Throw Me Some Beads

All it took was my friend Danny's FB reminder that today is Fat Tuesday and I knew what had to be done.

But when I started checking online, it became clear that the local Catholics are weather wimps so all the church pancake dinners for Mardi Gras were already canceled.

Boo hiss.

So I did what an self-respecting totally lapsed Catholic would do: high tailed it to City Diner to eat myself stupid with pancakes before the onset of Lent, which I will, as always, ignore completely.

The lapsed life is an easy one.

I slogged through the sloppy snow covered sidewalk and through the door barely 35 minutes before the diner closes its doors, only to find just one guy at a booth and the staff already starting to clean before closing.

Without a smidgen of guilt about my eleventh hour arrival, I quickly put my order in: pancakes and bacon and step on it (okay, not that last part).

Just as I picked up the newspaper to read while I waited for my food, the door opened and a man joined me at the counter.

Without looking at the menu, he ordered the most perfect Fat Tuesday breakfast imaginable: three eggs, bacon, sausage, fried apples, creamed chipped beef, pancakes and a sausage gravy biscuit.

Needless to say, I'd been out-ordered. Even though the three pancakes on my plate were not only as big as the plate but considerably wider than my head, it was no contest.

I followed ye old family rule for eating pancakes and waffles, slathering with butter (in this case the dreaded "buttery flavored spread") and syrup and the other half with butter and strawberry jam.

Not sure why my father taught us to eat our pancakes this way, probably his own preference, but my adherence to it continues lo these many decades later.

Meanwhile, my companion's food arrived and he dove in like he hadn't eaten lately.

Which, as it turns out, he hadn't. When I cracked wise about people like us who show up at 2:00 expecting breakfast, he admitted that he'd been working a snow plow since 3:30 yesterday afternoon without stopping.

Coffee and Red Bull had sustained him as he'd made the parking lots of Chesterfield Mall, some old folks' home and several strip shopping centers safe for die hard consumers who might need to get out and shop today.

I told him I could no more work for 23 hours without eating than, well, go for 23 hours without getting out of the house and we all know that's never going to happen.

His reasoning was that the money was damn good and that it wasn't so bad in the short term because it's not like we get snow every week.

Actually, this winter it feel like every other week, but whatever.

His plan after working down every crumb on his plate was to head back to Ashland, feed his animals and crash hard until he was restored.

Makes my afternoon of interviewing a photographer and shoveling the sidewalk sound pretty lame.

Count me as one of the devoted heathens who got my Shrove Tuesday pancakes on so now I can go into Lent knowing that's done.

Yo, Danny! Laissez les bon temps rouler and all that jazz...with syrup and jam, if you please.