It was my dream, too. A place of my own, in my alma mater, Middlebury, Vermont. I even had a name for it – a nod to my first wife and the mother of my kids. Katy’s Bean & Boucherie. I pictured it in a fixed-up old clapboard house on the main street in town, with a weathered front porch, a bench swing, a few Adirondack chairs, and a hand-painted sign. Inside you’d be greeted by a plank wooden floor, barrels full of imported coffee beans, and a sandwich counter where you could order the best deli in town on fresh-baked daily ciabatta or baguettes.
That dream never flourished. I went on to a career of words and images. But my fascination with it has followed me across every two-lane highway I have ever traversed. Ask my kids, who accompanied me for years when they were young. “Dad, are we pulling over again?!!”
“Yup.” To this day my eye is drawn to the caved-in walls and the broken glass; the faded sign that speaks to what once was someone’s aspiration. I park the car amidst the weeds and gravel and wander slowly about, waving away the flies and bees, peering through the splintered walls to see what remains.
A place to dine on an empty highway miles from nowhere speaks volumes to what a long ago stranger hoped and dreamed. Was this run-down shack once a bustling stop between distant farms? Did father, wife, sons and daughters man the grill and serve the coffee to the community that once populated the stools? And how did it end? Where did they go? Did even the bank abandon this piece of desolate property, left to sag and crumple in the prairie wind?
There is something innately reassuring about a luncheonette. It never fails to grab me when you roll down a Main Street that has escaped its destiny and discover the local cafe that has managed to survive. Grilled cheese & fries for single digits. Coke glasses on the counter that aren’t retro. Just older, like the people who still live there, hanging on – unbroken by the passage of time, clinging to a memory that makes us long for something halfway to lost.
Always hungry,
Ken Carlton, Editor-in-Chief
This Week’s Cravings.
While Beyondish clusters a heap of local reviews in the towns we call our Pick Cities, we also love to go off the beaten path for that unexpected find.
Prime Rib, Cave Springs, Georgia by Vics_Victuals
Lemon Ricotta Pancakes, Jerome, Arizona by Dan Edwards
Quesadilla, Missoula, Montana by Margaret Pfohl
Smash Double Cheeseburger, Pontiac, Illinois by Ken Carlton