Autumn day
I like Saturdays. The week is over and I have a day or two to myself to do things I want to do without having to watch the clock so I’m not late for this thing or that.
I even like the Saturdays when I have to work. The bus schedule on Saturday doesn’t quite align with my work schedule, so I have 45 minutes to kill. I just ride a stop past work and settle in at the counter at Jim’s Restaurant.
I’m delayed at the door today as a five or six year-old kid takes one of everything off the free newspapers rack. Real Estate listings, used car trader, Spanish language monthly. I decide not to offer to autograph this month’s issue of Computer Link for him.
Decaf appears before me as the waitress asks, “The usual, hon?” The usual sounds good. Scrambled eggs and onions special, comes with hash browns and toast—I add a large OJ. Tips the scales at under $5. “Sounds fine,” I reply.
Mountain, the man behind the grill, is singing this morning. Country tunes. This sparks a lively debate at the counter on the reletive merits of Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson. Since Jackson has the better hair—about all I’m qualified to comment on—I side with the Jackson camp.
Mountain drops Brooks from his playlist as he ladles-out a Mickey Mouse pancake—three pancakes siamesed to form the Disney trademark.
I’m relieved that, with national disasters fading from the headlines, the TV is tuned to CNN again, instead of The Weather Channel. The frantic gensturing on TWC gets in the way of my breakfast. CNN’s bleach-blonde anchor bobs her head and smiles her way through a more routine tale of robbery, death and dismemberment in a Georgia trailer park with the closed captioning spelling out the details.
Perhaps this is why Mountain is singing country tunes this morning.
As I chow into my special, the sports segment comes on and the guy next to me confides he likes both the Yankees and the Red Sox and wasn’t sure who to root for in last night’s game.
“The Yankees,” I suggest.
“They lost,” he tells me.
“Not much you can do on a 50-50 chance,” I offer in consolation.
He shrugs agreement.
