The Luck of the Draw

This column originally apeared on Sunday, April 13, 2008

You, the folks who live in Chester County who are reading this, don't know how lucky I am.

And by lucky I mean that it took unfathomable good fortune for me to be born and to grow up in Cincinnati, Ohio. That life was not foreordained. My mother was raised in small town Illinois; my father was born in Wisconsin. They met in New Jersey and were married when my father received his doctorate at Penn State. Somehow fate got them to Cincinnati and allowed my formative years to take place there.

According to one source, one's “formative years” are the time we acquire our adult personas as we move in stages from from childhood to adolescence. For example, the source states, in Hindu culture, during “upanayana, sometimes known outside India by the name, 'sacred thread ceremony,' children are taught the secret of life through Brahmopadesam (revealing the nature of Brahman, the Ultimate Reality) or the Gayatri mantra.” The child then becomes qualified for life as a student or adult, depending on his caste or walk in life.

Me, I just went to Skyline Chili.

I do not have to try very hard to capture in my mind the face of he waitress who served me my first portion of God's Greatest Gift to Food – the Skyline Coney. I don't, because she served me those same delights for two decades at the same chili parlor in Cincinnati, on Clifton and Ludlow, where we first encountered one another, until she retired. I didn't know her name and she didn't know mine, but she led me through the sacred ceremony of ordering “two up with mustard,” as respectfully as any guru would the Brahmopadesam.

That's where I grew up; that's where I learned to appreciate the fine things in life.

How lucky I was to spend those years learning how to eat the food of Nirvana from master teachers. The softness of the bun, the tang of the onion, the fluff of the grated cheese, the aroma of the chili sauce, all were as well known to me as the Torah is to any candidate for the Bar Mitzvah.

I tell you all these things because at this very moment I am less than a mile from that self-same chili parlor, and in several moments time, fate willing, I am going to walk into that parlor and order the Skyline meal I was brought up to receive and revere.

My meal will come after having spent the morning wallowing in the glory that are the other foods one can only truly find in Cincinnati. Shopping at the historic Findlay Market in the city's downtrodden downtown, I chose between hot beef metts and mild pork metts; between link bratwursts and old fashioned frankfurters; between garlic sausage and picnic hams. Today I passed on the smoked turkey necks out of a newly acquired mid-life appreciation for moderation. In my 20s, they'd have easily made the shopping cart.

My Cincinnati born-and-bred nieces, Emily and Alice, have chosen to lead vegetarian lives. Although I respect their freedom to make such choices, I sometimes wonder whether their parents should be investigated by the Hamilton County, Ohio, child welfare authorities for violations relating to culinary deprivation. But I let them slide, like a good hearted cop on the beat who looks the other way, knowing that the girls will still accompany their uncle to Skyline when he offers them a ride.

They know how lucky they are to sit in the Temple, whether or not they partake of the Ambrosia.

A Diner Sort of Guy

This appeared on Sunday, March 18, 2007

Had lunch the other day at Hooters.

(Pause.)

Now that I‘ve got your attention, I want to elaborate.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I was doing eating a meal at perhaps the world‘s cheesiest male-oriented restaurant chain, and by cheese I‘m not referring to the Swiss or the Camembert.

My friend had suggested that we get together on Thursday to catch some of the opening round of the NCAA Men‘s Basketball Tournament, but because our normal noontime meeting spot doesn‘t have wall-to-wall television sets we‘d need to pick a different venue.

Hooters, apparently, does have wall-to-wall television sets, sets which are permanently tuned to whatever sporting event is happening at that particular time, anywhere in the world.

My friend knows this because he‘s been there before, primarily, it seems, to watch the opening round of the aforementioned basketball tournament. There may also be some association in his mind between semi-naked men trying desperately to score and the whole Hooters concept, but never mind.

He‘s been to Hooters before, as I said, and he allowed when we got there that if Hooters had been extant while he was in his 20s, his life today would have been demonstrably different than it is, most likely for the worse. I imagine he meant that instead of being happily married with four delightful children, a good job, a house on a hill and a voter registration card with the word ”Democrat“ displayed prominently on it, he would probably be living in a rented room, jobless and near destitution, with only a Hooters' Girls calendar on the wall to keep him company.

Most likely he‘d also have voted for Bush. All four times.

I hadn‘t been to Hooters before, and he could see the discomfort with the whole situation in my face when we got a cheery ”Hi there, guys!“ from our waitress. He‘s pretty much used to my various states of discomfort, but this time he wasn‘t having any of it.

"You‘d be honest with yourself if you just acknowledged the fact that you really enjoy having food and drink served to you by a perky blonde/brunette/redhead in a tank top and nylon orange shorts," he told me. "Just look inside yourself," he said, "and respond to your inner … something or other. Let go and admit that the whole thing is fun."

But I don‘t see myself as a Hooters sort of guy.

I‘m more of a diner sort, and have been ever since my father sat me down at the counter at the Toddle House on Clifton Avenue in Cincinnati when I was 8 and ordered me a cheeseburger and a cup of hot chocolate, while he flirted with the 65-year-old waitress, who was probably named Irene.

Since then, I‘ve always tried my best to establish a friendly working relationship with all of the waitresses that have served me on a regular basis over the years, and have succeeded more times than not in developing a server-servee friendship not based on too much artifice. Also, without orange shorts on either side of the counter.

I‘d like to keep it that way. Besides, the local Hooters is in Concordville, and I don‘t do Delaware County very well.