A Breakfast I Never Forgot

My recent account of a three-day hospital stay drew numerous get-well wishes, for which I am most grateful, but it also opened a debate which took me by surprise.

One friend acknowledged both sides:

Most hospitals I’ve either worked in or was a [patient] serve things to eat that do not qualify for food. Adding insult to injury is that it is most unhealthy and in some cases sickening. But there are a some I’ve encountered that were really fine. One had a daily menu of 3 specials along with their standard choices. And yes, wonderful desserts also. This was done in a gourmet style and quality. I didn’t want to leave but was glad I was able to!

The rest of the responses were all about breakfasts. Never thought I’d hear of people who live near hospitals making a habit of having breakfast there. In each case reported to me, the food is fairly good, and the prices very low. And, as I wrote, breakfast omelets were the best of what I had at Anna Jaques last week. Furthermore, the comments unlocked a recessed memory from 1977:

Hitchhiking from spring break in Arizona back to South Dakota, I took a long-distance ride out of Flagstaff with an English prof to Salt Lake City. A bit out of the way, but it took me out of a snow storm on the high Plains and put me on a city on I-80, a major east-west highway. An English prof and an English grad student. Plenty to talk about. More than that, I had an offer of a place to stay that night and “a breakfast you’ll never forget” next morning.

Didn’t take long after I awoke in the bedroom of a kid gone off to college in Boston (of all places!) to realize that this prof and his wife prized me as an excuse to go out for this breakfast. They never named the spot, and so it was from the backseat of their hippie VW bus that I watched in disbelief as we rolled into a University of Utah Hospital parking lot.

The room was windowless, and the ceiling was oddly high, which made me vaguely uncomfortable and less hungry. I never saw the menu. The wife ordered for the three of us as we were sitting down. Okay, well, the coffee was very good and I was feeling better right away. Then the plates came.

Did I start laughing right there? Probably not, but I’m laughing at the memory of it right now. Three mountains of food! Pancakes the size of hub-caps piled on each with eggs once over and bacon and sausage generously layered in them. Thick, dark maple syrup on the side. All so good I felt a certain largesse that, in those days, I always denied myself. When the couple wouldn’t let me pay, I asked them where the bus depots were, Greyhound and Trailways always within sight of each other don’t’cha know? They took me downtown where my wait for Sioux Falls was just an hour away.

Best ever? Certainly in the top twenty. A B&B in Stratford, Ontario, and another in San Luis Obispo where my daughter got married are up there, as is–or was–a spot in downtown Salem, Mass., in the early ’80s nicely named As You Like It. Helen’s in Machias, Maine, and The Drumstick in Bismarck, North Dakota, both in places where I once lived. The Early Bird not far inland in Plaistow, New Hampshire, where I rendezvous with Cousin Sheila once a month. The Athenian in Seattle, although it has since changed hands, and Mitchell’s in Chicago, though friends there don’t care for it, are also memorable, perhaps because I landed there while traveling.

No, Anna Jaques’ omelets are nowhere near the list, but if I lived within a walk away, and if the price is as low as I hear they are in Beverly and Portsmouth, I might just give my own frying pan a rest now and then. But not tomorrow morning when that skillet will be doing overtime as I attempt to replicate what I had on a drizzly March day in Salt Lake City 48 years ago.

In a hospital. In a windowless room.

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Put three eggs once-over in that shuffle, and more syrup on top, and this is what I was looking at in Utah. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/crispy-bacon-and-maple-syrup-in-a-plate–473300242090370596/

Seasoned by the Season

Every two months or so, a friend and I rendezvous along the southern Maine coast.

We always meet for some combination of lunch and a hike, or breakfast and an art exhibit, maybe a dinner-theater, and early this year as volunteers at the finish line of a marathon where we dished out slices of pizza, cheese or pepperoni, to people who had worked up a serious appetite. Will never forget the sight of my friend piling up empty pizza boxes behind us for as high as she could reach.

Saturday we met in Ogunquit, a quaint haven for artists that lives up to its Abenaki name, “beautiful place by the sea.” We meet here more often than not because it is just about halfway between Portland where she is and Plum Island where I am. Since 2002, I’ve made deliveries here, and even when I haven’t, I’ve driven through on US-1 on my way from York to Kennebunkport. But it has always been early morning, too early to stop for lunch at Nikanos, a Greek restaurant with spanakopita, pastitsio, and gyros wraps that I otherwise stop for whenever I can.

We were going to meet at a chowder house in nearby Wells. She had a gift certificate, and we each fancy ourselves chowder connoisseurs. At the last minute, I thought to check something, and my hunch was right: Closed for the season. And so I recalled and quickly called Nikanos. Lucky me.

Lucky us when we took seats at the bar of a full and lively place. About every fifteen minutes, a fellow rang a bell to announce a sing-a-long. My friend chimed in with gusto, and after Santa names “Cupid” in Rudolph’s song, I chipped in by re-naming another reindeer “Stupid.” I also had “another beer” when everyone else raised “a cup of cheer” in “Holly Jolly,” but I just laughed all along the way of the rest.

My friend wondered if a stanza of “Jingle Bells” had been skipped, and I begged her not to risk encouraging the guy to prolong the torture. But she enjoyed it, and, in truth, the meal was so tasty that I wasn’t groaning or rolling my eyes. I had no idea why the spanakopita tasted better than the best I’ve had, but she noted that it wasn’t simply spinach and feta, but “earthy tastes” that “come through.” She guessed allspice, cardamom, “maybe thyme.” I managed to not fall off the chair at the thought that I know someone who could do that.

When we left, we walked into a crowded town center with police cruisers blocking the road that goes off US-1 toward Perkins Cove. People lined the streets, and we soon realized that, without knowing it, we had walked into a parade. She was all for it, her camera was out, her fist waving in the air, “Woo Hoo!” as loud as the sirens. “Remax Realtors, you rock!” Now I was rolling my eyes and groaning. All I wanted was a cup of coffee and a warm place to sit, but…

But here were the fire-engines, sirens so loud that parents were pressing the ears of their children as if they wanted to fit them into suitcases. And then, in no particular order I could discern: the floats, the classic cars, bikers with dogs wearing shades strapped to their backs, clowns and Santa and the Grinch cutting capers, the local high school marching band decking the street in sounds of jolly, a hot air balloon with a fellow who bellowed flames into the air–we were grateful for the warmth.

In the middle of it was a float for the Ogunquit Playhouse, for longer than I can remember a very popular and successful summer venue for musical comedy. At the top and at the back of it was an actor in character, dressed as Charles Dickens. On two of our previous meetings in Ogunquit, he performed one-man shows as Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe in Clay Hill Farm’s dinner-theater. But I call him “Your Majesty” because he is also King Richard at the Renaissance faire where I perform every fall.

I asked my friend to get his picture–because that’s what we neo-Luddites do when we want pictures taken by technology that we disdain and ridicule. Having noted the irony more than once long ago, she simply answered that she had him on video.

“That’s beyond me.”

“I can make a photo out of it.”

“Good, thanks. Can you make it horizontal?”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

She knew because I’ve said it at least four times during various meetings, including reviews of Clay Hill Farm’s dinner-theater and a walk along Ogunquit’s Marginal Way. One of her horizontal pics has me at New England’s most incongruous tourist attraction, The Desert of Maine, not far north of Portland, in the seat of a 1927 Ford, a primitive station wagon with an open-air wooden body (coincidentally posted with a recent blog). All my adult life, parades have been no more appealing to me than sing-a-longs, but how I wish I could have driven that old, old Ford on US-1 Saturday.

As a mere spectator, I’m grateful that I didn’t know of the parade ahead of time. Had I known, I’d have avoided Ogunquit. A few nice brew pubs just up the road in Wells and Kennebunkport.

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All photos by Carla Valentine:

A pic of hot air shooting up into my account suggests at least two metaphors, one of which is most unflattering. But here it is, and it did warm spectators as it drifted slowly past.

Apparently, the Grinch doesn’t know what to make of a doge riding piggy-back on Santa who rides a Rudolph with two tires and its red light in the rear.

Charles Dickens or maybe Bob Cratchit formerly Robert Frost and Edgar Allan Poe and possibly Ben Franklin and Mark Twain (though I haven’t yet seen those last two myself) on the Ogunquit Playhouse float with Kirk Simpson in the role as he flashes back to his role as King Richard XI when he recognizes a royal subject from the shire some 150 miles south and five centuries away from here.

A Plate of Boyhood, Please

Yesterday I was dispatched up the Maine coast, another route that I once did every week but was rescheduled after the pandemic.

Most Fridays these days I’m sent out to Gloucester and Rockport at the tip of “Massachusetts’ other cape,” Cape Ann, then down along Boston’s North Shore on always clogged roads into always crowded places such as Salem and Marblehead. But the Maine run is thrown my way every couple months or so, and so when I heard last month that legendary Red Sox pitcher, Luis Tiant, passed away, I awaited my first chance for a pit stop at the Maine Diner where he feasted so frequently, they named a breakfast for him.

Takes people by surprise to hear that the Cuban defector-turned-All Star hurler enjoyed his retirement in Wells and Kennebunk, Maine, playing golf and wolfing down poached eggs on corned-beef hash with toast and a cup of bite-sized chunks of cantaloupe, pineapple, honey melon, and grapes up on US1.

The Maine Diner’s location makes it impossible for tourists to miss. Here, a state highway leaves US1 for the coast, taking you past the Rachel Carson State Park and Estuary out to Kennebunkport and the beach where Tiant may well have hung out with golfing partner George H.W. Bush, himself an acclaimed firstbaseman for Yale before giving up pastoral baseball for political hardball.

Don’t know how it was for young boys in other parts of New England, but in the gritty mill city of Lawrence, Mass., and the nearby sedate river town of Groveland where I often played ball with my cousin and his pals, Tiant was an idol before he came to the Red Sox. That he fled Castro’s revolution at great risk would have made him a celebrity in any line of work, and his joyous, ebullient personality, emboldened by a thick, black Fu Manchu, made him a favorite of ours no matter that he played for the Cleveland Indians.

Goofing off, we’d try to imitate his tilt-a-whirl delivery that had him facing secondbase longer than he faced the plate, but we never attempted it in games because it was impossible to control. There was nothing else like it. There was no one else like him, and the unforgettable photo of him from the chest up, soaping himself in the shower with his ever-present cigar between his lips was all that was needed to memorialize it.

Finally, I have savored his favorite breakfast. As I so often do (and as I mentioned in my last blog), I again ordered before looking at the menu. But look at the menu I did, wondering if other entrees were named for local celebrities. Certainly, “George’s Beef Jerky” or maybe something called “Anti-Broccoli” would be a side dish, but the name Bush was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a sandwich named for network sports commentator Jim Nantz, a strawberry shortcake dessert called “Just the ‘Fax’ Ma’m” for pro golfer Brad Faxon, and lunches for former WEEI sports radio hosts Eddie Andleman and Dale Arnold.

That last pair may be an inside joke. Andleman and Arnold cohosted a mid-day show for a few years, “The A Team” it was called, and word has it that they wound up hating each other. The free-wheeling, snarky Andleman was dumped, and mild-mannered, meticulous Arnold survived for another ten or more years, but would never talk about it.

No one outside WEEI knows what happened, but this menu offers a strong hint. Andleman lunched on mac and cheese loaded with two quarter-pound frankfurters. Arnold preferred a lobster roll with melted butter on the side.

I checked the photos on the wall behind the counter directly in front of my seat. Arnold, Tiant, Bush Senior, Nantz, and others, including I bet the chefs at Maine Diner, were all smiling back at me, brandishing five irons. Maybe Andleman was still sitting here wolfing down hot dogs while the others strolled the fairways and greens.

The rest of the menu, unlike that of the New Hampshire joint where I dined the day before, was all straight-forward except for one entree: “She-Crab Chowder.” At first sight, my eyes rolled and my brain screamed, “For Chrissake!” But the description tells us that, rather than a crab’s preferred pronoun, the “She” is an ingredient’s natural abbreviation. This chowder offers “a hint” of sherry.

Can’t wait for my next trip up the Maine coast.

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Game Six of the 1975 World Series, considered by many sports connoisseurs as the greatest game and series in baseball history. Tiante had already won Game One, a shutout, and Game Four. But the Sox lost Two, Three, and Five to the Cincinnati Reds when a three-day monsoon drowned Boston, allowing the Sox to pitch Tiant in Game Six. The Sox won in extra innings on a nearly foul homerun by catcher Carlton Fisk, whose sideways skip toward firstbase is possibly the most shown, described, and imitated act in the history of sports. Here’s Tiant “showing his numbers” to Pete Rose.
https://www.stadiumtalk.com/s/greatest-pitching-windups-82d538b044b94cd0

https://x.com/Kartboy11/status/1400936563199053826

No, this is not the Maine Diner, but it was taken this year and is how I must have appeared, while reading about “The Eddie Andleman,” to the woman who served my “El Tiante” yesterday. Photo by Keith Sullivan, Newburyport *Daily News*.

An Appetite for the Past

Today I took my appetite into the center of Derry, N.H., to a diner where I had one lunch five years ago and to which I hoped to return.

Then came the pandemic, followed by a rescheduling of my employer’s routes. I’m rarely sent into New Hampshire anymore, and even at that, Derry is far from a strategic location for breakfast or lunch, too late for one, too early for the other.

But today was a fluke, straight up US 3 and down I-93 all the way to Plymouth, a quaint, small college town best known as the place where one of America’s greatest novelists died while in the company of one of America’s worst presidents.

To be fair, Franklin Pierce was a college buddy of Massachusetts boy Nathaniel Hawthorne, long before one’s Scarlet Letter and the other’s White House, and Hawthorne, knowing his end was near, craved another look at the White Mountains where his old friend kept out of public view.

As for Pierce, his accommodation of the slavocracy was so appalling that he returned to New England only to be shunned wherever he went, including his buddy’s funeral. Sixty years later, Robert Frost, who lived most of his life on a farm just south of Derry, penned a fond, epic ode to the state called “New Hampshire” that summed up Pierce with this:

She had one President (pronounce him Purse,

And make the most of it for better or worse.

He’s your one chance to score against the state).

To and from Plymouth, some 70 miles north of the state border, I starved myself until I could feel it–and finally feed it–in Mary Ann’s Diner. Derry is about 20 miles north of Massachusetts–in fact, straight north of my native Lawrence–but I offset that with a delivery east of Concord to Chichester, a general store that would seem more at home with “Pierce for President” signs than with the ones I spotted in its neighborhood.

You find those general stores in the nooks and crannies of all New England states–just as you find diners decked out to immerse you in the 1950s mostly at interstate highway interchanges, but a few in town centers.

I had forgotten that Mary Ann’s was among them, recalling only the generous comfort dish and blue-plate price. Friends and family think I have an inexhaustible photographic memory, and I do recall odd and impossible things such as tricks made at 45s which we believed was Lawrence’s own card game, or so we thought* played under trees or on porches, who won, who lost, who looked on, the songs that played on our transistor radios while we dealt and bid and talked trash.

I can describe many of my Little League baseball games, not just my own hits and errors, and not just highlights, but who was in the stands, who was playing on the other team, the color of their uniforms, things said by the managers and umpires. But it’s a selective memory, so I may not know who won, if I played thirdbase or centerfield, the name of the other team, or if it was one of the games with a certain girl from my class leaning on the rail along Bodwell St. to laugh and wave at me–which I hope was her way of cheering for me.

As I often do, I looked at the specials board and, without looking at a menu, ordered: “Loaded Shepherd’s Pie.”

Let me correct that: I ordered before looking at the menu which proved entertaining enough to make me forget my hunger while awaiting the meal–especially to the tune of Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again” playing overhead. Quite a clever creation, but the author missed one trick: Derry is the hometown of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly in space. Shouldn’t they tweak the spelling to name their pie for him?

Still, the pie lived up to the word “loaded” which represented the menu quite well. Omelets included “Kitchen Sink” and “Philly Steak Bomblet,” while for lunch you can have “Billy’s Big Boy Sandwich” or “Dominic’s Monstah Montecarlo.”

But emphasis is on time more than size. “Fave” breakfasts include “The Elvis Presley,” “The Sinatra,” and “The 50s Special,” while the list of lunchtime sandwiches looks like one for an Autorama in the Eisenhower years: Thunderbird, Bel Air, Little Red Corvette, Pink Cadillac, Mustang, Barracuda, ’57 Chevy, Falcon, and–amazingly–Edsel.

Also offered was “Surf City,” which may or not have played on the speakers overhead while I wolfed down the pie. Seems that all I heard was pre-Beatles, popular when I was in elementary school, what we now call bubble-gum music. Beach Boys, Four Tops, Rickie Nelson, Leslie Gore, and all kinds of falsetto hallyballoo that today makes me wonder why our parents didn’t just shoot us rather than telling us how bad it was.

Must admit that, as I left, the tune overhead made my knees wobble. Nostalgia never hit so hard as I froze before opening the door and racing in the rain toward the van across the street. “Easier Said Than Done,” like Alan Shepard’s trek beyond the atmosphere, was more likely in the Kennedy years, but it was still the same vibe we danced to at parties in each other’s homes.

One party was held at St. Augustine’s Elementary School–which went to 8th grade–by the nuns who perhaps wanted to see what we were up to. What they saw were all the boys standing and sitting on one side while all the girls kept to the other. Sister Bernadette, a young woman as I recall, though the habit makes it difficult to figure, listened to four or five songs before she had had enough. She charged in our direction and grabbed one of her favorites by the arm:

“Go over there and ask someone to dance!” she demanded.

“Ye-ye-ye-ye-yes!”

Not too many years ago, at a 50th class reunion, the girl-now-woman reminded me of that dance. The years have been quite good to her, and the joy on her face and in her voice was that of a school girl as she raised her hand: “And you picked me!”

Even then, I guess, I had an ear out for irony. Despite my stutter, we danced to “Easier Said Than Done.”

Don’t know how long it will be before I return, but I do not doubt, as the local bard put it, “that I should ever come back.” That “Big Bopper Burger” sounds pretty good.

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Turns out 45s came from Ireland with our grand- and great-grandparents. For those of you in other parts of the USA, it could be a variation on Euchre.

“Easier Said Than Done”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT3ivugR2eY&t=1s

Turns out that, while Derry is where Mary Ann’s first opened in 1989, three others have opened in the nearby NH towns of Salem, Amherst, and Windham:
https://www.maryannsdiner.com/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/559642691193698753/

A Drop into Drill & Dodge Diner

Driving long distance is ideal for thinking long thoughts.

Martin Luther King once said that about jail, but he can keep his barred windows. I’ll take a smashed-bug windshield anytime.

And I’ll take the choice eateries along with it—from Wagon Wheel way out on the Mohawk Trail, to the Bolton Bean House on the way there, then south to Rein’s Delicatessen deep in the heart of Connecticut, over to Percy’s on Buzzards’ Bay, zig-zagging back up for a snack at the Boston Bean House in Maynard, then through Beverly for the Depot Diner, or perhaps the Early Bird in Plaistow NH, before landing up north in the Maine Diner, and perhaps letting Wild Willy’s in York intercept me on my return.

Lately I’m overhearing a lot of political talk where I often stop while making my weekly rounds.

Though I’ve been making those rounds for over 25 years, this is new. Few of us ever talk politics in public, or if we do, we keep—or kept—our voices down for fear of argument.

Exceptions were few and far between. The outpouring of patriotism following September 11 was loud and unanimous. Too bad it turned into a pretext for war, and anyone not going along was painted as an ally of Bin Laden himself.

I recall walking into a Plymouth restaurant for breakfast and looking up, as I always do, at the “specials” board. Among them was “French Toast,” but with “French” crossed out and “Liberty” placed above it. I turned, taking my liberty of the place, and haven’t set foot in it since.

More recently, the horror expressed following January 6 was unanimous until Republicans offered up their “alternative facts”—a “normal tourist day” and “Antifa did it” and finally “an act of patriotism!”—and pay no attention to the glaring three-way contradiction of those claims.

Now, I hear political chatter everywhere. JD Vance’s “cat-lady” slur and Donald Trump’s gaslighting of VP Kamala Harris’ ethnic identity both seem to have detonated a nerve.

One was the subject at the counter of the Iron Town Diner in Saugus where I took the lone empty chair. With two men on each side of me, I listened as three drilled one about his apparent defense of Trump’s dodge regarding Harris’ race.

The Trumper kept repeating, “But he was just answering a question.”

Did he think there was a difference between an interview and a speech? They wanted to know.

Over and over: “He was answering a question.”

Finally, I popped: “Are you suggesting that the person who asks a question is to blame for the answer?”

All fell silent. Though I had been seated long enough to down a sandwich, I noticed they hadn’t been served, and no waiter had appeared. Then I saw the waitstaff was few and far between among the crowded tables.

Conveniently, I broke the silence: “Sorry, I’d love to stay for the conversation, but I’m driving a delivery van, with perishables, and I’m on the clock. Good day!”

Though the van was already empty, I wasn’t taking any chances. And giving up on the tastiest spanakopita in a hundred-mile radius and settling for an Italian sub down the road is hardly a good day, but the aborted scene serves as grated Parmesan atop my Mass Pike musings while racing my appetite to Iron Town’s best dish.

All talk of race—as well as any talk of gender and religion—is naught but smoke for the Republican screen.

Behind that screen? A presidential candidate who last month urged his supporters:

Get out and vote just this time… Four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.

Those last three words? Smoke, although the possessive pronoun is telling. This month, he’s more blunt:

Don’t worry about voting… we got plenty of votes.

Only one explanation for this: Team Trump is counting on Republican state legislatures to prevent certification.

Sure, Democrats can bring it all to state courts where they will win, but MAGA will appeal each case to the Mitch McConnell-stacked and Trump-controlled Supreme Court. And now we have Elon Musk hinting at the chaos that may be unleashed coast to coast in the two months before Inauguration Day if Election Day doesn’t go his way. British journalists believe that the social-media infused violence that has just gripped their country was a “practice run” for what awaits the USA.*

Instead of talk about India and Jamaica, Democrats need to focus on Madison, Lansing, Harrisburg, and other state capitals where this refined and sanitized version of Jan. 6 will be staged.

Otherwise, even at the rate of nine votes per cat, all the cat-lady votes Harris can possibly get will not survive the nullification that Republicans already have in place.

Nor will my appetite survive any other diner’s refusal to believe their own eyes and ears as they grasp at straws as flimsy as “tourist day,” “Antifa did it,” “he was just joking,” and “he was just answering a question.”

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*https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/18/inciting-rioters-in-britain-was-a-test-run-for-elon-musk-just-see-what-he-plans-for-america?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

This photo, by one Peter Sward who writes a rather appetizing blog called “The Daily Lunch,” is uncanny. Taken from the door as we enter, you see behind a few tables the counter where two couples are seated with one chair between them. That was what I saw–except that all who were seated were men. https://thedailylunch-woburn.blogspot.com/2019/07/iron-town-diner-saugus.html

Jack’s Apple-Cheddar Kick

Every now and then, heavy handed as I am, I break one of the yokes while preparing my standard breakfast of two eggs once over. Years ago, I started countering this by putting a small bowl on the counter, cracking the shells on it, and then pouring the egg into it. From there it went into a small frying pan with butter just starting to smoke.

Now, anytime a yoke is broke, I kill the smoke and, no joke, turn Humpty Dumpty into omelet.

Often it depends on what’s in the fridge, and I can pretty much always count on feta cheese and Kalamata olives. It varies, but I do have a new favorite.

Years ago, 2008 to be exact, I wandered into Lou Mitchell’s legendary restaurant on an early morning soon after Amtrak landed me in downtown Chicago and just two years after it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. First time I was ever given a “donut hole” by a woman in 19th century kitchen garb greeting us at the door and picking them out of a wiry bucket with a pair of tongs.

Quite tasty, but we craved far more than donuts. At the very top of the menu, highlighted as a specialty, was their apple-cheddar omelet. As many apples as this New England veteran of four harvests has picked, I had never heard of nor thought possible an apple mixed with eggs. I had to have it.

Another pecularity: Though all other breakfast entries offered a wide choice of bread, the menu made clear that only anadama went with the apple-cheddar omelet. No substitutions. My addiction to rye toast yielded to my curiosity.

To say that the omelet–and the bread–did not disappoint would be at once a wild understatement and yet misleading. Tasting it all day while seeing the sites on one of the city’s architectural boat tours, it was tempting to break the rule of not going to the same place twice. For me it was just three days. So many restaurants, so little time!

Disappoinment began when I returned home, back then making delivery rounds four days a week and needing as many restaurants. Apple omelets were nowhere to be found, nor did it occur to me that I’d ever be able to make one myself.

A year or two passed before a new customer was put on my Wednesday route south of Boston and I happened by an enormous sign–Omelet Factory–over a modest, stand-alone white building in Pembroke, Mass. Already full, I made note and a week later I was seated with a menu listing 140 omelets. About halfway in, there it was, apple-cheddar.

“And what kind of toast would you like?”

“Anadama.”

The look on her face! “Sorry, we–“

“Rye! Dark rye and toast it twice. Burn it!”

For a few years, I was close to a weekly customer, and before long one of two waitresses would approach me and ask, “Apple-cheddar?”

“Yes, thanks!”

“With crispy rye?”

“Burn it!”

Then came a day when, after seating myself and waiting for a waitress to emerge from the kitchen, I noticed a brand new, very colorful menu on the vacant table next to me, and thought I’d peruse it. All entries had descriptions, and the Portuguese omelet sounded more than tempting. Maybe next time. I kept looking to see what it said of apple-cheddar, and to my horror saw that it was gone.

I spoke before the waitress could: “No more apple-cheddar???”

“We’ll make it for you.”

“It’s not listed.”

“No, we didn’t list it because it takes longer to make, so only those who know of it will order it.”

The other waitress, sensing what I was asking, wandered over, overheard, and added: “Only you will order it!”

First waitress, playing along: “We make it just for you!”

And they did for a few more years until the pandemic kept me home and, upon my return, I was no longer dispatched on the southern route. By this time, however, I had been making my own breakfasts every day for 18 months, and my culinary skills could not help but improve. Mostly because I had figured out that I could find recipes for just about anything on-line. After I tired of 18 straight mornings of potato pancakes with applesauce and sour cream, it finally occurred to me to punch apple-cheddar omelet into a search engine.

There’s a lot from which to choose, and nearly every strain of apple and type of cheese will appear in at least one. One recipe includes kale, which I’ll leave to anyone other than me to try. After a few dozen attempts with slight tweaks along the way, I am ready to offer a recipe and instructions of my own. So thrilled am I with the result, that I am compelled to replace the mundane label, “omelet,” with a name that describes the feeling and mood any diner is bound to enjoy after finishing one (which, by the way, I just did).

More than that, a name that pays tribute to where it all began 16 years ago at Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant located within a couple blocks of the eastern terminus of US Route 66, America’s most celebrated highway:

Jack’s Apple-Cheddar Kick (aka JACK)

(Serves one. Double all amounts for two, triple for three, etc.)

Start with two frying pans, preferably small, a small bowl, and a generous half-cup of your favorite cheddar, grated.
In one pan, melt butter in a moderate flame while slicing half of a honey-crisp apple on the side of a grater.
When the butter is melted, saute the sliced apple.
In the other pan, melt more butter full flame while beating two large eggs and a splash of milk in the small bowl.
Let the butter begin to smoke before pouring the egg into it. Take a moment to enjoy the sizzle. Keep the flame full until you have topped the egg with the sauteed apple and grated cheddar.
Turn flame to moderate-low and add garlic powder and grated black pepper to taste (I recommend generous amounts). No salt unless you’ve already taken a bite and think you need it.
Cover for a minute before folding. Cover for another minute before serving.

Goes very well with either anadama or rye toast.

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You can vary the strain of apple or type of cheese according to your preferences. Here’s one with brie that doesn’t pick an apple (see what I did there?):
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/applebrie-omelet-recipe-foodcom–353814114448161624/

Sign at top: “Selected No. 1 Breakfast & Lunch Place in America.” B&W sign: “We Do Our Own Quality Baking.” Sign on lampost: “Illinois – US 66,” giving it a claim referencing a nickname that first appeared in John Steinbeck’s *Grapes of Wrath*, “First stop on the Mother Road.”
https://www.tripadvisor.ie/Restaurant_Review-g35805-d427842-Reviews-Lou_Mitchell_s-Chicago_Illinois.html

Bistro-by-the-Sea. Drawing by Angela Anderson looking northwest from her window next door.

Pie O’Clock Somewhere

Today, I trekked to Methuen, a town not quite 25 miles inland, referred for a medical appointment that proved harmless enough.

Had I gone 25 miles in any other direction, I might have come right back, but Methuen sits on the northern border of the city where I was born and raised, a section of it called Tower Hill which sits right on that border within a mile of the doctor’s office.

So I took a nostalgic tour, indulging in memories both fond and melancholy, when I realized that there would be one touchstone of my own distant past that I could find, buy, and take with on the ride home.

Between my junior and senior high school years, I was a clerk at the Harris & Moore Delicatessen in downtown Lawrence, Mass., my first real job unless you count newspaper boy.

Even back in 1967, the store was what today would be called “a treasure,” established in 1904, featuring sausages, meat pies and loaves crafted from recipies just off the boats from Hamburg and Liverpool at the time. Not to mention a German-styled potato salad I make to this day that delights my guests here on Plum Island and has delighted my hosts as far as Colorado–never mind that hard boiled eggs take forever to peel at that altitude. Though I never once made it at Harris & Moore, I watched it put together so often that, twenty years later when I finally had a nostalgic craving, I knew what to do.

But I did make, or at least bake our biggest seller, the item for which we were renowned: Pork Pies. Not much bigger than a baseball, they formed in tin cups that fit 30 on a tray in our large ovens. We had a machine that punched out the dough, another to grind the pork, and spoons to measure the seasoning. I’d tell you what the seasoning was, but I was a 16-year-old who never thought to ask, who thought “Scarborough Fair” was a coming-of-age song about four young women.

On busy days we sold hundreds of them. Lawrence was still a fairly vibrant city in the late 60s with a large and busy downtown, a county courthouse and a city hall just blocks away. A pork pie and a half-pint of potato salad–or a sandwich on Kasanoff’s pumpernickel and a side of coleslaw–made for a quick and satisfying lunch for many retailers, lawyers, secretaries, public officials, clerks. Inexpensive, too; those pies went two for 49 cents.

Harris & Moore, along with much of downtown Lawrence, closed shop in the mid-70s. I was long gone by then, but I stayed in touch with the legendary Joe Collins who worked for the original owners for at least twenty years before he bought the place in the mid-30s. He told me that a mom & pop grocery named Thwaite’s had purchased all of the pork pie tins and trays, as well as the machines that punched out the dough and ground the pork. I would have expected him to say it with regret, but he was genuinely happy to leave it all in good hands.

Located just over the border in Methuen, Thwaite’s has been going strong all these years. When I taught at UMass Lowell back in the 90s, it was hardly a detour to stop there. Since then, not so much, and since the pandemic’s shut down, not at all.

Today, the light bulb was as sudden as it was bright.

If Lake Wobegon is the little town that time forgot, Thwaite’s is the corner store that makes time laugh out loud.

A parking lot for about ten cars has green signs that look rather serious until you read them: “Parking for Pies and Sausage Only.” On the wall: “It’s Pie O’Clock Somewhere.” Small hand-written signs appear on the window, and if that’s not living in the past, the “banker’s hours,” posted at the entry, sure are–as most businesses did back in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, Thwaite’s closes at noon on Wednesdays.

Luckily, there was a tray of pies just out of the oven, nostalgia’s smell so much more vibrant than all its sights. I figured I was picking up dinner and wouldn’t mind re-heating in the oven on this rainy day. Two would do it, as they did on my way home from Lowell years ago.

After I paid, I couldn’t help but tell the woman at the counter of Harris & Moore and how I once made the pies I just then bought. But I could see she was too young for an old man’s sentiment, so I withheld the detail that she might have mistaken for criticism or complaint and paid the bill without comment:

Two pies for $8.54.

To arrive at the doctor’s on time, I managed no more than a banana and an English muffin for breakfast. Leaving Methuen, it seemed way too early for lunch, but yes, I was hungry, and there I was taking whiffs of two warm pies in a bag beside me.

But that’s for tonight to have with a couple IPAs while watching the Red Sox. Maybe I’ll nibble at the crust…

And just like that, I’m 16 years-old, ready to eat anything within reach. The pies are gone before I’m less than a mile past the doctor’s office, so I consider turning around and going back for more. Well, I said only that they were to take with on the ride home, not that they would necessarily make it home.

Here in 1967, it’s always Pie O’Clock.

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https://www.thwaitesmarket.com/index.php

https://visitingnewengland.com/thwaites-market-methuen.html

The large trays of 30 are gone in favor of what appear to be conveyor belts, but those are the same tins that I filled, emptied, and then scraped clean and oiled (repeat, repeat) 55 years ago.

Put Yourself on a Roll

Friends who take a week-long vacation in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts every summer are always sure to send me news of Arrowhead, Herman Melville’s home that is now open for tours offered by the Berkshire Historical Society.

Today they tell me that Arrowhead now offers “Musing with Melville” for anyone wanting to sit and write at his desk with the window that looks out at Mount Greylock 17 miles to the north.

Thanks for the notice, but at $300 per hour, I’ll continue to write while looking out my own window over a very flat Plum Island Sound here on Massachusett’s Atlantic Coast rather than at the majesty of it’s highest peak by its New York border.

However, I was fascinated by something else they mentioned, and took more time considering its possibilities: For just $10.99 at a nearby deli, you can pick “The Melville” from the sandwich list: Tuna with Swiss cheese, tomato & onion on sourdough.*

Seems an easy choice for how to spend three bills: One hour at his desk, or 27 sandwiches with his name?

Of course, Melville would have tuna, if only because there’s no whale to be had on today’s “Save the Whales” market. And I bet the tuna is not albacore, but yellow fin, because the first rule of food and drink is: The darker, the better.

When at the Thanksgiving table, do you choose the always moist dark meat or the relatively dry white meat? Is your rice brown or white? Now that corn is in season, will you insist on bright bumblebee or settle for pale canary? If you are particular about coffee, do you prefer dark or light roasts? If about beer, do you enjoy light or amber? Dark or milk chocolate? White or wheat bread? Or rye?

So many preferences got me to thinking: If you had a sandwich named for you, what would it be?**

Call me rosemary ham with sharp, aged cheddar, a Calimari tomato, and ranch dressing on pumpernickel as dark as there is. Dark rye is fine, but pumpernickel makes for good conversation. I have yet to have lunch with anyone who did not enjoy the story of how the word came to be:

For it we can thank Napoleon. When he went on that ill-fated campaign to conquer Russia, he camped outside a Saxon town where he took a liking to a local bakery. One very dark bread may have been the reason he had his army linger there a few days. Be that as it may, he sent his officers into the town to get it.

We overlook that Napoleon was Corsican, really more Italian than French, hence his black hair and darker complexion. His officers, of fairer skin and fairer tastes, thought that their general was indulging in crudeness for this bread, and did not want to admit to the German baker that a French general would want such a thing.

So they made a point of telling him that the bread was for Napoleon’s horse, Nicole. In French, bread is pan, and for is pour, and so the German ear heard pan pour Nicole. Adopting that phrase to name his bread auf Deutsch, the baker coined pumpernickel.

I tell the story now as an example of how to craft a sandwich named for you into something you can craft conversation around. In addition to European history, I can parlay the rosemary into mention of a realtive who avoids it eleven months out of the year because it reminds him of Christmas. Calamari tomatoes are a recent discovery for me, and the first that I ever liked putting into omelets. Ranch dressing I like to say is a tribute to my years in the Dakotas, which it really isn’t, but it starts a good story if anyone should say, “Oh yeah? What’s it like out there?”

Last night when I began typing ideas for this, a friend now living in Western Pennsylvania rang my phone wanting to know if I knew anything about Hunter Biden vacationing years ago on Plum Island. That interested me about as much as would Spam and Velveeta with Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread, so I ignored the question, and spoke excitedly:

“M———, if a friend of yours opened a delicatessen and wanted to name a sandwich for you, what would it be?”

I’d have been thankful if it just made her forget about Hunter Laptopper, but she dug right in with relish. Well, not relish relish, but as if she was starved and about to chow down on grilled chicken and mozarella topped with tomato and basil on sourdough.

Not sure what she would have to say about any of those items, but the word “grilled” could well serve an historian and genealogist who does a lot of writing, which she is, and therefore asks a lot of questions.

Another friend, answering the identical question, didn’t hesitate: “It would have to be roast beef from a cow still mooing.” She mentioned mayo as if she’d turn the jar upside down rather than bother with a knife, as well as “lettuce with a crunch,” presumably to drown out the poor cow’s mooing, and a heirloom tomato all on the sesame-seeded, crusty white rolls crafted by the legendary Virgilio’s Bakery in Gloucester. Now that’s loaded with conversational possibilities, as well as argument from the well-done crowd.

So there you have the first three items– “The Garvey,” “The Mel” (preferring her nickname), and “The Annie” (preferring her first name)–on the sandwich board at the Cold-Cuts-R-Us Deli. My travelling friends have not yet responded to my invitation to add theirs, which makes me worry that their Melvilles may have turned into Moby-Dicks and sunk them.

To stay afloat, I am taking suggestions on-line in the comments section–or, as we call it in the real world, over the counter. In time, with apologies to another famous Berkshire resident, I hope to be able to boast that you can have anyone you want at this oh-so personal restaurant.

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*Everyone has likely seen these. Within my rounds, I can recommend the Maine Diner’s “El Tiante,” named for the legendary Red Sox pitcher of the ’60s and ’70s, corned beef hash with poached eggs and a side of fruit. And the Early Bird in Plaistow, N.H., reaches back to the 50s with the “James Dean,” Hollywood’s rebel without a cause, biscuits with gravy and sausage.

For later in the day, Wild Willie’s “Annie Oakley” up in York, Maine, a burger with blue cheese–Yes please! Here in Newburyport, the Port Tavern’s “Tom Brady,” a burger with avacado–No! Just no!

But my all-time favorite was on the beverage menu at the Great Lakes Brewery when I visited Cleveland in 2008: “Eliot Ness IPA.” Now that’s gloating at its finest, and the brew lives up to it!

**The word itself is from the Earl of Sandwich who, in the 18th Century, was the first person to put corned beef between two slices of bread. Turns out that his obsessive gambling was the mother of his invention:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/john-montagu

Nature’s ‘Jolly Round Board’

When someone gives you a book titled Beer Hiking New England, you wonder if she’s trying to aid your effort to lose weight or sabotage it.

Then you start thumbing through 340 colorful pages of maps, photos, charts, and graphs of elevation for 50 trails in six states, combined with descriptions of 50 brew pubs within four miles of each trailhead, and you say “thank you” and start planning.

Since my friend, a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, shares my contradictory interests in weight loss and craft ale, I went looking for entries between here and Portland where she lives, and found the Wells Estuary Reserve that separates the tourist hotspots of Ogunquit and Kennebunkport.

Looking toward the ocean. There is a barrier beach much like Plum Island on the other side of that stand of trees.
Photo: Carla Valentine

And so we met on an overcast Sunday at the Maine Diner, less than a mile from the trailhead, for coffee that would fuel us over 3.9 miles of trail, much of it on boardwalks over wetlands. Might call it the Hellcat Trail on Plum Island set in a pine forest in lieu of tall marsh grass. Instead of an observation tower, the boardwalks lead to a few decks with benches overlooking broad meadows, and placards to tell you what’s in sight. Benches are scattered along the entire trail, as are placards to identify trees and other flora and fauna, including the swamps that one calls “Nature’s Cafeteria.”

Among Nature’s Cafeteria’s treats is Skunk Cabbage. Photo: Carla Valentine

One of the loop’s tangents takes you to Wells Beach, which I’m tempted to call “Plum Island with rocks,” except that my companion reminded me that it’s probably the least rocky point on Maine’s coast. I sat corrected on one of several benches that allowed us to turn what Beer Hiking estimates as a two-hour walk into more like three.

We also paused to consider a porcupine halfway up a pine tree. We’d have missed it if not for a woman, perhaps college age, peering through field glasses. Hard to find, but she gave good directions, and after we both had a look, she declared, “Well, I can take that off my bucket list!”

I almost fainted: “Bucket? Did you just use the word bucket?”

She smiled: “Yes!”

Aghast: “That’s for old people like me, not for you!”

My companion couldn’t fathom my objection: “She got it done!”

Double-teamed, I turned in both directions: “The reference is to the expression, ‘kick the bucket,’ doing it before you die!”

They just smiled, and we continued on as the young woman remained in place, admiring the tree-climbing critter, perhaps hoping to fit every quill into her bucket, which better be very, very large considering the head start she’s taking. A few steps away, I wondered if my grandson might cross second grade off his “bucket list” in a couple of months, and I turned back to her: “Thank you!”

Her smile and wave were so warm, they may have been on my modest bucket list without my knowing it.

Our strangest encounter came at the start of the first of the five trails that form the loop–the “Muskie Trail,” named for Edmund Muskie, Maine’s US Senator (1959-1980) best remembered as Hubert Humphrey’s VP running mate in 1968 and the prime target and victim of the Nixon campaign’s dirty tricks in 1972. Before I could reminisce out loud about my exchange of correspondence with the always helpful senator during my brief stint as a reporter for the St. John Valley Times on Maine’s northern border, we were looking at a man coming toward us garbed as a jouster, repleat with helmet, armor, and a coat of arms.

My companion laughed: “Must be a friend of yours from King Richard’s!”

A time-warp into my previous life warped again into the 16th Century: “Probably.”

He told us he was lost, and asked if we had seen a battle taking place. Astonished, we said no; he said thanks and kept going, thankfully in the opposite direction.

Laudholm Farm buildings at the trailhead. Worth noting that the Swedish suffix, “holm,” means “meadow,” and “laud” means “praise,” giving us English words such as “applaud” and “lauditory.” Photo by Carla Valentine.

We two changed directions near the end of the 3.9 loop, taking our growing appetites on a shortcut back to the trailhead for a 3.6 hike (according to an app on her phone). That’s still my longest walk of the year, nearly a half mile more than I do in the gym, though having company makes it seem shorter–despite being leisurely and taking longer. A time warp or a distance warp? Flip a coin.

Figuring that we had earned it, we flipped coins for mouth-watering smash burgers at the Batson River Brewery and Distillery a few miles south on the road that connects US 1 to Wells Beach. Though I’m always on the lookout for IPAs, I couldn’t resist ordering a Barber Chair Bitter just so I could say the name aloud. It did not disappoint.

No offense to Nature’s Cafeteria, but it apparently lacks a liquor license, and so we took our thirst down the road to Batson Brewery. That must be photographer Carla V’s Barber Chair Bitter, as mine was two-thirds gone by the time the burgers arrived.

Laughing at the idea that the combination of brew pubs with nature trails most likely turns the goal of weight loss into the compromise of “breaking even,” I recalled Herman Melville’s hedonistic declaration in Mardi:

No sensible man can harbor a doubt, but that there is a great deal of satisfaction in dining. More: there is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.

And well knowing this, nature has provided this jolly round board, our globe, which in an endless sequence of courses and crops, spreads a perpetual feast.

His next line, alas, is sobering:

Though, as with most public banquets, there is no small crowding, and many go away famished from plenty.

No doubt that’s why we chose the offseason to hike Maine’s coast. While dining, we brainstormed other relatively nearby and inland entries in Carey Kish’s book: The Great Bay Estuary and the Stoneface Brewing Co. in Newington, NH? The Northwood Meadows and the Northwoods Brewing Co. in Northwood NH?

While writing this, I wonder if two more entries in Beer Hiking New England–Plum Island’s Hellcat Trail and Walden Pond–require revisits followed by fare at the Newburyport Brewing Co. and True West Brewery respectively.

Otherwise, we will be nothing until refilled.

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https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/local/207/guidebook-beer-breweries-trails-hiking-new-england/97-abe921c3-b41a-4140-9134-f4264748ac8a

This book continues a series that includes: Beer Hiking Pacific Northwest, Beer Hiking Colorado, and Randos Biere au Quebec, with Beer Hiking New York and Beer Hiking the Canadian Rockies soon to come. The author/editor of the New England volume, Carey Kish, is the editor of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Maine Mountain Guide.

As I mentioned to my companion over our Barber Chair Bitters, the series reminds me of both the Green Book published annually from the 1930s into the 1960s and the Guide Books published as part of FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s–if only because I reviewed books about both published in recent years:

Recovering the Green Book

Forking off in All Directions

A Welcome Counter-Fit

Maine Diner, Wells, Maine

If you’re touring Maine’s southern coast between Portland and the New Hampshire border looking for breakfast, you can hardly go wrong. Indecisive types might even complain that there are too many excellent choices.

Before the pandemic, I was dispatched north once a week, enough to visit them all depending on my craving that morning. For eggs Benedict it was Mike’s All Day Breakfast on the road connecting US1 to Kennebunkport; for an omelet, The Egg & I on US1 between Ogunquit and Wells; for an oversized blueberry scone, Backyard in Ogunquit center; and for biscuits and gravy never easy to find on New England menus, The Maine Diner in Wells.

Also on its menu is the “El Tiante,” named for the legendary, colorful Red Sox pitcher and Hall-of-Famer, Louis Tiant, whose kaleidoscopic wind-up all little league pitchers tried to imitate much to the dismay of our coaches back in the 60s: poached eggs over corned beef hash with a small bowl of fruit in lieu of homefries. There’s another entre named for a celebrity patron, former WEEI jock Eddie Andleman, but any memory of that windbag threatens my appetite.

The restaurants I name are just the first four that come to mind, all within a four-mile radius suited to the timing of my deliveries any given Friday. Last Friday, the timing and my craving combined to steer me into Mike’s for an Irish Benny. Unfortunately, it was quite busy, with way too few staff to handle it–a common story for restaurants since the pandemic.* Since I was on the clock, I got back behind the wheel and reluctantly stopped at the Maine Diner.

Reluctant? Only because my last time there, back in December, I was horrified to learn that I barely fit at the counter when my stomach pressed against it as I squished in, ordered, and had the biscuits and gravy. To leave, I could barely turn the chair. If only in my own eyes, I was thoroughly humiliated, and once back on the road, I resolved to join a gym after a couple years of ignoring recommendations of a few friends to do just that.

But I knew the Maine Diner made very good Bennies, and it was worth the embarrassment. When I spotted the last chair empty at the end of the counter, I was grateful that my self-humilation would be slightly less.

When I took the seat, instant euphoria! Not even my sweatshirt, thick as it is, touched the counter! I fit!

So a few months in the gym have paid off, and with weather improving, most of my walking is now on the marsh side of Plum Island. When it gets hot, I’ll be barefoot on the surf at low tide.

For the sake of an occasional change of scenery, a friend in Portland and I converge for hikes in places such as Ogunquit’s Marginal Way, with the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Reserve and the Wells Estuary, both on our horizon and both within two miles of the Maine Diner.

Nice to know we have a base of operations where I can make myself comfortable.

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*Of several restaurants, pubs, cafes, coffeeshops, and diners that have folded due to an inability to find enough staff, the loss of Lindsay’s last November, a family-owned-and-operated for 74 years seafood place on what we in Massachusetts call “the upper Cape” has been most tragic. I am among many fans of its best-ever-best-anywhere crab cakes who still has hopes for its return. Notice its resemblance to the Maine Diner: