Me Grow Up? Forget About It!

My wife and I love to take day-long road trips. We get in the car with no particular destination in mind, stop at a local grocery store to stock up on “rations,” then hit the road, making decisions on which way to turn as needed. Most of the time, we are pleasantly surprised where we end up. Last weekend, however, we had a destination in mind.

My wife and I grew up in a small town in Tennessee. While we didn’t know each other until we were older, we both frequented, over the years, the same establishments in town. One, specifically, was the Blue Circle Restaurant (http://www.bluecircleburger.com). It was a drive-in style restaurant, part of a small chain in East Tennessee, famed for their steamed-bun hamburgers. The restaurant was wildly popular with both the older and younger crowds in our town, but, as with most popular things, it eventually faded, then went out of business.

Sometimes we sit around and reminisce about such things from our past; how it seemed so much easier back then when we didn’t have one-one thousandth of the worries we have now. Worrying was what our parents did, and we were happy to let them do it. During one such rumination, one of us mentioned the Blue Circle, and I got to wondering what had caused them to go out of business. So I looked it up on the Internet, read about their history, and found that there is one location still open, and within 130 miles. Road trip!

I put the address into our GPS (funny how we often use modern technology to return to the past) and we hit the road. It took almost four hours to find it (mostly because I put in the wrong address and we weren’t in any kind of hurry) and we pulled into the parking lot. The distinctive sign immediately took me back to my youth. It was like seeing an old friend.

We went into the small dining room area and sat at one of the old fashioned tables and chairs, deciding not to employ the stools at the counter. As was the style of such restaurants, the food preparation area is completely open, so you can watch the employees as they prepare the food.

As we all know, memories are easily trigged by smells. I went into memory overload and, much to the mild chagrin of my wife (she’s used to me “going off”), became a kid again. I found it extremely easy to drop all the worries, all the cares, all the constraints of adulthood. I wanted to run around the dining area, spin on the counter stools until I got dizzy, laugh and joke, and generally “cut up.” I even found myself wishing my legs were shorter so I could swing them under my chair.

All too soon, it was over, every bite of my super cheeseburger and fries taken with a child-like ecstasy, and I reluctantly came back to the present to pay for our meals, and prepare for the drive home. That part, I don’t remember when I was a child. My parents always handled the paying (I think we kids always assumed food just dropped out of the sky) and the driving.

A split second after we walked out the door, I grew up and became a responsible husband and father again. What a bummer. I try to keep that youthful feeling as much as I can each day. The real world, however, does its best to defeat me in that goal. Well, the real world can go take a flying leap, because I refuse to let it control me.

I plan on being a kid until the day I leave this world, and you can’t stop me! Nanny nanny boo-boo!

So there!

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