Eat Out Once In A While

I spent an hour on a recent sunny day having lunch at the JC Diner in Tremonton Utah. It’s an older place built in 1950. It is surrounded by field corn on three sides and parking lot full of pickups and tractor trailers. It is for sale and is described as a “well established country restaurant”. I walked in and immediately felt out of place. I was the only patron not wearing bib overalls. This fine dining hall has eight stools and six booths. The Formica counter top has been wiped clean so many times the pattern has completely disappeared. My waitress approach and I braced myself for the greeting. “You want coffee Hon, or do you want to see the menu?” Cindy must have been born in the place. She knew everyone who came in by their first name. She said she works from 5:30 am to 2:30 pm everyday but Sunday and has done so ever since her husband grew up and left home. That must have been some time ago. The specialty of the house is chicken fried anything or a hot roast beef sandwich. The soup of the day was straight out of the Campbell Soup can. I thought I was 14 again.


As I sat at the counter I recalled going to work for my grandfather, Charles R Snelgrove, when I was 14. He was the founder and chief potentate of the Snelgrove Ice Cream Company. My initial duties were to clean milk cans and make popsicles, assorted ice cream novelties and scrub the floors at the end of the day. I worked full time during the summers. Since I was a man of money (I made 90cents/hr), I bought my lunch every day at Hubbard’s Diner in Sugerhouse. My typical lunch was a hot roast beef sandwich followed by a piece of homemade apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese on top. I would then go into the retail part of the ice cream store and have the counter help make me double caramel fudge malt with a scoop of caramel and a banana mixed it. I gained one pound one summer and blamed it on the hot roast beef sandwiches.

 The conversationat the JC Diner ran from the price of corn to immigration. I was wearing a US Border Patrol hat and when one the locals noticed it, the conversation turned from Mexican farm help to the weather. At one point the local constable came in for coffee. He was typical small town law enforcement. You know the kind; average height, balding, addicted to greasy food, overweight, always gets his man, or woman or an occasional transvestite. His name was Bob. I think all cops from northern Utah to the Canadian border are named Bob. He asked me how long I had worked for the Border Patrol and I ignored the question and just told him I was retired. An hour later, well fed and more importantly well entertained, I went on my way, thinking I had stepped back into another time.

If you travel the country, get off the interstate and find a local café. You may find Bob or Cindy or a whole bunch of folks who look just like them and you will be glad you did.
Thanks for listening I feel much better.