Breakfast this morning cost me something like $14.00 (w/o a tip). This seemed to me a enormous amount since I could replicate the meal at home for about one tenth that. Last night I had been reading Lauren Bacalls biography, By Myself And Then Some, at a part where she mentioned Chock Full ONuts Date Nut Bread with Cream Cheese and like a Pavlovian dog, I started to salivate. Horn and Hardart also came to mind as well: the magic of the H&H Automat that converted my coins into pie. I dont know that either chain is around anymore, but I do miss them. My first time at an automat was in the early 50s, with my Dad and it was a wonder. Sometimes, when I watch one of those 1930s musicals where the starving chorus girls went to the automat, I kind of wish I was around then just so I could get a piece of pie for a nickel or a dime (assuming I would have had a dime). Anyway, Im sure Im not the only one waxing nostalgically about these chains, at least I hope not. I dont know what happened to breakfasts in America; I really dont understand why pancakes and eggs should cost the equivalent of the national debt or why, in this part of the country, requesting a bagel with cream cheese manages to get stares from everyone. Worst though is that crusty bread, that is to say Italian or French bread is impossible to find; it all tastes the same-gooey, uncooked, raw. But thats another story. I m convinced that all those end times signs that we keep hearing about from evangelicals and others are bullshit. The real end times prophesies, I believe, are things like the disappearance of Horn & Hardart and date nut bread cream cheese sandwiches. These losses, if not indicative or predicators of the end of the world are surely indicators of the end of civilization --and so is a $14.00 breakfast.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 15:34:53 +0000