Only In A Small Town
Mood:  a-ok
Topic: Holiday Happenings

My husband, Harold, and I went out to eat at a local restaurant this noon. Their menu special on Fridays is always the same - all you can eat walleye and all you can eat potatoes it seems since the portion looks like a double helping. I think it’s a ploy to keep us from ordering more fish. If that is the case, it works for me. I always leave feeling stuffed. Good thing about that is, I usually don’t have to fix supper.

It’s cold outside. If people don’t have a job, must be all there is to do is shop and eat. The restaurant front room was full. We dodged around the pulled out chairs over to the back room door and saw an empty table. Quick before the couple behind us had the same idea, we headed for that spot in the corner. The couple at the table next to ours smiled at our eagerness to get seated.

"Hello. Decided to hide out back here?" asked the young woman.

"Sure did," I said, smiling back. "No where in front to sit."

"We found that out," she agreed. "Here, in case the waitress doesn’t get here for awhile." She handed us their menus. "You may have a while to study them."

"Won’t take long," I said. "We want the walleye dinners. That’s what we came in here for."

"Us too," the husband said.

The conversation dried up when the waitress bore down on us like she was in a race with herself. "Here’s the coffee," She said, pouring as she talked. "See you have menus. Know what you want to order?"

"Walleye," I said to keep the conversation short.

"Potato?" She asked, breathlessly.

"Hash browns."

"Soup or salad?"

"Soup."

She turned to my husband. "And you, Sir?"

"What she’s having except make my potatoes French fries," he said.

And she was off back to the front, forgetting the coffee pot. She stopped only long enough to demand the dessert orders at a table down the line.

In no time, the waitress raced back with our cream of broccoli soup just as my husband helped himself to the coffee pot. "Good job," she said as if relieved to have the help no matter how small it was. She grabbed the pot and took off only to return loaded with two plates of mash potatoes and gravy and headed right for us.

"We ordered French fries and hash browns," I told her. "These must belong to someone else."

"Probably not. The cooks are so hassled in the kitchen, they just winged it and guessed wrong." Off she went and in seconds was back with the right potatoes much to the amusement of the young woman at the table next to us. "That was faster."

I excused for being particular, "I was tempted to keep the mash potatoes, but I thought they belonged to someone else."

That ended the conversation once we had food in front of us. The friendly couple left before we did. As soon as they disappeared out the door, my husband asked, "Do we know them?"

"No, we don’t. That’s what’s so nice about having a conversation with her. She would have felt at ease talking to whoever sit down by her," I replied.