Early Bird Special

Every time I see the sign "early bird special," it conjures up a picture of doddering oldsters gumming their comfort food dinners while it is still light out. Very funny, until it came to this: a dinner so early-birdy that it was really lunch.

Real retro lunch, too. None of your hipster-retro grilled pork belly or caramelized bacon.  Nyuh-uh. This was the real deal. And it was delicious.

FIsh cake, baked beans, cole slaw, corn bread.

When I was a kid, my family almost never went to restaurants.  Once a summer we went to the Fox Lounge for the open face steak sandwich.  A huge grilled strip steak lolling atop two thin slices of toast which pretty much dissolved in the meat juice, that sandwich was as far from our usual sandwich fare of baloney on white bread as it could be. The platter was completed with an avalanche of french fries, cooked in beef fat, of course, because this was in the days before the cholesterol police took the fun out of fries.

I'm sure that once the early bird families who came only to chow down on steaks packed it in for the night, hauling greasy kids and doggie bags full of meat, the Fox Lounge showed it's true neon-beer-sign colors and became a  rowdy road house with drinkin', dancin', and carryin' on aplenty.

The place I had lunch today, The Sagamore Inn in Sandwich, Massachusetts reminds me of the old Fox Lounge, only much, much cleaner. It's a wonderful family run restaurant serving seafood, Italian food, and Shirley's Famous Pot Roast. The most modern thing on the menu is a Classic Caesar Salad. In the summer you can get breakfast, too.

What really brings the Fox Lounge to mind is the old sign just outside the bar area:

I'm surprised it doesn't read "NO DANCING per order of the Sandwich Police Dept." I'm sure it had something to do with licensing or blue laws, but can't you just see a hussy in a polka dot dress being asked to leave the premises on account of a little butt-shimmying? Or a wise guy in a zoot suit being shown the door for toe-tapping? 

You know why I like that sign so much, and the wood paneled walls and booths, and the painted tin ceiling?  They date from the time when my parents were young. It's as though my own memory has extended back before I was born, and that doesn't make me feel old at all.  It makes me feel young. 

But not so young that I would even think about violating the atmosphere by DANCING. 

Excuse me, but I think there's a doggie bag calling my name.