Your Dinner is Waiting…Life at Howard Johnsons

My mother was not a bad cook, she just wasn’t interested unless she was putting on a production for company. Family meals were few and far between. My mother scheduled all her appointments, conveniently, at dinner time and since she was almost always involved in local theatricals, she had many, many appointments. Abandoning her husband and children to fend for themselves, she set off each evening, script in hand, to the community playhouse.

Left to feed us, my father opted for restaurant meals rather than a visit from Social Services. The idea of cooking never entered his mind. And so, every single night of the week my brother and I would bundle into the car for the short drive to Howard Johnson’s oranged roof restaurant. And every night we each would place the same order: grilled cheese sandwich for me, tuna melt for my brother, and a cheeseburger for Dad. We all ordered onion rings and not a day would pass without my father asking the waitress “Are the onions rings extruded or sliced?” The waitress, having heard the question so many times before would pretend to have to think about it and then would say “They are fresh, sliced and fried just for you.” It was a complete lie since the onions rings had never been anywhere near an onion,  but my father enjoyed the joking with the waitress more than he cared about the food. And when it same time to pay he would look at the bill and pretend to be horrified. “Kids, we are going to have to wash dishes!” He never tired of this routine.

During dinner the talk was always about something that would stretch our intellects. Dad would pose questions such as “Do all points on a tire travel at the same speed?” And, of course I would say yes and of course I would be wrong. Every question was accompanied by a pencil drawing on the paper placemat. These were elaborate sketches with x/y axis or square root symbols or some such mind numbing notation. We talked about physics and art. Once we talked about ballroom dancing. My dad loved to dance and as  he talked about ballroom dancing his body would sway to some music only he could hear. He drew complex pictures of dance moves and taught us about leading and following and being perfectly in the same mental space as  your partner.

During all these grilled cheese meals nary a vegetable entered my system. I guess Dad was of the Ronald Regan school of nutrition where ketchup counted as a vegetable as did fried onion rings — it was clear that any notion of guilt over our heart clogging meals never entered his mind. And I emphasize this point by remembering that every night we ordered ice cream cones with “jimmies” to go.

We were such regulars at HoJos that sometimes the waitress would not come take our orders. She would just bring the meals. After several years she admitted to us that she kept most of the placemats and had accumulated hundreds of them. She felt certain Dad was the next Leonardo DaVinci and that his sketches would revolutionize the world.

We usually sat at the counter since my brother and I liked to spin on the tall stools. Our favorite seats began to take the shape of our bottoms. Whenever HoJos would make a change to the restaurant it was cause for much evaluation and discussion. New placemat designs were a favorite especially if they contained trivia or pictures of HoJos in different states. Once they came out with a placemat showing all the different fish species that could be found regionally. This lead to our father telling us that if we could memorize the facts about 100 fish then he would take us to Cape Cod. We got our trip to Cape Cod. We were then challenged to learn about sea shells. To this day I can tell you about the chambered nautilus and the left handed whelk.

Every meal ended with the same question being posed to us. And there was no escaping having a good solid answer. Dad would ask: “What have you done today that is creative, constructive, altruistic, and educational. If we had lived the day according to these values he would take a package of gold stars from his pocket, lick one and stick it squarely on our forehead. It was a happy night for me when I would drift off to sleep after touching my forehead to make sure my star was still there.