatata Pyow! Zhhhhht! Zhhhht! of alien forces attempting to invade the planet, but being held at bay by something called a Transformer. Or something. Or over the lyrics to a song about some boy who would do you wrong, girl, but I never would you have to trust me, girl, ooooooh. Oooooooh. I’m sure that in her holiday shopping the cold, spinster-ish aunt had thought that Christmas morning was going ring with heart-warming cheer instead of the heart-wrenching wail of “but I wanted a kitty cat!” And that was at this cold, spinster-ish aunt’s house. At her friend’s house, the two children who live there puked their ways through Christmas morning and the three days thereafter. I know why kids have to be manufactured so darned cute. If they didn’t have that going for them, people would just hand them right back the twelve-hundred and ninety-fifth time they had to say, “Because I said so, that’s why!” And see, that’s the only reason I have for not letting the child wear my favorite, no-longer-possible-to-get, 10 year-old bought-in-Germany house shoes out to play in the snow: Because I said so, that’s why. If I were a good person I would open my hands and my heart to the little ones and let them clang me on the head with sofa pillows all day long. I would let them shoot the aliens hiding in the Christmas tree and lift my original Mimi Pieropan oil paintings off the wall with their feet while they lie on the couch reading Harry Potter. If I were a good person, I would let them stomp all over my rugs with their snowy boots and tell me in detail all the plots to every movie they ever saw. As it happens, I am not a good person and I make no excuses for it. I identify strongly with the Cold Spinsterish Aunt and am considering re-writing the Pollyanna series from her point of view. But most important, I am going to stick to my resolution and I will not be giving birth to any children in 2008. Absolutely not, no way. I don’t care if they come with 100 pounds of chocolate each, I will not be having children this year. Already-born children are quite welcome to come into my house in their best clothing and sit on the edge of my chairs in their shiny shoes, spit-down hair and little white gloves. We will have tea and we will discuss current events and tell quiet, but amusing stories. They will leave my I-pod alone (because I said so) and they will not ask me again to download Beyonce to it. But as far as having my own? I don’t think so. It was a difficult decision to make, but some resolutions must be stuck to and so, with a fierce determination I state out-loud for everyone to see: I will not be having any children this year. Only, maybe if they come with 200 pounds of chocolate and their own butler, each. No, wait—I just heard the delighted squeal of someone opening another shook-up soda on the rug. That’s it. I’m sticking to my resolutions. |
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December 2007 The boys were brothers, men-children not only in the un-promised land, but in a land that was never even meant for them. Raised to live within the boundaries of The Neighborhood where one could get a fine education in lawlessness, but not a toehold in anything else. They were raised by a single mother, but two mothers in herself; the older boy had come along before the crack had straight-jacketed her, the younger boy never knew a mom not on the prowl for drugs. She loved her boys with a fierce light, and, despite the fact that the older boy’s first memory in life was of running down the street beside his mother being shot at by an unknown foe, they were their own family. What else is there besides being shot at in life? Who in The Neighborhood could possibly know? The older boy became the dad to his brother, to his mother; that’s what people do in dysfunction-addicted families. At the age of six he learned to fry chicken by standing on a chair before a pan of thick, hot grease. Someone had to feed the family, didn’t they? But only three years older than his brother, he had difficulty wresting seniority away from the drug-sellers on the corner. On the coin-der, as they said in The Neighborhood. The drug-sellers had money, they had street-credibility, they had plenty of free time. The elder boy had only an idea—and no one knows where he got this idea—that there was a life that did not involved hiding. Their mother came looking for her boys every evening at sunset. Whether her own mother had ever come looking for her as a child, I have no idea. I know that she had seen her mother killed by the man she loved. Before that time she had disdained drugs, vowing never, never, ever. After the murder she knew what everyone else did: That life is all about getting shot at and crack was the easiest, quickest way to make that work for her. But now the boys were thirteen and sixteen years old and reason, questions, guilt, doubt, anger, frustration, hurt and desire had crawled up their bodies and gripped their quick minds. Why? How? Where? Is there a way out? Their aunt screamed at me, “You destroyed those boys! If you had never come along they would have been all right! You made them want to be something they never could be! You made them want to be white! We ain’t white! We can never be white! Why can’t you just leave us all alone? Those boys don’t respect their mama because of you! Why can’t you just leave us all alone?” Because by that time we were all in too deep. The younger one had run into my house as a three-year old, ran slap into me, fell back on the floor, returned my surprised gaze and said, “You’re that lady who helps little children!” “No, I’m not!” I said, “Who told you that?” “My mama,” he said, “And I just know it.” And that was how I met them, the boys who would come to my house every single morning on their way to school— ---“Oh! Did we wake you up? I’m sorry! Can I have a Flintstone vitamin? Do you have any today? How about a pencil?” and after school, the little one destroying about fifty dollars worth of stuff a month in my house-- ---(“Don’t do that! Don’t do that! Get off of that . . . .!” ---“Ooops! I’m sorry!”) We were in too deep. When the mother needed money she would come and ask for money to buy food for her boys. She knew I would help her boys and when I bought her food instead of giving her cash, she understood. It was about her boys. Her boys would disappear and I wouldn’t be able to find them for months, for years. Then they would call and say, “We didn’t want to call you now, but . . . “ and the rest of the sentence was always the stuff of corner-turning: My mama’s in jail. Ricky beat up my mama. My brother got hit by a car. My brother broke his arm. My brother tried to kill himself.” We were in too deep together, all of us. The older boy turned sixteen. He had gotten himself into and through two Life-Skills-Building Programs: boot camp sorts of affairs where, through tough love and hard work, he had climbed the first foothill and knew that if he was going to succeed, if he could succeed, if there was a way to make it to age seventeen, he had to get out on his own. I owned a house, a tiny rental house that the tenant had just moved out of. Could he possibly move there? He could get a job. He could pay rent. Please? Might it be a possibility? Okay! But only you! Not anyone else! No friends! No girlfriends! No mother! No drugs! Sixteen years old. Full of hope and summer, he moved in. He kept it spotless. He grinned and furnished it with whatever he could find anywhere in life. The Younger One was still living in limbo: with his mother in an abandoned house. Staying with friends. In the building where they put kids who were picked up after the city’s nighttime curfew, waiting for someone to come and pick them up. He was figuring it out, as well. He was figuring that it wasn’t right. It ain’t right. It ain’t right. But the harder part was figuring out what is right. The guy who was supposed to be his father swore to anyone who would listen, including the boy who had always thought otherwise, that he was not his father. That he had left that boy’s mama two months before she was supposed to have got herself pregnant! That boy was not his! One good thing, though, about no father? When it comes time to claim the boy’s body and decide on cremation or open-casket, one less person to have to find to sign papers and agree on a decision is better. Thirteen years old and full of injustice. Revving his engine at the corner of Right and Wrong, of Good and Evil, of Love and Hate, the younger one didn’t know where to go. --Please, Bro’, please? Can’t I come and live with you? The house became dirty. The front room became a bedroom. No one was grinning. Words, words, words, words, words. The right thing to do. What is the right thing to do? How come no one ever did it before? The older one lay his head on my lap and cried, “I just want a mama. I just want someone to make things all right.” We came up on December. One night, while the younger one was trying to get home from some place, no one knew where, I grabbed the older one and said, “Come on. We’re going to get a Christmas tree!” “For who?” “For y’all!” “For us? We don’t need a Christmas tree!” “Ever had one?” “ . . . . . . No.” “Come on.” We went to the Christmas tree lot and walked around and around, and around, inspecting each one. Height, smell, kind, color, needles, how do you know if you have no tradition? Christmas excitement, however, was crawling up his body and working itself into his quick brain. Hours we were there. Hours we were there. But how much nicer to be in a Christmas tree lot than in a dirty house with only white bread and baloney to eat? We found the tree and wrapped it up and put it in the back of my truck. Lights? Decorations? “No colored lights,” the Older One said, “Colored lights are ghetto. Only tiny white lights.” “Colored lights are not ghetto!” “Uh-huh, only tiny white ones.” We pulled up in front of the house and the Younger One, full of injustice came outside— --“Where you been? I been here starvin’, not knowing where anyone was”— He stopped and drew up to my truck. “Who that’s for?” he whispered. He whispered. “Who you think?” I asked. “ . . . . . . Us?” He stared at the tree. He squinted his eyes. He tilted his head. And then he held up his hand and gently waved like a little tiny boy to the back of my truck. “Hey Christmas Tree!” he whispered, welcoming it as if it were the new baby Jesus come home to live. |
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October 2007 Here are all the things I know how to do well: Carve a truck that looks exactly like a real, live rusty old 1953 pick-up out of a huge block of Styrofoam. Design and build an entire 12 stage festival. On time. In a snowstorm. For Bill Clinton. Write a play. A really funny one. Write a menu. A really funny one. Here is the last thing in the world I know how to do: Waitress. There are some unfortunate ironies in life, and the most pressing one is that every Monday morning from 7:30 am to 11 am I am the waitress at Elmer’s Big Time Breakfast Joint. I do not have the waitress brain. The waitress brain remembers all the customers at once and what they need. A waitress knows to ask all the questions the first time around: White or wheat? Links or patty? Would you like fries with that? A waitress not only knows to bring coffee around to re-fill cups, she has time to do it. Me, none of the above. Last Monday morning in the middle of a mad rush, when Cassie Nylen Gray (our weekend waitress) was trying to enjoy her breakfast as a regular paying customer but graciously ended up bringing orders, totaling checks and re-filling coffee cups for me, Mary (the cook) said, “But Nan, you’ve been waitressing for a while. Seems like you’d have it down by now.” I will not print here what I nearly said back to Mary. I need Mary to continue cooking breakfast and dinners for us at Elmer’s, so she was spared a reply. If she knows what’s good for her she will never make such an inappropriate and inapplicable statement to me again. I can paint PVC pipe to look like rusty iron. I can create an entire illustration out of little pieces of torn paper. I can hand-write professional-looking signs faster than a computer can cut them in vinyl. But I can not wait well on customers. With a room full of people you have to greet customers as they walk in, tell them where to sit, supply them with menus, booster seats and high chairs, silverware and napkins, take their drink orders. Then you come back and take their food orders (with all the right questions in the right order.) And you have to write it all down legibly. At the same time you’re doing that, you have to get the orders to the other sitting customers, re-fill their cups, get them ketchup, jam, syrup and butter, hot sauce and Pick-a-Pepper Sauce. No, wait—the syrup and butter go to the people waiting for their food. Then you have to clear tables of dishes, put people on waiting lists, I can speak Diola—the language of a small tribe in West Africa. I can live without electricity, and I ain’t talking about no living off the grid—I’m talking never-knew-the-grid-existed living without electricity. Now, you should probably know that my day to waitress is Mondays. Those are our slowest days and it’s hard to get a real waitress to work on a day that brings in no customers, so that’s when I work my magic. This could be a good thing for you to know, or a bad thing. I could see the fine people of Ashfield sitting around on Monday mornings saying to each other, “What yew wanna do today, Maw?” “Well, we could go down the diner and watch Nan try to take orders . . .” “Hot dog! Now yer tawkin’! Let’s go!” But when you get there, I might just give you your own pad and pen and have you write your own damn order. That has happened. And, depending on the number of people wanting to give me their orders, it will probably happen again. I may have to change the name of the place to Elmer’s Big Time Breakfast Joint and Monday Sideshow. I have designed and built sets for Jimmy Buffett, Widespread Panic and the Promise Keepers. I have lunched with Bonnie Raitt and Robert Duval. I’ve danced with Harrison Ford. Fortunately, none of those people requested a menu or a breakfast burrito of me. I want you to know that for Columbus Day, the Monday after Fall Festival I have already enlisted the services of two actual, bonafied Elmer’s waitresses for that day, for I am also good at knowing when to step back and let the professionals take over. So don’t worry about that Monday—but you just might want to avoid Wednesday of that week, if you know what’s good for you. I can change a tire on my truck. I can fix my own computer and even know the difference between FAT 32 and NTFS when installing a new operating system. I know how to get new paint to stick to ancient plaster. But please, whatever you do, do not ask me to wait on a whole room full of hungry people! PS. I can’t do math, either. So you might want to re-add that check before you take it to the register. . . . |
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August 2007 This column is for mature audiences only. Hey all you hip, swinging cats! Like, remember The Summer of Love? Wow! Like, where were you at, man? Like, I was a groovy little kid of 10 years old. Wow. Ten years old . . . so beautiful! So innocent! And I looked a lot like a chicken (Wow! What a coincidence! I looked like a chicken and now, like, wow! I’m always writing letters to chickens! That is so Age of Aquarius!!!) See, I looked like a chicken because, like, I was really skinny and I had these really square cats-eye glasses. And the combination made me look a lot like a chicken. And my dad? He looked like Sonny Bono! And my mom? She had long hair and, like, we used to be like hippies and all. Wow! Those were some groovy times in our Volkswagen bus, camping out on the beach and all! So I was thinking that here we all are together in this little town and, you know, a lot of us remember the Summer of Love. Remember the little flower power stickers on everything? Those were beautiful, man! And peace symbols? When people finally got them right and stopped making them look like Mercedes symbols? Wow! That was righteous! So anyway, I was thinking it would be really fun to see what we all looked like in those days! And so I had a groovy, groovy idea! How about if people bring pictures of themselves from 1967 or thereabouts to Elmer’s and we could hang them on the wall! Wouldn’t that be hip? And then, like we could try to see if we could identify each other! Wouldn’t that be cool? And you know, like not everyone was a hippie! Lots of people were doing other things at that time! But one really cool thing about everyone is (and this is deep my brothers and sisters): We probably looked a lot different than we do now! Because like Time is so heavy. It just marches on. Who know where the Time goes? Turn turn turn. So like, don’t bring in originals because, like what if they got messed up or something? I don’t want anyone to blow their cool over something like that! Just, like scan the originals and print them out and bring those. I mean, we’ll certainly try not to let anything happen to any of the pictures, but like, we can’t really be responsible for anything, you know? Life is too beautiful to be responsible for something important to anyone else, you know? But yeah! Cool! Bring us (or mail us) photos of yourself in the sixties and we’ll put them up on Elmer’s Summer Wall of Love! Let us know who you are and we’ll have a list to the side of peoples’ real identities! Our post office box is 505. Whoa! Look what I just found! A pic of me around that time at my first gig on the front steps of our house! Oddly enough I wasn’t looking as chicken-like as usual in this pic, but you can clearly see my origins as a young hippie chick. This is going to be so beautiful! I can’t wait to see you up against the wall! Peace and Love, Big Elmer |
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June 2007 Through years of careful study (involving binoculars, measuring tapes, sextants, canaries and pith helmets) I have determined the best day and time to eat at the Lake House and get the table that I want. That is certainly not what this column is going to be about, as you might then beat me to it. And, so if you see me at the Lake House, please do not record the date, the hour nor the table I am sitting at; get your own damn canary instead. What I can and will do for you however, is to give you the same suggestions for getting your favorite table at Elmer’s so that you don’t need the extra accoutrements. The wait-staff, the cooks, the counter staff, the dishwashers and the accountant and I used the same instruments listed above (although we included a dachshund and an adding machine in our Elmer’s study) and have exacted the science of How to Eat at Elmer’s Without Much of a Wait: 1. Decide whether or not you think there will be lots of people at Elmer’s and then act on the exact opposite of that instinct. If you think it’s a sunny day and there’s an event downtown and everyone and their grandbaby’s going to be eating at Elmer’s that morning, then rush on over! Because as it happens, that is the day that we will be absolutely quiet with waitresses playing poker at the empty tables. It works that way consistently—we are dead quiet with the wind whistling through the empty corridors of Elmer’s and every one I know will tell me the next day, “We started to come, but thought it was just going to be too busy, so we didn’t.” Whatever you do, do not follow your instincts when deciding whether or not to eat at Elmer’s. 2. Count the cars in the parking spaces, multiply by 3, divide by your age, remember that we only have about six parking spaces so that it looks much fuller than it is, park and come on in. A packed parking lot means that it is quite possible that all eight of those cars are driven by separate people who are all congregated at the very same table and the rest of the tables have tumbleweeds rolling over them. (Our policy is to clean up the tumbleweed debris before we actually seat you.) 3. If you came for breakfast one day and Elmer’s was full of people and you had to wait, then come again the following day and for the next two weekends. (Refer to 1.) If you were scared off, remember that everyone else was, too and the waitresses are over there at Elmer’s playing poker among the tumbleweeds. 4. Come on a weekday! Mondays through Wednesdays are slow enough that you could order a Pope, two sausage links, 3 pancakes, a waffle and a steak (if we had steak) and it would be served to you before you could close your menu. Thursdays and Fridays get a little more crowded, but they never mean a wait. 5. Call ahead We don’t take reservations because we want Elmer’s to be for everyone, not just those organized enough to be able to call ahead, but we are not averse to putting your name on the waiting list if you’re going to be there soon. (That’s an advantage over people who are not From Here and who don’t read the Ashfield News. They don’t know about that. And don’t tell them!) You can also call us (628-4003) and ask if we’re full and we will be honest and tell you. If we are and you still want to come, we’ll put your name on the waiting list. We can’t hold a table for you, but it does mean that you’ll be near or at the top of the list when you arrive. So when that happens and we call your name, we’ll act as if you were on the porch the whole time and you act as if you indeed were there the whole time so that people who drove in from Michigan just to eat breakfast don’t say, “Hey! Wait a minute! Jeez you guys!” (That’s what people from Michigan always say.) 6. Eat from our new Beautiful Bountiful Breakfast Buffet! Good Old Rob (as we like to call him when we’re not calling him anything else) came up with an idea for Elmer’s Breakfast Buffet and ---- Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! We’re not talking about chunky old scrambled eggs at Motel . . . um . . . 9! We’re talking about things we don’t even have in the kitchen like fritattas, quiches and mixed fresh fruit salads. We have granolas, a variety of yogurts, healthy kid-cereals and smaller-sized pancakes. We debuted Elmer’s BBBB on Memorial Day weekend and people with little kids found they could get in, serve themselves right away, eat and leave before their kids got antsy from the wait. Everything is priced a la carte so that people who can’t eat a lot can get what they want and not be afraid of all those starving children in China raiding them for their leftovers. The BBBB does not replace our regular kitchen menu. You can order off the menu or get your food from the buffet—but the most beautiful thing, Rob, is that since some people are serving themselves from the buffet, it also frees up some orders from the kitchen so that those orders can come out faster! Did you even think of that??? Wow! Wow! Wow! So that’s what I know. But if I see you at the Lake House looking at me, I’m going to act like I just stopped in to use the pay phone and someone asked me to sit with them. That won’t be my real time or my real table, so don’t try to copy! |
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April 2007 These past two weeks I have spent by day down in Greenfield painting the new Bart’s Ice Cream shop they’re opening down there on Main Street. Nights I catch up on Elmer’s stuff, and Friday, Saturday and Sundays I’ve been doing my regular Elmer gig, greeting people at the door, seating them, chatting them up and (eventually) clearing their tables after they leave. In between I’ve been running around keeping doctors’ appointments, attending meetings and upholding other important, time-wrangling events. And in that time, I have figured out that what I need in life is more time. Just more time in which to get everything done. So I’ve been doing some ciphering and I’ve come up with this: All my life I have never smoked, not once. Not one single puff off of a cigarette or any other smoking device. Ever. Nor do I drink. I can handle about a third of a glass of wine but then I get tired of it and return to regulation drinking matters like water and Cheerwine, a non-alcoholic soda found only in North Carolina, cases of which I demand of NC visitors as soon as they announce plans to visit me. So here’s the deal. The way I see it, if drinking and smoking and similar carrying-on shortens ones life, then staying clear of those vices should add years on to ones life just as well. And seeing as how I’ve never been drunk and never smoked a cigarette, the absence of those two activities alone should add thirty or forty years to my lifespan. And that’s the kind of time I’m looking for. But see, my people tend to live long. My grandmother died at 96 and her dad stopped short at 99 and seven-eighths, dying out of sheer disagreeability at the idea of being caught alive at age 100. So seeing as how my genes stand a good chance of going the distance, I don’t really need the extra years at the end of my life; what I need is hours now. So I am petitioning The Lord to let me take those extra thirty years and break them up into five-hour spans so that I can have 29 hours in a revolution of a day instead of the usual and way-too-few twenty-four allotted me now. In those extra 5 hours a day I would be able to work two or three jobs, write a screenplay, read a book, learn Mandarin Chinese, catch up on my correspondence and with the last couple of them, sleep. Now, I neither dance nor play cards (sins to Southern Baptists) because I’m good at neither. That should be good for adding on a few extra minutes for afternoon napping, at least. I do enjoy gambling on race horses, however, and spent a good couple of years back in the eighties hanging out at the track every single afternoon, swapping hopes, tips and disappointments with a group of old men regulars at the Fair Grounds Race Course in New Orleans. I don’t know if gambling subtracts years from your life, but really, since it’s my only real vice or sin, I think it wouldn’t take much away. So five hours a day. That’s what I’m looking for. Five measly hours added on at the end of each day. And with that, I’ll happily die at age 105 or 6 with everything I had to do finished, in ship-shape order: clean, orderly and sanctified. And done. And whoa! Think of all the extra time I could spend not smoking or drinking in those added five hours a day! That in itself would probably add on an extra ten or fifteen years, so I could conceivably live to be about a hundred and twenty or so by the time I get my earned-time credit in! The only drawback of this plan that I can think of is that it would rob me of my favorite “I didn’t have time” excuse. I could still use it, but no one would have sympathy for me, just like Bill Gates’ kids probably roll their eyes when their dad says, “No kids, we can’t afford that.” With five extra hours a day everyone would find me lousy rich with time even if, like with fax machines, computers and other alleged time-saving devices, I found out that work effortlessly and mysteriously expanded to fill the extra time I had. For that reason I am taking my time to put in my time-petition with The Lord. I haven’t had time to consider all the ramifications of five extra hours a day, but as soon as I do I am going to go after it with all the time it takes to get Him to really consider it. Then, with all the extra time I have, I will invite you to come by Elmer’s and I will leisurely tell you about all my extra time and all the things I am doing with it. |
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March 2007 And lo, a great lightness descended over the earth and they called it “Winter.” Great mammoths could not bear to be separated from the ground and so they criss-crossed the land, scraping, gnawing at the vast White until they were once again reunited with their life-giving pavement. Lo, even after the pavement had been found, the mammoths rooted more for good measure, just to be sure the road was really there and would stay there. So fearful were they of losing their life-giving pitch that a sprinkling of transparent inches lured the mammoths again. Two-legged animals became smaller as the ground rose and swallowed their legs, and their shoulders rose to swallow their heads until the two-hoofers were but little nubs waddling through the White. Some two legged animals grew large white plumes that fanned out behind them as they strutted back and forth (and back and forth) in front of their dwellings. I do not know why the two-leggers choose the White of Winter to fan their plumes, but it seems they do. Inside Elmer’s hobbits jumped about, happy to be released from bondage, and their elders too, seemed relieved to be released from something or other as they sat at one table all day, sipping and laughing and not going home. “Winter” also seemed to bring out invitational kindness in people, as one after another invited me, the southerner home to scrape the white from their walks and from their roofs. I, the polite southerner refused all invitations as it did not seem proper for me to accept only a few if I could not accept all. Boys, Boys! I protested. “I can’t shovel ALL your walks, just little old me! Fiddle-dee-dee!” So I stayed behind and sent them ultimately, sadly off to shovel their own walks. And then, lo, at some point there entered Elmer’s a man I had not seen before. He was not of the earthy-crunchy tribes, as I could tell from his speech—he spoke in a manner reminiscent of the House of Dickenson—ancient Ashfield—and I knew him to be a stranger unto me. “I read an article in this paper and it made me think of you,” he said and handed me a farming journal of some sort. “It’s about this girl doing this work and it just reminded me of you.” He started back toward the door. He seemed familiar enough with me, but I, embarrassed, was certain I had no idea of his name, but, being embarrassed, did not want to ask. I thanked him properly and hoped for a sign. At the door he stopped and turned. “I’ve done a lot of drinking in here.” He said, “Mostly in that back room. Lots and lots of drinking with my oxen waiting for me out front. Well, ‘Bye.” He started out the door and the warm flicker of recognition lit me up. “Wait!” I called to the man. “Are you . . . . are you Fritzy Graves?” “Yup,” he said, and was gone. I had heard the tales from disgruntled Ashfieldians, where Ashfield has changed so much over recent years that lo, Fritzy Graves can’t even stroll his oxen through the Lakehouse anymore. And there I had seen him, like an apparition on a cold winter’s day, in Elmer’s where he has been seen naught ‘fore nor since. And now they call for more of the Great White to cover the earth. I, myself look forward as I know it will bring more invitations from Gentlemen Callers to come shovel the White from their Walks and I will turn them down again. And I, the Southerner will drink Mint Julep Hot Chocolate in the warm confines of Elmer’s, await the arrival of the Winter Apparition and perhaps his Oxen, avoid the paths of the mammoths and stomp through as much knee-high of the White as I can encounter before the force they call “Spring” vacuums it all up. |
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January 2007 Back when I was in my early whipper-snapping twenties, I moved for 6 months to a tiny village in West Africa because I wanted to see what it would be like to live life as a total clean slate where I didn’t know anything and had to learn how to live from the ground up again: new language, culture, tribal dress, etc. At the end of my six months there I made a list in my journal of all the things I had leaned living as the only white person in a village of 600 people who thought I was stone cold crazy when I pointed to a map and said, “There’s Senegal.” The villagers looked up, looked at me, looked all around and said, “Heh! Senegal is much larger than that!” My list of things I had learned at that time included things like: 1. You get more sleep without electricity to keep you up at night. 2. If a mango falls off a tree in the middle of the night during the time of year when you’re not supposed to eat mangos, you get to eat the one that fell. If it falls in the daytime you can’t because the spirit of the mango tree will come and kill you for it. 3. You can sell a whole chicken for more than you can an egg, so don’t eat eggs. All kinds of important stuff like that. So then last night I had the worst nightmare. I was dreaming that (oh my gosh it was awful) I had accidentally put my long underwear into the dryer and they had shrunk and I had them on and all of a sudden they were riding up to my knees and I had that BIG GAP between my knees and my socks and my legs were just freezing! And I thought, “I am going to be uncomfortable and cold all day long!” And then I woke up and found that it was all just a terrible, terrible nightmare (so frighteningly real though!) And I wondered what else I had learned since moving here. So I made a new list and I thought I would share it with the local villagers here, who when I say in early November, “I want snow!” look at me as if I were stone cold crazy. 1. Outside, twenty-eight degrees is not cold. (Ten degrees is cold.) (2 degrees is colder.) 2. Inside, 58 degrees is not cold. And seventy-five degrees inside is ungodly hot. (Astoundment rating: Same as map-equals-entire-country ideology.) 3. You can’t turn around in this town without running into someone named Phil Nolan. I never saw a town with so many Phil Nolans in my whole life! In West Africa everyone was named Fatou Dieme. Here they’re all named Phil Nolan. 4. As long as I live, I will not be able to dress for company without help. (I used to think it was just because the weather was so humid that I looked just all thrown together, but . . . .it’s me in any weather.) 5. A properly run town dump is better than Macy’s when it comes to shopping. 6. Correct, proper and effective use of the word, “Yup.” 7. Life without fear of someone doing me wrong or physical harm 8. You need snow at some point. You just do. 9. People are damn good! I used to think they were no damn good. 10. All about the life-and-mood-cycle of the common no damn good chicken 11. Loud and weird things live in home heating radiators. Especially at night. 12. All about dry skin And the last but most important piece of information I have learned since working and living in the tiny New England village of Ashfield, Massachusetts is: 13. The shortest distance between here and getting something fixed is Willie Gray |
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