Chick's Diner and The Beginning of The End

Siss always gets up early to do her ablutions and have coffee nuked in the microwave, and since there was no microwave in the room, this means that we got a very early start the next morning. I am no longer a person who sleeps until noon, but I do have my limits as to what time I will rise when on vacation. During the fall and spring semesters, I teach a 7:30 A.M. Jazz Dance class, which means that I rise at five. This is enough penance for all my sins, even if I were still a Catholic, which I most definitely am not. Who wants to be cut from the same cloth as all those pedophile priests?

Once out of the bed, I was forced to admit that this was the very best time of day to begin the assault on Chick's Diner and the "stroll" around Lake Scranton. The heat of the day was still hours away, the air was fresh, and I was armed with several bags of raw nuts-in-the-shell for the wildlife that tends to abound in these early morning hours.

Chick's Diner is an institution among the Lydons who frequent it. "Chick" himself, whose real name is, (or was) Charles, is (or was) the uncle of a man who married into our family. This man is the unlucky father of my detestable cousin who had the misfortune to call me "artsy-fartsy". See how complicated relationships can get in a large family? Anyway, I never even saw Chick in all the years I lived in Scranton and frequented the diner with my father. For all I know, there is (or was) no such person. All I know is that I like the breakfasts there, in the early morning hours before a walk or a run around Lake Scranton. All these things have to be present in order to achieve the desired effect.

In the booth with my sister, I perused the menu. Pancakes or eggs? Toast or biscuits? Honey or jelly? Coffee or tea? Ham, sausage, bacon, or skip the greasy breakfast meat? I ended up asking the waitress for a poached egg, dry wheat toast, hot tea, and tomato juice. Yes, I am thin and I do not apologize. No, I do not really diet, but as a dancer, there are things that I will simply never eat again. I don't miss them. I love the physical freedom of being unfettered by fat layers.

Why is my back as high as a cat's over this? Why do I bring it up now, in the booth at Chick's Diner in Scranton, Pennsylvania? Well, Siss is perennially trying to "lose five pounds before your visit" or "drop a few so I can eat over the holidays", and when we are together, she looks at what I eat and measures it with her eyes. It makes me nuts. She eats doughnuts and whoopie pies and all the goodies of Lancaster County, and I don't think that she understands why I do not. I can't really believe that she equates my avoidance of such things as some kind of anorexia or unhealthy self-deprivation, it is just an attempt to force a sisterly competition akin to dogs butt-sniffing. This being said, I sat in the booth and waited for the Sword of Damocles to fall. I was already thinking of things to say to justify the way I was eating when Siss got around to noticing that I wasn't having butter on my toast or bacon with the egg. She usually remarks on this. It didn't happen this time, but sometimes it does. The problem is that I felt ready to justify myself in order to make the vacation go smoothly. How sick is that!

This scene was like the rumblings of Mt. Saint Helens right before the big blow of May 18, 1980. There were warning signs and ashes in the air, but the status quo had been the status quo for so long that many people thought it would never happen. Then, it blew. Never before had I even thought of altering my own status quo. I was thinking it now, big time! Who was that old guy who had the little resort on Spirit Lake and refused to leave it when the mountain was going to blow? Ah, yes, his name was Harry Truman. I felt just like that guy.

This was the prevailing atmosphere as we left the diner and climbed into Siss' Volvo wagon for the five-minute drive to the lake. Nothing had happened. It was just that forty-odd years of crap that had been piling up was about to blow, but who knew when that would happen or what the trigger would be. The next 'phone call to The Rag? I clutched my peanuts-in-the-shell and slipped easily into enjoyment of the Pocono morning.