Gentle Reader: what’s your favorite breakfast mom-and-pop? Share the savor!
There is a local restaurant, in Roseburg, named Casey's. It's been in the news recently because they violated health regulations regarding the coronavirus; they are at the center of the so-called Citizens Against Tyranny—the group that has labelled a couple of senior citizens as “Filthy Traitors”—that has been featured on Daily Kos, along with our local messianic megalomaniac, Dallas Heard.
But I don't want to talk about them today. I’d not mind never speaking of them again. And I’ll never go to Casey’s again.
What I want to talk about is local restaurants, and the joy of breakfast therein. A joy I remember from the Before Times, and something I want to experience again, just two jabs and a box of face masks from now.
I treasure early-morning breakfasts at local mom-and-pop eateries; farmers, short-haul truckers, builders, many of whom know the others and the servers well. I eavesdrop and spy. I savor the banter, the little flirtations and the snippets of conversation, and know that these are repeated lines in some long-long-running story, that began long ago, and will continue when we're gone, brief players.
Biscuits and gravy, with a side of Spoon River.
One of my earliest infatuations was with a long-gone restaurant in downtown Silver City, New Mexico, back in the early 1960s. A buddy of mine and I would come up from White Sands Missile Range a couple of times a year and meet Doc Campbell or one of his ranch hands at dawn at the restaurant, before heading up to the Gila Wilderness on a pack trip (hunting or fishing). In that restaurant were honest-to-god real cowboys, and at age 15, I still kinda wanted to be one, too. The air was redolent of tobacco smoke, leather and horses. Of bacon, and eggs and white-bread toast and pies. Most of all, I remember people-watching and people-listening; and I was hooked. Swagger and yarns, cussedness and tobacco-spit, and fugitive tenderness.
And there are breakfast joints by the sea, in fishing ports. I used to frequent some in Westport, Washington; breakfast an hour before dawn, filling up bellies with what might be chum by noon. The flavors here were salt air and unreasonable hope.
And places near ferries, in Port Townsend or Port Angeles, or the Streamliner Diner on Bainbridge Island, fetching in tourists and travelers going to work, or coming home from a night shift. Deckhands and captains. Salt air, again, and adventure, resignation, or fatigue.
And hangover breakfasts. Kiki’s in El Paso; menudo for the chemically afflicted, who might speak softly of their indiscretions and sorrows and joys. Kiki’s isn’t serving breakfast right now; and I have not been there—or in Texas—in several years. At Kiki’s, I’ve played incognito witness to post-wedding-party breakfasts that demanded menudo and beer; and some pre-funeral breakfasts that required the same.
(Note: I like truck-stop breakfasts, too, but the character is—in my experience—quite different. I used to frequent the I-10 truck stop in El Paso, but I think it’s gone now, subsumed by a chain. I used to love the Creekside Cafe on I5 at Canyonville, Oregon, but it’s gone, too.)
Gentle Reader: please let us all know about a favorite breakfast place or breakfast story of yours.
I’ll list a couple more of my favorites in the comments, too. And, oh: if you have a biscuits and gravy restaurant, lovely: I am disappointed 90% of the time; too little spice, too much paste flour.