Plethora of Personas

Lines convene in an irregular fashion through large-grained wooden doorways, gently meeting, never brushing. Names are taken, places are made. The wooden floors fail to creak due to their recently replaced state, despite the pseudo-aged look achieved by liberal varnish. The congregation is compounded by the billing and waiting areas’ proximity, a mere 2 feet across. Names are called as people mill into a large, low ceilinged area with saws on the walls, axes on some, and demonstrations of logging prowess on a television screen. This building is the Petaluma branch of Lumberjacks Restaurant, so recently opened, the signs of previous tenants are visible in obscure corners; awards from previous tenants and open hour window markings hide in plain sight from average clients.

Large bodied people stand lazily by the cash register, waiting to pay bills. All declaring the unanimous decision that bluejeans are superior to all else. As they scuffle across the floor, a fine leather shoe is all but a fable, boots and running shoes clobber the floors with the weight of bellies. All hands are stationed in pockets as time meanders. Leaving these people, a slow labored walk unveils tables destined for great quantities of food. The tables are not just full of all types of foods, but of all types of people. It appears no group has not entered the sanctuary of this eatery, sampled its flavors, and never come back. All of the clientele—the tall and the short, the young and the old, the loud and the quiet—all partake.

Young families spar at each other, trading thoughts as fast as favorite sports teams in playoffs. Clanking forks attesting to rapid changes from food to talk. The television holds great interest. The young hold great interest. The parents hold great interest. The food holds great interest right before and after a spill. Then, as soon as the mess abates, the television holds great interest again. Interests fly around the room at an inhuman rate, so deluged by information, so agog with knowledge that eyes cannot rest. Family members focus on the young, then the parents, the food, outside, inside, waiters, bus boys, the sound of a possible fly, the television. Eyes move more than forks, and forks move more than the lips, and the mouth more than the legs, and the feet beat at an incessant rapid movement for no reason other than energy consumption.

Young couples safeguard their young children, babies only old enough to finally permit leaving the house. Every bite, morsel eaten, or half second, a parent directs a watchful glance at the child. No more than a slight peep is made before attention is given. Mother and father look down the table to check if the baby is doing well. Mother looks up, the father eats, the father eats, the mother looks up. The guard changes through the meal, always a person stationed to help.

The old peek into their food tentatively like children looking for a hermit crab; they slowly dissect their food and eat meagerly. Forks rise as slow as cranes and with the precision of such, barely making the arduous journey to the mouth. Wrinkles split in apprehension of pronged utensils, making slow openings; avoiding contact, the fork passes over the lips and into the mouth. Eyes are fixed at plates or aged companions, gazes only shifted by the greatest of outside merits. Silence is golden. Eating takes a great deal of thought: all that could go wrong is averted by caution. The fallacy of overeating is avoided by caution. Happiness is measured by caution.

Careful of their diets, wizened couples with steel wool hair measure salt with their hands, making sure not to overload their sodium adverse bodies. As the elderly patrons fill the seats, they produce a myriad of lensed articles to make menus intelligible. The slow scanning of rows upon rows of possible food types produces an eventual choice to be savored ad nauseam. After a thorough meal, a scrutinizing eye turns on bills, paper traced by pen for accuracy. The pen skims the paper an infinitesimally small height above the paper, the ballpoint skimming gracefully and serenely. The thick grip an unaccustomed part of restaurant visitation in the age of rubberized hand holds and branded pens. Scanning between the lines, every margin is made clear, every blurred line lucid. Not a wafer thin appetizer escapes the ever efficiently economical mind of an inured consumer.

Between the age gap in clientele, the differences spill unnoticed; the elderly are grey, the young are a vibrant spectrum; the old are methodical, the young impulsive and decisive; the elderly measure carefully, the young are eagerly quick; the elderly represent their era, the young, all that does not remember it.

In a day of target marketing, the restaurant holds firm; patrons spilling over from previous decades cling to life and forks with fingertips. New arrivals, young families fresh on the hunt for restaurants unwittingly appear in a merely refaced building, with the same people, but more axes. The surge of humanity convenes in a crowded, smell-lacking building to eat meat in pound denominations, mix and mingle, but never brush. Whether child, whether parent, whether grandparent—the brushing cultures meet at one place, at one time, for the same reason.

-Brett H.