Dining Through the Decades in Forgottonia
By - Harry Bulkeley
Walking out of the front door of my office building, if you turn right, there is a Chinese restaurant down the street. Turn left and you find two Mexican restaurants, a Korean restaurant and a bagel shop. Walk to the corner and one way there is a place that makes crepes right in front of you. Up the street the other way is a coffee shop where the baker who used to make made the pastries was from Hungary. That is a pretty diverse selection of food in a small town in Forgottonia.
Fifty or sixty years ago, choices for dining used to be a lot more limited. First of all, folks didn't eat out nearly as much as they do now. Maybe a special event or a homecoming date would spur a trip to a sit-down restaurant but most folks ate supper at home. If you worked, sometimes you had to eat lunch at a diner but other than that, you ate around your own table. "Fancy" in those days was a Swanson's TV dinner on a tray while watching Bonanza.
The bigger towns had "fine dining" establishments which served various kinds of meat- pork, chicken, hamburger steak and, of course, the King of All Meat-Steak! Every meal included a plain lettuce salad (maybe some radishes) with French dressing and a baked potato.
Going out to eat at one of these places meant putting on church clothes (another antiquated concept). When you were a kid, you had to get lessons on how to eat at a fancy place. Sometimes, there was more than one fork. Maybe even two spoons. Which is your butter dish, and which is your water? Your parents would teach you all those things under the watchful eye of a waiter wearing a coat and tie. Pretty la-ti-da fancy.
Many of those places had live music. Harbor Lights, the apex dining experience in Galesburg, featured the accordion stylings of Frankie Gem and the Geminis. In Monmouth, Melings' diners were entertained on piano by Miss Gracie Peterson. Gracie knew everybody because everybody's name was "darling." Macomb had The Red Ox (famous for its "ugly steak") and the Macomb Dining Company, which featured a new-fangled salad bar with a sneeze guard.
The roadhouse was a step down from fine dining. Right at the place where Knox, Warren, and Fulton counties meet were two such joints. The Junction was right on the corner of 116 and 41. Now it's known as Twisted Sister's. Just down the road was (and still is) Club 41. In addition to the usual meats, these places served catfish- fried, of course. And, who could forget that huge stack of onion rings- also fried? (Guaranteed to stay with you all week.) Some of the best places in Fulton County were in the small town of Norris, like Viano's and Joe's Place. On your birthday, the Covered Wagon in Farmington would give you a cupcake with a sparkler (safety glasses not included). Working folks used to eat out at lunch rather than supper. Every town had a diner, and their special, every day, was meatloaf, green beans, mashed potatoes, and gravy.
Elsewhere in this edition, people are talking about "Farm to Table" and "Organic" food. Diners had a different term. "Homemade" was the common claim. The one thing you could count on as really being made from scratch by the owner was pie. Cherry, apple, and strawberry-rhubarb were baked in the kitchen and topped off every meal. 40 years later, a friend still remembers the coconut creme pie at Hilda's Pantry in Lewistown.
There was one exotic dining experience when I was growing up. Susie's Chinese Restaurant in Knoxville featured both kinds of Chinese food- chop suey AND chow mein- plus a fortune cookie for dessert! But, the best thing about Susie's was that he (Susie was a he who was from China) had a board near the front door where he posted any customer's school picture. It wasnt quite footprints in concrete but it sure made a fifth grader feel important.
Something you notice in pictures from back in the day is that very few people were overweight. Even with all the "unhealthy" (by today's standards) food that they ate, they seemed to do a much better job of limiting their portions or something. Whatever it was, it worked. Maybe organic is not the only answer?