Mr. Baan’s Bar and
Mookata Noori Pocha
Fikscue Azizam
Jenny Lawson, in her book, “Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things” , writes that sometimes she needs ‘a word that I just made up for words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist.’
With today’s haiku, you might think I am indulging myself with words I had to invent but they didn’t exist.
But you would be wrong.
Today’s haiku is made of names of restaurant’s from the article, “The Restaurant List: Our 50 favorite places in America right now,” in the New York Times.
In the movie, The Natural, baseball player Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford, goes out to dinner with an old coach played by Richard Farnsworth who takes him to an Italian restaurant.
The coach starts eating as says something along the lines of, “… you can’t pronounce it, but it sure does eat good.”
I like that line and how it applies to Italian food (and I always have to ask what was Italian food like before Columbus brought tomatoes back from the new world – there was no saucy pizza before 1492 so maybe that is were Neapolitans got the idea … but I digress ) but I am not sure how it applies to restaurant names.
Noori Pocha?
Fikscue?
Azizam?
You can’t pronounce it but it sure does eat good?
Maybe – but I will know never know as I am pretty sure I will never eat in any of these places.
Growing up in a family with 11 kids and a Dad who liked to eat out, eating out was interesting.
Like my own family when we got to seven kids, we didn’t so much go to a restaurant as much as we invaded it.
There was a cafeteria on the North End of Grand Rapids, Michigan were we lived that my Dad enjoyed named Schenshul’s and when Mom needed a break for Sunday Dinner we would all pile in the car and drive up there after church and pile out of the car.
We drove around in what today is called a Van but we called it bus.
In front it had a drivers sear and a passenger seat with the engine … yes the engine … between the two seats.
It had double doors on the passenger side and the last one in sat on a four legged wooden stool that my Dad would place just behind the front seat.
That was with one kid seating on that engine.
In the summer time that engine block would get HOT so my Dad had a couple of wool army blankets that he would set on top of the engine and you would sit on that.
A little kid in summer, wearing shorts, sitting on itchy wool blankets on top of a motor.
No air conditioning back then either.
Don’t even ask me about seat belts.
That was just the transportation.
I am not sure what folks thought watching us all pile out.
I know what they thought of the bus though.
One time there was dent in a door and for reason known but to my Dad, he covered the dent with a stick-on fluorescent flower.
On a trip somewhere at a stop, me and my brothers were wondering around the parking lot waiting for the rest of the family and we heard these two old guys point out the bus and the flower and said, “Stupid Hippies.”
Oh did we laugh and laugh and couldn’t wait to tell Dad when we all got in the car.
No sure what he thought but he left the flower.
Back to Schenshul’s, one time I remember we came through the doors and someone on the restaurant crew looked up and saw us in the line and yelled out, “IT’S THE HOFFMANS! BREAK OUT THE WHITE MILK.”
There were several layers of ‘rites of passage’ when dining at Shenschul’s.
The age when you got your own tray.
The age when you got to push your own tray.
The age when you to order for yourself.
The age when you got to reach over the edge of the cafeteria line and help yourself to a dessert.
The age when you got to CARRY your own tray to the table. This was a biggie and one that my parents were reluctant to okay as there were many close calls.
I myself don’t remember that I or anyone in my family ever dropped or tipped a tray so everything slid off but we saw it often enough.
The final passage was where you got to sit.
Those folks at Schenshul’s would often pull together tables so we could sit in one long group but just as often my Dad would let us take a cluster of tables and we could sit away from our parents.
To sit with the big kids at Schenshul’s.
That’s when you arrived.
No Haiku For You 