Betty's Sunnyside Cafe

                                                               
There’s a place up Saratoga way
tucked just north of the grey & pink houses
where east facing windows
look bleakly to the lake,
the shoreline sprinkled with the skiffs of summertime.

Drive past once white, long haired cows,

now the color of old men’s teeth,
lying contentedly in lumpy mud
on straw laced fields,
bovine reminders of yesterday’s farms.

Stumble on in to Betty’s

…Sunnyside Café
Crack a Molson, and sit warmly,
rest your bottle on the red vinyl tablecloth,
gingerbread men prancing gaily across

You may feel unwelcome at first

for the farmers’ backs on red leather stools
are solid and unyielding
behind a blue curtain of smoke at the bar
a stranger with a notebook is a foreign sight

But soon you’ll feel warm and safe at Betty’s

a fat black stove rocks slightly,
stuffed with snapping logs
as Betty serves up brewskies
then kicks open the back door behind her
to shuffle in a sliver of hard March air.

The walls are knotty pine,
thickly coated with the stink of beers
from sixty years or more,
a crooked canvas to a neon group of clocks
Budweiser, Miller, Schlitz, Beck

But the water doesn’t stink at Betty’s

like the miraculous springs of sulfur past
and blue linen towels unwind continuously in the
bathroom dispenser
and the walls whisper of pool hall hustlers and
farmers with a week’s pay from their grain.

A tractor wide man with big black suspenders
parks his John Deere outside
and a young farmer with a wedding band
approaches your table to quote Shakespeare
a twinkle in his eye born of boredom
and farmer's daydreams.
Just stumble on in to Betty’s
…Sunnyside Cafe

Gale and Bill and Elvis

They were friends of some friends who were themselves not really close friends, but, for a couple of years, we got together regularly and I tried to fit in.  They were all older than me, the two, sometimes three couples, all settled in large houses with teenagers, dining room sets with draperies and houseplants that had grown up with their kids. I was in the land of toddlers, potty training, chicken pox and five and dime shades on the windows.

There was usually really good food, prepared by Athena, who shared my then husband’s Yugoslavian heritage.  She was a lovely, petite woman with a pronounced accent and a delightful laugh who seemed to cringe at her husband’s mannerisms and crude jokes.  Gale and Bill were their closest friends and always present at the get-togethers.  I watched Gale closely.  She was a statuesque woman with large breasts, red hair, very white skin and a very shy way about her.  She was woman incarnate to me, a rather lanky twenty something with traces of bad skin, and no breasts to speak of, even after two kids. She and Bill had three teenagers who all seemed to be well-behaved, average kids.  Often I wondered how Gale really handled it all; she seemed so ill-equipped for motherhood, nonchalantly folding her arms under her large breasts and smiling widely as Billy (as she called him) told stories and drank beers, as his cheeks became pinker and his grin wider.    

Inevitably, after the veal marsala and the salads and the pastries, and the scotch and the beers and wine, everyone would settle into the deep plush brown couches, and begin casting glances at the guitar case that lay behind Bill.  “Oh c’mon Bill” they would start to cajole.  “Give us some tunes!”  Gale would smile shyly, her long wispy red bangs in front of big brown eyes, like venetian blinds.  “ Go ahead Billy, play for us” she would coax.  Well, Billy really didn’t need any coaxing.  In fact, he was pretty darned good and this was really the highlight of the evening for most everybody gathered.  Bill, in fact, was a sort of Glen Campbell  look alike, with a large round face, pale blond hair and a wide grin.  He liked to play Glen Campbell tunes too, and so he would begin.  And he wound his way through Wichita Lineman and Galveston, threw some Johnny Cash in too, and everybody was warming up.  But I was watching Gale, who, I knew, would soon start saying quietly  “C’mon Billy,  do it. Play it for me.”  And after a few more tunes, Billy would take pause, his blond stringy hair now hanging in his face and he a little bit sweaty, and he would strum loudly and throw his head back and start wailing  in the most spectacular Elvis tones “One Niiiighhtt with Youuuuuuuuu”   And Gale would blush and giggle and squirm and say “ Ohhhh, Billy……..!"  in the most erotic way. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkx0BTSDGD8

 

 

The Lion Waits Tonight
Mixed Media January 2014