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Air Fare

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As part of yesterday’s discussion, tim offered lyrics by Loudon Wainwright III to a song called Plane, Too, from his second album, Album 2.

There was a hipster on the plane
There was a sailor, too
Big business man on the plane
Stewardess, too
I saw a movie on the plane
Grand Canyon, too
Earphone music on the plane
Time magazine, too

Airplane food was on the plane
Airplane coffee, too
Airplane booze was on the plane
Tea and milk was, too

Reclining seats were on the plane
Seatbelts, too
“No Smoking” sign was on the plane
In French and English, too
Hostess button on the plane
Ventilator, too
Vomit bag was on the plane
Oxygen, too

There was a bathroom on the plane
A flushing toilet, too
There was a mirror on the plane
Me, too

Wainwright’s Album 2 was released in 1971. The big airplane news in the early 70’s was the introduction of the still impressive Boeing 747, the first of which was named the Juan T. Trippe (after the Boeing CEO), commissioned in October 1970.

That once proud jet, a marvel in its day, is now an empty hulk, rusting by a roadside in South Korea. I’m not permitted to post a photo of it here but you can see it by following this link to a website called airliners.net, where there is a gallery of photos taken of the same plane in different places all over the world through it’s working life. The aircraft is a superstar, fallen on hard times.

The big concept was to operate the fuselage as a restaurant, thinking that people might find it charming to eat on a plane. But no one who has ever eaten anything on a plane could possibly think it would be fun or worthwhile to climb into an aircraft to receive a meal of any kind. The airlines created a reality too stark to overcome, and this marketing idea flopped.

Though apparently the notion still has some lift in Germany, where this unique dining experience awaits.

Cafe' Restaurant Silbervogel

Please fasten your seatbelt and share your most memorable (for whatever reason) restaurant stories.

99 thoughts on “Air Fare”

  1. June 10 1965, Denver sandwiches at Stub and Herbs for lunch; Sandy and I at the same moment announced “Let’s Get Married” after 8 days of dating. And we did, 6 1/2 weeks later . . . but I could be wrong.
    Can I go back to bed for awhile now?

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  2. My dad completely understood his job as Chief Embarrasser of His Children when I was growing up. On more than one occasion he felt the need to break into song at a restaurant meal with the family; his favorite was “O Sole Mio”. This happened more than once — at lunch at Famous & Barr (now defunct department store in St. Louis), breakfast at IHOP and once at the restaurant at Telemark Lodge in Wisconsin.

    People who met my dad said it explained a lot about me. Although in my role as Chief Embarrasser of the Teenager, I have never sung in a restaurant. Maybe I should learn the words to “O Sole Mio”!

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      1. That’s what I would do…. my father actually knew quite a few of the words. At least I think he did… it sounded like he was singing Italian. Knowing my dad, he probably made it a point at some time in his life to learn the words.

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    2. See below, Sherrilee – honest to God, a waiter would come around at this little restaurant singing O Sole Mio as he served…

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    3. Haha, love the singing! One of my cousins (big guy, well over 6′ tall) will jump up and down in the middle of a meal to “pack it down.” Wherever he is, he’ll stand up and jump, haha.

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  3. Rise and Shine Babooners:

    July, 2009 in Roma, Italia, family members and I stood outside the Osteria Romano in a raging lightening, thunder, and rainstorm with lightening striking way too close for my taste. The waiters there don’t speak English, but you are supposed to call for a reservation, which we did. But no one could understand each other. So 9 of us show up for supper too early, before they are open. We got drenched as we huddled under umbrellas and under their eaves as they stood there looking at us through the window. A kind waiter finally had mercy on us and let us in, but we had to wait for another hour. However, they provided us with bread and wine while waiting.

    The food was fabulous. We were wet fading to damp as we ate. The pictures of each other we took huddled out of the rain are great. We all got a wonderful adventure to tell everyone else about.

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    1. stupido americanos eh. prego prego!
      give me wine and bread for an hour and i don;t need dinner any more.
      wet fading to damp is a marvelous phrase.

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      1. I’m with you tim. Wine and bread for an hour sounds great, and after that any food they brought out would look fabulous to me.

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  4. i can remember being in china and traveling with a couple of other folks form the company i ws working with at the time and we were about a week into the trip. the group ws accustomed to seeing odd dishes like the fish with heads on and the eyeballs are considered a delicacy, and different menu items like snake and then we came to a local spot for lunch is a working class town and it felt kind of like eating at the cozy corner cafe in any town it the midwest. checkered table cloths, formica tables with chrome 1960s chairs, it was a gray day and two complete walls were windows looking out at the street and parking lot. off to the side of the parking lot almost out of view was a series of wooden boxes stacked up and the woman i ws sitting next to was interested in the boxes, she saw soe movemnet and went to look and saw dogs and cats and other animals and was cooing and saying oh pretty kitty and look at the cute little dog. the waiter came over to get her away form the window and had our host figure out to explain to her that was the menu and people were bothered be her cooing over their lunch chioces. her face changed from a big animals lovers smile to a shocked realization that is indeed the way the world works. she cried and left the room and came back later but skipped lunch that day. i explained tht wa sa bit more graphic illustration than i would normally visualize but in essence the same thing i see every time i look at a menu featuring the beef , fish and chicken sections, it hit me that way when i was 16 and is still here.
    i have had some great food on planes, the best was on a first class ticket from paris to minneapolis in one of those round chairs that open to abed with movies and hedphones and a beautiful flight attendant who kept bringing me wine and chocolate and cognac and a big smile and wonderful french vegetarian entrees and appitizers. on a us plane you get a roll and a piece of something to put in it. if i am lucky someone though to put cheese in there so i can enjoy it a salad that is the sorriest excuse for a salad imagianble and a piece of chocolate cake that would make a good door stop. maybe its good that the meals stopped. i remember leo buscaglias (love) telling about the time they took his mom to hawaii and it was on one of those tickets where it was a super saver and there was no food included in the service. you could bring your own but none would be provided, leo’s mom was a wonderful cook and she thought that was too long a trip to go without food so she prepared a beautiful lemon chicken and of course an antipasto salad some bread and and a little canolli, they opened the basket during the flight when the other people were served and they were not and had the people in first class salavating. he said his mama felt bad they didn’t have enough to share,
    good weekend all. i found out yesterday that the only time my son and i can go visit grand forks for his college deal is saturday, i let him have it with both barrels for not setting it up in advance and he didn’t understand my frustration at going on short notice. i told him i had a book club i didnt want to miss and he looked at me pitifully like i should try to improve the quality of my life a little bit… they just don’t get it at age 18 do they? sorry bevin book club partners, pick a good one for february, i can host in ep if thats not too far out of the central range we have done so far.

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    1. Tim, both of my daughters’ families are vegetarian. I enjoy vegetarian food and also eat meat, but only small servings of meat. Through my work in sustainable agriculture I have become a supporter farming systems that I think are more sustainable than conventional farming systems, and which include meat production.

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      1. i don’t remember the book but its premise was that you feed beef 1000 pounds of grain to come out with 2oo pounds of meat.and nutritionally speaking the grain fed to the cattle would have been more effectively produced from a nutritionally measure were it fed directly to the people instead.

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      2. In sustainable agriculture grass fed beef is often prefered with little or no feeding of grain. I just had an error in posting and there be an accidental double posting of this message.

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    3. The book might have been Diet for a Small Planet, Francis Moore Lappe…

      We’ll miss you Saturday, tim, but have a good visit with your son.

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    4. Speaking of killing dogs & cats…….I was simply appalled to see a video
      stream of Palin taking dead aim at a magnificent, 8-point moose then
      pulling the trigger (after which she danced in glee). I guess a worse
      video of this woman was flying over a wolf in a helicoptor and shooting it at close range. Oh – and then there was the infamous political commercial she made with huge turkeys being slaughtered a few feet behind her in plain view.
      All of this makes me feel like shooting her or, perhaps, never eating living creatures again.

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      5. Jacque, you said something about those mean 8th grade girls awhile ago and it has really stuck with me (junior high was not a pretty place to be for me in general).

        Told my solidly Republican parents at Thanksgiving about the mean 8th grade girls trying to run the country, and they thought it was a pretty apt reading (and darn funny too).

        Hope springs eternal.

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  5. Good morning and good dining memories to all,

    I don’t know where to start. I have a lot of special memories of meals in restaurants. I think I should start with a meal I had in Azerbaijan when I did volunteer agricultural work there.

    A meal was given in my honor in a town in a rural area of Azerbaijan arranged by an Azeri man would was very helpful and worked for the non-profit group that paid for my travel. A man who ran a tomato processing plant, some his staff, and some local officials were there.

    They told me one of the staff from the tomato plant wanted to tell me something. This was not long after the Twin Towers attack on 9/11. The man from the tomato plant told me in a very sincere manner that he and the people of his country, who are almost all Muslim, felt very bad about the attack on the Twin Towers.

    The meal was also memorable for the very good food which I enjoyed many places in Azerbaijan, including crusty bread from small roadside tandora bakeries, herbs, vegetables, grilled chicken and grilled sturgeon with pomegranate sauce. Also, usually some vodka.

    I had some other memorable meals on other agricultural volunteer trips and, of course, some very memorable family meals. I will leave these stories for later today or another day.

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      1. The bread made in a tandora was new to me and extremely good. You can get it here in Indian restaurants but it is not as good as the bread from the bakeries set up out-of-doors along roads in Azerbaijan. They bake in big clay pots over a fire of wood coals.

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  6. When our son was about 18 months old we were on vacation in the UP in Michigan, and stopped to eat at at a small restaurant in a small town. We were the only customers in the place. Our son wasn’t too interested in sitting and was walking around investigating his surroundings. I thought we were keeping a pretty good eye on him when I heard the waitress scream. Our son had wandered into the kitchen and grabbed a broom and was walking around with it. Since he was so short, all she saw was this broom handle marching across the kitchen, sort of like the ones in Fantasia. She said she thought for a moment the kitchen was haunted.

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    2. LOL, Renee — when Joel had just learned to walk, we went to the (small but crowded) Hillside Fish House across the river from Winona, and he toddled around and greeted every table in the place. Luckily he didn’t get into the kitchen!

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  7. One Sunday about 10 years ago we were driving my mother back to Brookings SD from Kato and took a southern route so she could see again some of the places of her childhood. We ended up in Fulda, a rather isolated town for southern MN, about 12:30 and found a local mom and pop restaurant, whose only identification on the outside was CAFE. The moment we walked in it was a small-town culutral experience that should have been bottled and sold in joke shops. It had four calendars on the wall, so by Charles Karault, it was going to have good food. We clearly had taken someone’s table and everyone was edgy about it you could tell, but it was the only table that worked for my rather immobile mother. However, no one ever came in after we did. Everyone of the 7-8 groups, all in church clothes, stared at us for the next 10 minutes. We ordered the roast beef special for less than $5. Big plate of over-cooked but still delicious roast beef, made from scratch mashed potatoes, wonderul gravy, two home-made hot biscuits, and a soup bowl full of peas. Desert, part of the meal, was piece of chocolate cake about 3 inches square and two inches thick with thick wonderful icing.
    The only voice we heard the whole time was the waitress. Everyone else whispered while sneaking peeks at us. We did not dare look at each other or we would laugh. I wanted to do the undertaker thing in “Huck Finn” and announce something like “Well, Mother, we will run right out to the ‘Johnsons’ right after this meal.” Then they could figure out which Johnson after we left, and there had to be a Johnson family somewhere.
    But my wife topped that lame idea. As we left she gushed in a loud voice about how wonderful the food was to the waitress and the cook, who was out in open view. They had no idea how to deal with it; everyone in the place, who all stayed until we were done despite having lonmg finished their roast beef dinners, was embarrassed.

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    2. great story clyde, had that happen in nebraska once when i was a long haired hippy and th cowboys didn’t know what to make of us. but hippies was enough of an excuse to justify odd behavior, stopping into the local cafe would not be the same type of expected oddball behavior. i’ll bet thats the way they’ve always been there.

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  8. Probably the worst dining experience I’ve had was when a friend and I were driving down to Iowa City for the I-Con, the science fiction convention. We stopped for lunch in Waterloo, and spotted a Serbian restaurant. “Aha,” said we, “we’ve never had Serbian food. Wonder what it’s like?” Well, the menu was full of descriptions like “Special Serbian meal” or “Serbian special”, not saying what was actually going to be on the plates. There was one waiter, who was occupying himself filling a glass with water, carrying it to a table, then going back to the station for another glass to fill. When my friend started asking what the different dishes were, he informed us that he was too busy to stand there and tell us what was on the menu, and walked away to fill more water glasses one at a time. Finally she ordered at random something that turned out to be a mediocre sausage. I was vegetarian, not vegan, at the time, so I got fried eggs. The bread was very good, actually, but the rest of the meal was miserable, and we left without tipping. On our way back, on the other hand, we went a little further down the street and found the Mexican grocery store, which had a tiny restaurant in the back. There was a huge TV playing the Spanish-language cable channel and no Caucasians except us, but that staff were perfectly friendly and helpful, and the food was terrific (I had a really excellent chile rellenos). My friend reported that the Serbian restaurant was out of business by the next I-Con, and I have no idea how it had survived even six weeks, unless it was a front for the Serbian Mob!

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    1. No, I lie, being good passive Minnesotans we left a very small tip and then talked for several miles about how he really didn’t deserve it. We tipped the Mexican restaurant well, of course, we were so grateful to them just for existing.

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      1. Once, a long time ago when it was in Milwaukee. It’s still the biggest con I’ve been to. I remember a magnificent dragon gown that won Best of Show at the Masquerade, having dinner at a pizza place (Green Mill, maybe?) with a passel of Klingons, and the Castle Falkenstein ball my friends ran, my first and only LARP (if you don’t count my time in the Society for Creative Anachronism ;-)). I don’t care to game with strangers so I didn’t go a second time, but it was one heckuva experience.

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      3. CG – we went to a few gatherings of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) in Winona – do you mean you only went to one SCA meeting, and if so, where? We went to a teriffic Christmas potluck once, with strangely spiced meat, middle ages style, of course.

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  9. When I did workshops around MN, I would tell them I had taught in Two Harbors for 24 years. Very often people would come up at break or lunch and ask me what was that German waitress in Millers Cafe.

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  10. I have also had the quintessential small town cafe experience more than once. A favorite one though was a stop made with a couple of friends in Cosmos, MN. We had headed west in search of a particular shop – which was its own experience. I had been directed there to get elk hide as it was a store known for its unusual leathers and animal hides…little did I know I was dragging one of my more devout vegetarian friends into a truly amazing display of wildlife taxidermy (cougars, bears, wolf, birds of prey – if it lives in the northern states in the wild it was stuffed and mounted and in the front room of the shop). We made our purchase and headed up the street the cafe; the sort of cafe marked by a 20-year-old soda sign (might have been 7-Up), and had at least three outdated calendars hanging on the wood paneled walls. There was one customer – an older fellow in engineer striped overalls and a seed cap – sitting at the counter, very clearly in from the fields for the late morning bit of “a little lunch” (not to be confused with “dinner” which happens later, nor “supper” which is the evening meal). There was one person working in the diner – and he operated as cook, server and everything else. The farmer/customer was a regular, and what little conversation there was between them centered mostly on the tractor pull happening that weekend in the next town over, and at that it was a lot of partial sentences and single syllable responses (yep. you? ya. so…). We mostly ate in silence (so we could listen – these guys were dyed-in-the-wool Minnesotans – kinda like Clyde’s diner minus the whispering), except when we got the giggles because our cook/server/everything else guy poured coffee into one friend’s tea (he had seemed perplexed by the tea order, even though it was an option on his menu – though heaven knows how old the Lipton tea bag was that he produced). On our drive home we decided that the cafe owner had probably opened up the place with his wife (and high school sweetheart), with him cooking and her working the dining room (and doing the decorating), and that had worked well for the 30-40+ years or so that they were together. She had since taken ill (or possibly passed on), so now he worked the place by himself (this also explained why the calendars were all outdated, Wife replaced those and he hadn’t gotten around to it since she took sick). The farmer was also part of the high school gang, and possibly the two had left town together when they were in the service (whether they were drafted or not, we couldn’t decide). Farmer was probably a bachelor and had gotten used to coming into town for his daytime meals, and it was a ritual for both – conversation, order, the whole bit. We suspected that Farmer was going to the tractor pull in his best flannel plaid (and possibly cleanest boots) to see if this time he might find someone to share the quiet evenings with and make the farm house more cozy at night. Cafe Guy might go along as a wing man, but his heart was still with the woman who worked the cafe with him (wherever she was – nursing home or the great beyond). The food was adequate, if a bit greasy, but our created back story was worth the stop.

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    2. I know what you are talking about Anna. I have had many lunches in local cafes in small towns and know some of the people who eat in these places. The food isn’t usually too good and I don’t share a lot of interests with some of the people that eat in these places. There is at least one positive aspect to them, I think, they are community places which bring people together in good ways at times. Unfortunately, many small towns no longer have cafes.

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      1. There’s a little cafe in the small town near me that is the exception that proves the rule – the owner is a great cook. Probably my favorite meal is her home-made soup, which you can get with a thick slab of fresh home-made bread. Yum!

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      2. I spent 50 years traveling small roads in pheasant country, all over Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana and Nebraska. Small town cafes can be so wonderful. I love the ones with Coca-Cola signs from the 1940s and old high school football schedules, but above all you gotta love the ones with glass displays of the pies baked early that morning, and you could get fat just looking at them.

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  11. The summer I moved to San Francisco, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I don’t have one particular restaurant meal that stands out as The One — there were several that were spectacular in my memory — the Bratskellar in Ghiradelli Square where you could get the most delicious hamburger on a dark rye with blue cheese dressing; tiny O Sole Mio on Chestnut St. where I discovered canneloni, and atmosphere — the little chianti bottles hanging from a gridwork of (fake) grapevines above; Tia Marguerita where I found out Mexican food is more than tacos, discovered chili rellenos; the entire Fishermen’s Wharf seafood scene; a little Russian hole in the wall on Clement… I imagine I’ve had food that was as good or better since then — I think it was the element of my taste buds awakening that made them so memorable.

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  12. Morning–
    Boy I don’t have anything as exotic as some of you…
    Was on my Honeymoon in Seattle that I first had a plain toasted bagel. And that was just a hotel room service bagel so while the ‘quality’ of the bagel would be disputable, it was the beginning of bagels for us. That same trip, in a little store in the woods, we found ‘Cheddar and Sour Cream potato chips’. Yummy!
    Former restaurant here called ‘Sandy Point’ on Lake Zumbro had the best french fries and garlic bread that I’ve ever had; still trying to find a place w/ garlic bread that good. Thin, crispy, melt in your mouth…
    Love the small town cafe’s! Food (usually) plus the atmosphere…

    Take care out there—
    Fa la la la la and all that…

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    1. I said above that small town cafe food is usually not too good. I was exaggerating. I have had some good food in these cafes, but not always.

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  13. One more for me… as I have many of these. I have been lucky enough to visit Africa twice. One the second trip, we spent time doing safari camps near Krueger National Park in South Africa. All the meals are outside, sometimes under a tent, but usually just out on a desk or terrace or boma. On our second day, it was a gorgeous buffet on a desk many feet off the ground. We had seen the pretty vervet monkies all over the camp and you could see a few of them in the trees that surrounded the deck. Well, it’s a funny thing… if you can see monkies while you’re eating, they can see YOU while you’re eating! And they are FAST. During the meal, several items were snatched from tables; if you pushed your bread plate too far to one side or if you got up to get more coffee or something, they swooped in quick. I only lost a roll, but my client lost a fairly large piece of grilled chicken!

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  14. My husband suggested that I relate the sorry tale of the time we had a group of grad school friends over for a Christmas buffet. Everything turned out quite good except for something called a Chartreuse of Winter Vegtables. He chose the recipe and made it. It called for a gently poached whole head of cabbage. After it was cooled, it had to be taken apart leaf by leaf, and then reconctructed, leaf by leaf, around a mixture of pureed turnips and parsnips. The puree was flavored with nutmeg. My husband has very poor manual dextrity and is left handed and somewhat OCD. He worked for hours decontructing and reconstructing that stupid head of cabbage. The filling tasted horrible. We were glad it wasn’t the only thing on our menu.

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      1. As the mother of a southpaw (and therefore a “carrier”) I will say that they are usually quite clever and creative, but dextrous they are not. 😉

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  15. VERY OT: I put a sign or two up saying “Free Office Items” and set the items by my office door into the round floor lobby. My booss told me to get rid of everything I could so they had the least possible to haul to St. Cloud. Almost everyone who stops is incredulous that they are free. Now if I made it a “jumble sale,” as the British call it (love that term) and put prices on things, no one would have stopped.
    I had a small fireproof safe out, but early this morning two very rough guys, who come here often on early mornings I assume for a support group upstairs, stood whispering and pointing a the safe. Finally they very quietly asked me if it was free. I said yes. They kept asking and finally took it. I am not sure I want to know what they were planning to keep in it.
    I have many plants across my front windows. I also had up a sign singing “anyone want the plants.” Two nice and charming college girls crept silently in and asked very shyly, if they could really have the plants. I told them they could have all they wanted. They

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    1. Oops finger problems. ERRRRGHH!! Let me finish that:
      I have many plants across my front windows. I also had up a sign saying “anyone want the plants.” Two nice and charming college girls crept silently in and asked very shyly, if they could really have the plants. I told them they could have all they wanted. They took all but three and told me excitedly they had wanted pants in their apartment but their mothers had told them it was foolish to waste the money.

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      6. Don’t feel bad, Clyde. “Boos” is easily done; you just change the letter that is doubled. Yesterday I read a story from the Associated Press that was so badly written I hope it embarrasses somebody into hiring better editors. I mean, if the AP can screw up, you have a right to a typo or two. This story was about how four deer were in somebody’s backyard and the family’s dogs went after them. The deer stomped the dogs pretty badly, and then the buck impaled one with his anglers!

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  16. When I was in high school, our choir was invited to sing at the International Advent Sing in Vienna, Austria. While we were in Austria, one of our dinners was at a Heurigen Restaurant in the wine village of Gumpoldskirchen. It was fantastic! The meal was bratwurst and sauerkraut (I’m sure there was more, but that’s what I remember most, haha) and we were seated picnic table-like with long benches and heavy tables. I remember I was seated in the “cellar” with my friends. A violinist and an accordionist were going from table to table playing music. They happened to start playing “Tradition” from The Fiddler on the Roof and everybody burst into cheers. See, we had just put that musical on the weekend before we left…and most of the choir was in the show in some capacity 🙂 We even had Tevya there to sing it, haha. It was great! I’m sure everybody not connected with the choir were wondering why we had all started singing and dancing to this song. Kids were standing on their benches so they could see better. After eating, we were walking back to the buses when we came across two other choirs going to the same restaurant. We had an impromptu “sing-off,” kind of showing off, but more just for the enjoyment of singing for others. We all sang Silent Night together to finish. Whenever I’m feeling nostalgic, I watch the video that was made of our trip and relive that night. I think I’ll have to watch that tonight 🙂

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  17. Way back when, we went nearly every summer weekend with a motorcycle “gang” (mostly band members, friends, and groupies of a local band) on Sunday rides to watch hill cimbs and motocross events. One time on the way home we stopped at a restaurant in Pease MN where the good townfolk were enjoying a peaceful Sunday dinner. The hostess blanched when she saw our motley crew of 15 or 20 bikers, ushered us swiftly into a private room in the back of the restaurant, and pulled a curtain to protect the rest of the customers. The local patrons craned their necks and nudged the curtain to see what I guess they assumed was a bunch of Hell’s Angels. I have to admit, we got a tiny bit rowdy just so they’d have a tale to tell. To show just how rowdy we were, one of the “pranks” we played was when the waitress asked if we wanted soup or juice with our dinner some of us countered with “Yes, super juice would be great.” Ah, the good old days . . .

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    1. This reminds me of a Northern Exposure episode where Ruth Ann was riding with bikers… They all had to be home kind of early though to get the kids in bed… 🙂

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  18. Did anyone ever eat in the Norske Nook in Osseo, WI? Waht a great place! The pies were wonderful. The retired owner has a cookbook that is a delight to read.

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    1. Teenager and I have eaten several times at the Norske Nook in Hayward, which is the sister-restaurant, I believe. Teenager loves the Lefse wraps.

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      6. What good news! I had no idea they had opened again. We haven’t been back in that area of the country for 5 years of so. Thanks for the update.

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      7. One of our memorable restaurant experiences was there and I almost entered it this morning. Really. Our son, my wife and I went there the Sat. before Mother’s Day about 12 years ago and did the whole full meal. Took about 2 1/2 hours, and ran a very high price, but was worth every penny.

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  19. Such nice memories from everyone. I was thinking I didn’t have a memorable meal to compare with yours, and then I remembered my wedding.

    My father agreed to pay for lodging and a meal at the famous Lowell Inn in Stillwater on the evening of my wedding. He knew we would be tired and not safe to drive a long distance, so sending the two of us to Stillwater was a brilliant stroke. The ceremony was at noon and we had a reception that ran for several hours in the afternoon. Even when you are young, all that socializing and dancing and conversation is tiring.

    Our meal was the signature Swiss fondue menu served in the Matterhorn Room. The menu is basically set, although you have some choices within the various courses. This might be the most famous set menu of all restaurants and inns in Minnesota. I think they haven’t changed it significantly in 40 years. It is a fairly posh deal, with great food and candlelight.

    The Lowell Inn must have been busy that night in September. They plopped a bottle of sherry on our table and didn’t come back for nearly an hour, which was good because the bottle was empty by that time. Then our waiter (a Greek pretending to be Swiss) brought out the fondue course (with escargot) and a bottle of white wine. Once again, we were left alone for a long time to talk about the crazy day and enjoy the wine. Then it was time for the salad course, and it came with its own bottle of wine. That was followed by a meat course–I might have ordered duck–that came with its own bottle of wine. Desert was “Grapes Devonshire.”

    We certainly appreciated my father’s consideration, especially appreciating the fact we didn’t have to drive anywhere that night. Wedding nights are all famous for one thing, but ours was a little different. Exhaustion and wine combined to have a powerful effect on us. My clearest memory–and it wasn’t all that clear–was the wrestling match I had with a floor lamp next to our bed. I’m not sure who won; we both ended up on the floor.

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    1. One of my clearest memories from the post-reception portion of my wedding night was taking off my shoes and discovering just how swollen my feet were after all of that standing…

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    2. Ah yes… our wedding night memory is being exhausted and the string on my lovely wife’s slip is tied in a knot… and me trying to cut it off her.
      It was funny then even as tired as we were…

      Dale, thanks once again for coming up with these fun questions!

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