You've seen 'em in every town. It's the kind of restaurant where neither the decor nor the menu has changed since 1945 or even 1935. If you scraped the residue off the floors or looked on the underside of the tables, you would find trace remains of every toxic substance known to science, and some not yet identified.

The menu is based on the following:

MEAT AND POTATOES. Eggs and bacon. Dairy products (CHEESE on virtually everything). Sugar-laden desserts. Coffee that would rot the guts out of a gila monster. Sugar, Salt, Pepper and Ketchup. MORE MEAT AND POTATOES.

Did I mention meat and potatoes???

Oh yes, here and there you might find a pathetic shred of some overcooked vegetable or some canned fruit, hiding amongst the culinary delights...

This place has never heard of: the New Age, vegetarianism, macrobiotics, food combining, wholistic medicine, meditation, whole wheat anything, brown rice, or nut butter. Or rice milk. Or soy anything.

In this place, the soul is something found on the bottom of your shoes...along with a wad of gum from yesterday's careless waitress.

And then there's the clientele...they are almost universally elderly or middle-aged, wearing nondescript, rumpled clothing. Their faces are furrowed and lined with care from too many years on a lean income, too many cigarettes, too many of life's small disappointments, and too little real satisfaction. They are essentially good people, the salt of the Earth you might say, but time has worn them down. Their dreams were long ago traded in for a Readers Digest subscription and a cable TV contract. They have been coming to this restaurant so long that they could probably find it asleep and blindfolded.

Nothing ever really changes there, it just deteriorates.

You've probably seen Dagwood at the front counter on a regular basis. It's where he always goes for lunch.

I ate in such a place this morning...eggs, bacon, homefries and toast. I committed a subversive act and drank tea instead of coffee, though.

And you know what? For a greasy spoon it was actually pretty good. And the waitress, bless her heart, was entirely helpful and courteous.

Have you got a greasy spoon or two in your town? No town is complete without one.

- LH