Hip Shots

Café

By Catherine Bruce

Copyright © 2017 Catherine Bruce

Hip Shots

Brunch

By Catherine Bruce

Copyright © 2016 Catherine Bruce.

Shepherdstown, RFD

Betty’s Restaurant, February 5, 2012

I left the Potomoc River home of my still-sleeping hosts before seven in the morning and drove all the way through Shepherdstown, West Virginia, to the Food Lion on the other side of town. They were open but had only Sunday Washington Posts, stacks of them; no Sunday New York Times. Still searching for the Times, I stopped at the Sheetz gas station on the way back to the river house. Same deal, not a N.Y.T. logo in sight. Continuing on German Street, back toward Rt. 230 and my hosts’ home, I noticed a clean well-lighted place, the only business open on the town’s main drag. It was a restaurant called Betty’s, a down-home old-style main street-type diner; extreme chintz and hand-lettered everything. (Click attached picture to enlarge.)  Inside, there was a sign up front that said “Please Wait to be Seated.” Two older men and a single woman about the same age were seated all the way in back, each in individual booths.

The waitress, a very pleasant young woman, on the chubby side, called out to me “You can sit anyplace, sir.” I took a booth just in front of the other three residents—so close I could overhear the conservation between the two men and the waitress. They were discussing their various health issues, weight, high blood pressure, and their mutual love of chocolate. Two more men in our collective age group came in and selected individual booths just in front of me. The waitress greeted each one by name. I said, smiling up at the waitress, “Gee, I wish I was a regular!” “You can be one,” she said, laughing, “I’ll treat you right.” She took my order—two eggs over medium with sausage gravy and one biscuit. As she walked away, I noticed a newspaper rack up front and went to check it out. Bingo—a huge stack of Sunday New York Times off to one side!

As I settled back in my booth with my treasured newspaper, several more male customers came in and they, too, took individual booths. Again, the waitress greeted them by their first names and brought them coffee without waiting to be told to do so. Then she placed a cup of steaming black coffee exactly halfway down the empty counter and left it there. A minute or two later another older man came in, picked up a local paper from one of the racks and sat down at the coffee cup waiting for him on the counter. He and the waitress exchanged greetings and a bit of banter.

Shortly after that, she topped-off the coffee cup of the man in the booth directly in front of me, then scratched his back. Then she topped-off my cup and said, “Plus one for you, too,” and scratched my back. I laughed and said, “Now I really do feel at home!”

So, of course, on the way out, as I paid the waitress for my breakfast, I told her, “I will be back,” and gave her a very generous tip. She said, “Now you do that, hon—and soon, too, OK? You’re my new best buddy.”

“Mutual,” I said. “Very, very mutual.”

Prose Styles Gone Wild, #1

This headed the menu at Richard’s Restaurant in Baltimore, 1983.

RICHARD’S MISSION

Our mission is a simple one. To Please your palate and to sooth you aesthetically. To make the drinking and dining experience singularly pleasurable to you and your friends as well as those you send to us. If we do not, you must let us know and know why. Remember, it is you, our client, whom it is felt by us, one and all, that on account of you, pay the bill, hence, therefore, you are only the most primary important and very gorgeous person with whom we do business.

Three-Minute Memoir

Revelation

By Florence Newman

It had been a mistake to go to the Safeway, even though the snowstorm wasn’t due to arrive for another two days. The aisles were already crowded with shoppers stocking up on bread, milk, and toilet paper–the Holy Trinity of disaster preparation everywhere. The stereotype of Baltimoreans is that they panic and rush out to the stores at the first threat of a snowflake, but this time their anxiety was justified: forecasts called for 18-24” of snow over the course of the weekend, with blizzard conditions possible. Still, you’d think that hitting the grocery mid-day, well in advance of the storm, I wouldn’t have had to contend with frantic survivalists. No such luck. My usual route through the store—a pass around the healthy perimeter, with brief forays into the shelves of preservative- and sugar-laden cereals, crackers, packaged dinners, and canned goods—was now an obstacle course of bodies and shopping carts. I navigated my own cart, part stealth bomber, part battering ram, among the rest, collecting provisions, then headed for the self checkout machines, which I use almost exclusively these days because 1) I usually don’t have to wait in line and 2) I like the autonomy of ringing up my own purchases, being in full control of the process (until, of course, the scanner goes out of whack). It never occurred to me that I might have another reason for preferring the machines to human cashiers.

The throng at the front of the store was so thick that it took me a moment to realize, in astonishment, that the two self-checkout lines snaked as far back as the lines for regular checkout. I almost abandoned my errand right there. But I hadn’t invested all that time and effort just to go home empty-handed. I decided to try the “15 items or fewer” lanes: those lines had to be shorter, or at least moving more quickly. Unfortunately, they were also at the opposite side of the store. “Pardon me.” “Excuse me.” “May I cut through?” Finally I reached the express lanes and positioned myself at the end of one of the lines. A woman nearby tapped me on the shoulder and pointed behind her: the line actually ended seven or eight carts back, midway down the aisle. One look at the impenetrable mass of folks waiting single file and folks milling around the aisle shopping and I resigned myself to wheeling my way down the next aisle over, rounding the bend, and joining the queue from behind.

I didn’t remain the last in line for long: a grandmotherly type looking particularly glum took the spot at my back. For a while, we made small talk about the weather. Then she mentioned that her bank had closed early because it had been robbed, leaving her without cash for groceries. The conversation sort of trailed off after that. I turned to face forward again. The young man immediately in front of me had his foot propped on the base of his cart and his head bent over the glowing screen of a smart phone. Every so often, without taking his gaze off the screen, he would give the cart a shove with his forearms, and grandmother and I would shuffle forward a few inches.

Suddenly I noticed a burst of color. It was a bouquet of bright flowers wrapped in cellophane in the child’s seat portion of the cart two spots ahead. The possessor of the cart was a tall woman with a dancer’s posture, graceful and erect, and gold-silver hair that swept up to show a bit of neck above her scarf. (I only saw her from the back, so I can’t describe her face—though I’ll bet it was beautiful.) She wore a dark wool coat, which stood out among the puffy jackets that made the rest of us look like a flock of Pillsbury Dough Boys. Still, I could hardly take my eyes off the bouquet. There’s a blizzard coming, for God’s sake, and this lady is buying flowers! I took in the other contents of her cart—two small whole chickens (or perhaps they were guinea hens), a bag of brown rice, some fresh vegetables. Then I looked down into my own cart: a four-pack of vanilla Frappucinos, two Fuji apples, a box of low fat Triscuits, a jumbo chocolate chunk cookie, and a packet of sugar-free gum (tropical fruit flavor). The necessities of life.

In my imagination, the tall woman sits at a linen-covered table, the flowers tastefully arranged in a vase at its center. Candlelight flickers over the silverware flanking a china plate full of fragrant slices of fowl, steaming brown rice, and roasted vegetables, as outside the frosted window the winter storm rages.

I glanced again at my own cart: what a pathetic scenario it brought to mind. I realized at that moment that the self checkout lane appealed to me not just because it improved my efficiency, not just because it enhanced my autonomy, but also because it shrouded my purchases in privacy. Ahead, the colorful bouquet drifted down the conveyer belt and disappeared into a bag. The clerk rang up the rest of the elegant lady’s elegant items, and soon she too had vanished. The young man in front of me, having pocketed his cell phone, began placing his stuff on the counter. Before long, it would be my turn. I had waited impatiently for a good half hour to reach the head of the line, and now I dreaded the prospect. There was nothing for it but to follow through. The gum, the jumbo cookie, the vanilla Frappucinos went up on the belt to be lifted and swiped over the scanner by the clerk’s beefy hands. “Busy day, huh?” I said. “Everybody’s getting ready for the snow,” I said. I was babbling, trying to distract the clerk from the hodgepodge of barely-comestibles I’d offered up for inspection. It turned out that my subterfuge was unnecessary: the clerk hardly glanced at what he was ringing up. Although his apron-clad torso remained turned toward me, he was looking over his shoulder at the other lanes teaming with other customers. I decided to take a risk: “Funny the kinds of things people buy during an emergency.” For a few seconds, the clerk faced my way, then his attention was again elsewhere. “We see it all,” he murmured. “Believe me, we see it all.”

Florence Newman is professor emerita at Towson University, where she taught in the English Department for 27 years.  A specialist in Middle English literature, she has published and delivered conference papers on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and medieval women writers.  She grew up in Blacksburg, Va., reading books in her parents’ library and eating strawberries from her grandfather’s garden.  She currently lives with her husband in Towson, Md., escapes occasionally to their farm on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, and travels farther afield when time, energy, and finances permit.

Copyright © 2016, Florence Newman

Today’s Comic Strip

Copyright © 2015 Jim Sizemore.

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A Visit from POTUS

My name is Amanda Rothschild and I’m the manager of Charmington’s, a café in Baltimore City.  That’s me to the lower right of President Barack Obama in this picture.

(Click image to enlarge.)

The president visited my restaurant because our workers get paid sick days, even though Maryland law does not require employers to offer them. Because our employees have paid sick time off, they can take the time they need to get well or take care of their families. They don’t come to work sick, spreading germs to their co-workers or our patrons.

This year we have the chance to pass the Healthy Working Families Act in the Maryland General Assembly and give more than 700,000 Maryland workers paid sick days. Sign our petition and tell Maryland legislators that you think workers should be able to earn paid sick leave.

When the president dropped by yesterday for a sandwich, we talked about our paid sick days policy.  I shared with the president that having paid sick days makes our employees healthier and reduces our staff turnover, saving the business time and money. He told me about his work to pass paid sick days legislation in the U.S. Congress and that he is encouraging every state to give workers earned leave.

President Obama cannot do it alone, he needs for people like you and me to make our voices heard. Please join me in signing our petition to tell Maryland legislators that you think workers should be able to earn paid sick leave.

Thanks for your activism and visit us at Charmington’s soon!

Hip Shots

Smoothies

By Catherine Bruce

(Click images to enlarge.)

The “Hip Shots” series of photographs will feature images that were grabbed “on the fly,” with little or no regard for framing and focus. The object of the exercise is to create dynamic pictures, not perfect ones. With this ” shoot-from-the-hip” method, the more frames exposed the better the chances are that you’ll come up with something interesting — a related series that may be arranged as a post. If you’d like additional tips for using the technique, or to submit your own images, drop a question or note in the “Leave a Comment” section, below.

Copyright © 2014 Catherine Bruce.

Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2014 Jim Sizemore.

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Today’s Gag

Copyright © 2014 Jim Sizemore.

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