A VISIT TO MEL’S

I thought, quite a few weeks ago now, that I’d told you the last of my tales from California based upon my experiences during this year’s visit. I really believed that the barrel had been scraped through to the paving stones below and that there was nothing else to say. I also believed, probably quite accurately, that you, my beloved reader, would be heartily sick and tired of hearing about it by now. After all, back in the days of the seventies sitcom, there probably was little that was more tedious than having to endure other people’s  holiday snaps, and what is this modern day bloggery other than being asked (but at least not forced) to sit through other people’s thought processes…? So if they then abuse the opportunity and show you their holiday snaps anyway, well, Terry and June are likely to be having some very heated whispered conversations as they pass each other in the hallway on their way through to the bathroom to make their various escapes from the ordeal…

However, a couple of days ago, I remembered that I’d failed to mention “Mel’s Diner” during any of my recent (and now not so recent) witterings, and it seems to have been such an omission (or should that be “a sin of omission”…?) that I thought that I would swiftly (and briefly) transport you across the pond to the Pacific coastline one more time.

There’s no use you trying to hide in the bathroom. I know why you’re in there and I am prepared to wait.

Happy now...? Good...

Whenever we are having our last evening in San Francisco, before heading homewards the next morning, it’s now become something of an “instant tradition” (if you like, in the sense that we’ve done it on each of the three times we’ve been there. We are nothing if not predictable…), for us to call in and have a meal at “Mel’s Diner”. It might not be the most lavish of eateries in that fine city where, they say, you could eat out three times a day for every single day of the year and never have to visit the same place twice, but we’ve come to like it there, so it’s where we choose to go.

“Mel’s” is a chain of 1950s style diners of which there are several in San Francisco, and which have been in existence for enough years now for one of them to have featured in George Lucas’s film “American Graffiti” as an authentic backdrop to his nostalgic idea of what the 1950s were like when he shot it in the 1970s. Twice as many intervening years have passed since then, but that combination of chrome and plastic decor, home-style cooking and an authentic 1950s and 1960s soundtrack is, to visitors to the country looking for that kind of American experience, pretty much irresistible, and we have grown rather fond of the old place.

There are three “Mel’s” restaurants in the city that I know of, although there may now be more as it does rather have that notion of a “franchise” written all over it, in this modern “market absolutely everything within an inch of its life” culture in which we now exist, but the one which we always call at is the one on Lombard Street, not so very far from the motel we first stayed in on our first trip to the city back in the day when I didn’t have quite so many miles on the clock (or my waistline...).

This particular branch is not the one as featured in the movie, by the way, but in many ways, that’s part of its charm, and we always seem to arrive just in time for the rush hour traffic to be heading home along Lombard and the sun always seems to be setting far beyond the Golden Gate giving the air and orangey golden glow.

Perhaps that’s got something to do with the rosy glow of nostalgia and the imminence of  heading home, but that lighting always seems to have been especially set up just for us.

It’s rather interesting to me that every single time we arrive, usually on visits several years apart, the staff always seem to be the ones whom I remember from the last time, and the waitresses always seem to be at the end of the counter folding novelty cardboard boxes into the shape of red convertibles for the children’s novelty takeaway meals, whilst the same set of locals are eating at the counter and having the same conversations. You could even say that, because I always seem to visit in an election year, the same sort of news items will be playing on the muted television set high up on the wall, over in the far corner. I’m also fairly convinced that we always sit in the same booth, and you can be fairly certain that if we don’t order the same food, which is very likely to be a “Mel’s Burger” in my case, we will, most definitely order the milk shakes.

Just to prove to you that I haven’t fallen into some “Twilight Zone” idea of a place that never changes (although that is a distinct possibility), this time we arrived as the tail end of a children’s after-school birthday party party was going on, mercifully in another corner far away from us. This was something that I hadn’t experienced there before, but it did have an air of being somewhat understated, especially for an American party, in a country so notorious for people having “plenty”, when people tell me of the lavish efforts that they feel almost compelled to make for their own children’s parties these days. To me, it always seems like people just like to find yet another stick to beat themselves up with in some kind of great competition between those who choose to participate in such nonsense. Still, as the harassed parent herded the “little darlings” back into the car park, and peace once more descended upon “Mel’s” for a while, we overheard a hearty and grateful expression of thanks being said to the staff for bearing the burden of the chaos that had, presumably, already ensued, happily for them, not in their own home.

Anyway, just to let you know, we still like “Mel’s”. A lot. And we’d go back there like a shot.