It’s Not Pretty

The family gathering at the recent funeral down in New York City spawned another reunion up in New England.  A gaggle of my siblings gathered and we broke bread at a local diner that had a sign that touted their fried clams and ice cream.  Quite a combination.  But we had neither of these.  I had a Reuben and a cup of coffee and the rest of the crew went up and down the menu.  Somebody even got the pot roast and mashed potatoes.  And as we sat there and enjoyed our fare several of us remarked on the virtues of a good local diner and the fact that they seem to have disappeared from some locales where they were formerly ubiquitous.  Brooklyn used to have a ton of Greek diners and you could always get baklava at midnight after a movie or some other outing.  Now they’re all gone, or so it seems.

This being New England, baklava was not on the menu.  But this diner was one of a very few locations within a twenty mile radius that would be open much after 1 am.  And they had very courteous service which is also quite rare nowadays.  One very strange business practice, they’re a cash only establishment.

That’s another reason to hate the Biden administration and the Democrats.  The COVID lockdowns bankrupted so many small businesses including restaurants.  Sure, you can always go to Mickey D’s when you’re coming off a late shift or a date but the local diner was so much more welcoming a sight.  A place where you could order an actual burger and finish with some pie and ice cream.  That’s how I remembered the world back in the day before mega-corporations finished off all the mom-and-pop shops in America.  And sure, there are plenty of good chain restaurants that serve good food and do employ the local kids as wait staff.  But history has some bearing on it.  The place we went to eat has been around for seventy years.  The grandchildren of the original owner run the place.  We’ve been going to it for over thirty years.  Is the food four star?  No.  Is it good.  Plenty good.  Are the prices fair?  All things considered, yes.  The food is fresh.  The silverware is clean and the waitresses are good humored.  What else could you want?

I know that Donald Trump has an enormous to-do list on his plate.  He’s got a raft of executive orders a mile long and he’s battling everyone from the presidents of Denmark and Panama, to the deep state, to that dopey lesbian bishop in Washington.  But if he needs another item to add to his list, I’d say he should figure out a way to boost small businesses.  The billionaire class has beaten the snot out of small and even not so small businesses over the course of the last thirty years.  Amazon alone has killed off the downtown retail district of every city and town in the country.  And with it has gone any hope of ever meeting up with your neighbors.  Probably grocery shopping is the last gasp of that.  And even there Amazon is doing its darndest to conquer all.  I know I must sound like a Luddite but I think anti-monopoly laws are there for a reason.

And if there’s no way back then something fundamental has to be done to force people in the same locale; town or neighborhood, to spend some time together talking to each other about the details of their community; their kids’ schools, the trials and tribulations of their police force and their fire dept. and all the pot holes that the road department hasn’t fixed and all the other things that need attention.  The problem is we’re all too busy or too lazy or too anti-social.  But people are going to have to start solving these problems.  If we leave all of this to the “experts” they are going to tell us how to live and we really won’t like the rules they come up with.  In fact, we’re already there.  It’s time people woke up and looked around at the default setting of the New America.  It’s not pretty.