Excerpts from the breakfast notebooks:
"1/20
"Met David & Barb for breakfast Saturday. No, actually, I picked them up for breakfast. They weren't ready, David kept getting distracted by cartoons, Barb moved so slow. Finally we drove off to the Mighty Fine Diner, in Nordeast. Got a bit lost on the way but we found it when we spotted the 7up sign from blocks away [illustration omitted].
"The seats were all full when we stepped in but a couple moved down and suddenly there was room, just enough for the 3 of us. We were between hot & cold -- the heat streaming from the grill and drafts sneaking in through the door. The steam on the glass door was freezing down next to the frame in a mini ice dam running down to the floor mat.
"We sat down in front of the grill and watched the eggs & sausage & hash browns cooking, the cooks moving around (so close and everyone watching -- it was almost too close, as if they couldn't see how closely we were watching them because they were so busy and so often turned away from us). We watched our ticket make its way to the top of the line of tickets clipped to a shelf beside the grill hood. I liked the diner-speak for Barb's order '2 Blues.' I had the #4 and David the #3. ...
"But anyway, we sat by the grill, feeling the radiating heat. When the door wasn't opened for a while it got really warm! The old grill was labeled VULCAN-HART and all the knobs were the shape of hearts. I love that name -- its not the forge of Vulcan, or made by Vulcan -- its the heart of the monster, cut out and set before us. Its power is from its material, not a vessel for heat -- it is elemental heat, it cannot be turned off, only vented to the outside to cool it off. ...
"Watching the great piles of hashbrowns cook I had an idea that they might not be too good ... not in the way I like them - not plump and fluffy, crisp on the edges, these were more stringy and burned/uncooked like they end up so often at home.
"David thought the coffee was very good, but how he could tell I don't know -- he & Barb kept passing the cream & sugar back and forth across me. It was decent coffee and served in a miscellany of mugs."