Sambo's
I've been having this persistent memory of going out to breakfast with my mother when I was very young, most likely in the late 1970's. The memory only has so many facets, but it's strong. I can feel the sunlight pouring through the windows-it must have been a nice warm summer day and I can feel that the aroma of the restaurant was so quintessential that it could be the next air freshener from Glade. The smell of hot sun punching through large, wide and tall, plate glass windows and heating up dark brown booths and paneling, orange naugahyde seats mixed with the smell of lots and lots of bad coffee and maple syrup. No doubt the cigarette smoke of my mother and other patrons mixed in. The sounds would have been spoons clinking in cups and cooks slamming plates down in the window, ringing the bell. I remember that I was coloring the kids' menu which was a mask of a tiger's face. I wish I could remember what I ordered- was it pigs in a blanket? Bacon and eggs? I remember that the restaurant was called Sambo's. I typed in Sambo's to the wonderful internet and it was really a real place. They got run out of town when too many people were all - hey that's racist.
It's nice when your questionable memories are confirmed, especially when they're so very lightly shaded but I can't help but think that that that warm morning could never, ever be replicated. Sambo's is closed, my mother is dead, you can't smoke in a restaurant anymore and the paneling and naugahyde are as banned from society as the "racist" tiger theme. I am eternally saddened that I cannot visit the 1970s, the 1960s, whatever is off limits. I am always saddened that I cannot open up my past like a dollhouse and climb in and play inside. I am always aware that the present is roaring by while I pine for the past. And it's simply crazy what your mind chooses to remember while it forgets masses of the rest. It surely wasn't the breakfast that was memorable, and I don't think it was my mother. I think it was the mesmerizing, intoxicating, enveloping warmth of the sun that morning and the orange/yellow brightness of the light. And the smell. The smell of just another busy day in a pancake house.
It's nice when your questionable memories are confirmed, especially when they're so very lightly shaded but I can't help but think that that that warm morning could never, ever be replicated. Sambo's is closed, my mother is dead, you can't smoke in a restaurant anymore and the paneling and naugahyde are as banned from society as the "racist" tiger theme. I am eternally saddened that I cannot visit the 1970s, the 1960s, whatever is off limits. I am always saddened that I cannot open up my past like a dollhouse and climb in and play inside. I am always aware that the present is roaring by while I pine for the past. And it's simply crazy what your mind chooses to remember while it forgets masses of the rest. It surely wasn't the breakfast that was memorable, and I don't think it was my mother. I think it was the mesmerizing, intoxicating, enveloping warmth of the sun that morning and the orange/yellow brightness of the light. And the smell. The smell of just another busy day in a pancake house.