“Please can you turn the music down a bit – thankyou”.
Because it was the worst kind of Christmas schmaltz, he ever
heard.
“Yes, I’ll have the turkey special, of course”, as the waitress
hovers above him. This seemed to please her, on a festive
evening, in her roadside diner.
It was festooned with decorative kitsch and staff dressed in
red-an-white; whizzing around between the baubles, flotsam
-an-jetsam, with small lights switching off-an-on.
“Hello”, it was the phone he had with him…
“Who – oh, yeah. You too – christmas is a humbug and new
year’s a blah”! It proceeded on a bit longer…
“Sorry, it’s the canned music, I’m out for the turkey dinner, xmas
cheer, you know — don’t want to cook for myself, not tonight”!
Two more nuisance calls, yet to come – before the quick-serve
dinner appeared, a drink and bread rolls.
He got out his book, as planned – and read about Fitzgerald’s
characters enjoying the ‘roaring Twenties’ – lavish life-styles
and scintillating company.
But he was to be surrounded by local hoi-polloi, assembled at
the corner of Main and Front Street. They happy enough to be
spared cooking and washing dishes at home; sporting winter –
wardrobes and ugly headgear.
He kept looking round for the waitresses, the pretty one, other
side of the room. But a smile flickered across her face as he
focused on one young blushing gal, when she waltzed past him
a few times – studiously watched by the manager and himself.
At least he scored, some recognition, in his own neighborhood,
on a cold/wet/dark winter’s eve…
Time to depart and leave behind the happy revelers, food left-
overs, the spilled drinks; hoping to avoid the place for a while.
There was just too much to take-in, think about, absorb and
survive — just too many things escaped ‘Pandora’s box’.
N.B. — this is very unfair to ‘Denny’s’ and their patrons, in North Vancouver on Xmas eve. But Christmas easily serves as satire and humour, even for the worst versifiers.