senile center surrogate
We don’t really have a Senior Center on the South End. The Diner is sort of a substitute, but you need to at least buy a cup of coffee before you park in a booth or belly up to the counter for the daily gossip specials. The vintage car guyz, the Flatheads, fill the joint Wednesday morning. Tuesdays the Bible study crowd rolls in and most of the regulars roll out. It’s not that they’re religious averse, but like Freddy the Freeloader sez, Sunday’s plenty. Freddy gets his disability checks first of every month. He’s a busted up stump jumper chain choker from the days when logging was man’s work all right but good luck living to be an old man. If he had his druthers, the Diner would be church a-plenty.
The AA used to congregate on Fridays, but Brenda, the Diner’s owner since 1987, finally asked them to find another meeting place. She was losing money on their endless coffee refills and the parking lot out front looked like Pittsburg in Carnegie’s day, the smoke from their unfiltered Camels hanging heavy on air inversions. Plus, she and Big Larry, the grillman, had quit drinking years ago and the new AA members’ determined but usually hopeless drought between benders or DUI’s depressed them mightily. Half them ended up in Bible study anyway so AA didn’t complain very vocally, just moved it on up to the toxic mold blue Camano Center the County rents cheap and never cleans up.
Thursdays now the Zumba crowd pulls in after an hour of aerobics at the nearby South Grange, mostly post-Mom women desperately fighting the midriff bulges and Michelin Man thighs. After a morning workout they replaced the calories lost with Brenda’s Blue Plate Specials, burger baskets with fries and slaw and fountain Coke they could get refills on for free, sort of a zero sum gain. But without the guilt. They earned every calorie!
We been thinking about maybe fundraising for a Senile Center. Lot of work. Lot of money. Something ever happened to the Diner, maybe we’d motivate. Meanwhile, the coffee’s cheap and the gossip’s free. You ask me, we got the best of both worlds. Without the Book of Revelations or the 12 step program.
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