When I saw the white sign with the green lettering that
read, “Food-Liquor-Motel,” I knew we were close to home. The little one-stop
triumvirate was about fifteen miles from our home in Frederick. It was the end
of a large stretch of farm fields, wooded parks, and a petting zoo that made up
Thurmont and Emmitsburg.
Seeing the
sign brought back memories of the one time we stopped at the restaurant there.
It wasn’t a pizza joint or a sandwich shop, they were actually trying to be a
real restaurant, white tablecloths and all, directly off the side of a highway.
The attempts at formality without a thought for current tastes froze the
restaurant at least thirty years in the past, a 1960s steak house that was once
the height of stylized dining for wealthy ad men in New York City. Being inside
the restaurant, however, I felt more like the housewife waiting at home in
suburbia for her husband as he downed drink after drink and hit on the
waitresses in the city. A brown roast was drying up in the oven, bland mashed potatoes
were crusting over in a pan on the stove, and green beans were cooking to
smithereens in a vat of pig fat.
The restaurant's food,
in truth, was so bland and tasteless that I don’t even remember it. What I do
remember is my father being angry about the food or the service, or both. The
water glasses with smudges and stains were filled and then overfilled causing a
spill into my mother’s lap. “Oh, oh, that’s okay,” she said trying to allay my
father’s anger.
“No, it’s
not okay. Someone needs to get a towel and clean that up. Somebody needs to get
over here and take our orders too,” my dad shouted at the busboy and the two
other members of the wait staff wandering near our table. The bus boy ran off
to grab a towel. He apologized for the mishap as he handed my mother the towel.
My father glared at him. I was just glad that the young man didn’t attempt to
over apologize by awkwardly mopping up my mother’s lap for her.
Why we ever stopped at that
restaurant, I will never know. Maybe it was the incessant screaming of my
sister, “We’re hungry!” while I drowsily passed out from the soothing hum of
the car engine. My dad always responded
with frustration, “I’m not stopping for fast food. I need some vegetables, Abby!” So many times we had passed that restaurant on our way home from a day
trip to Gettyburg, but we never stopped. It was as if fate was determined that
the Bateman family knew why they never stopped.
