Presto Lunch

Just tiles on a sidewalk and now even they are gone. An oddity. More joke than truth, we jumped on them as children and opened sasame’d their name. “Presto, Lunch!”. Tiles. Like bathhouses or something Greek or Roman or special. Marker. Someone thought it out. Permanence. Not just a Diner. Hope. Ambitions. Dreams. Opened to the public. Proof positive in cement of staying power and good food. Presto Lunch. Just off the Boardwalk itself. Right around the corner from the movie house. Feed the crowd before. Feed them after. Feed them well. Feed them for as long as you can and then your children will feed them and you will be the one that made it happen. Then their children will carry that forward and their children too. Generations from now, they will know you. That first signed dollar bill by the cash register ordered special from Sears. Your first not second hand thing. National. Nothing but the best. Then the tiles.

Art. Craftsmanship. Class. Presto Lunch. Weather any storm. Handle any traffic. This was more than a Diner. It was your Diner. A new life in a new town.

You even hired a waitress. Not even family. You were an entrepreneur. She needed the job. She had the baby coming and all. It was the right thing to do. She was a looker. That helped.

She left after the baby was born. She married that guy Buddy. They came in now and then. Business wasn’t as good as you planned. Maybe a job on the side. Then that was not even enough. Soon, the bills were greater than the receipts. The Cash Register was the first thing to go. Paper and pencil did better…with negative numbers that is. Soon, you have to give it up. It was a big dream anyway. Too big for this town. It was kinda busy in the summer and damn near dead in the winter. Location. Location. Location. Three swings and a miss. The signed dollar went in a box. The box went in a closet. It was sad.

No one saw you cry that night. Standing on those tiles. The ones that felt so good and now felt so dead. No one saw you cry. No one saw you kick them. No one knew you wanted to rip them up. Ashamed. Angry. No one saw. No one would know.

Each time you saw them after that, you wanted to see them less and less. Soon you stopped going there. Soon you stopped talking about Presto Lunch at all. Soon you kinda talked about it but only the good stuff. The eggs that tasted just right. The burgers as good as any in those crap places on the highway. The dinners that were real dinners for real people in a real town. It was more than a Diner. It was your home and you knew the people that came in for coffee and a roll with butter.

You are gone now. The tiles lasted longer than your Diner. The tiles lasted longer than you. The tiles are gone now. So is that waitress you hired that time when you had the new hopes, the shiny cash register, and the signed dollar bill. You are not forgotten though. I remember. That is the Magic of Presto Lunch even though I never went there. You tried. You did your best. That is enough.

I love Diners. Magic places. Good food. I like my eggs over easy and hash browns. I bet your hash browns was awesome.