You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
IHOP.
The International House of Pancakes.
It’s an iconic name that means nothing.
Have you ever been to IHOP. There’s nothing international about it.
It’s a straight up time warp.
If you haven’t been there, let me set the mood.
You open the door.
Suddenly a wave of 1974 washes over you.
The decor is the Patridge Family Bus.
The sound is Donna Summers floating across the acoustic tile.
The wall is peppered with ridiculous posters of pancakes and syrup dispensers of all things.
The waitress are a truck stop throw back to a time when the AMC Gremlin was parked in your neighbor’s garage.
The clientele is pancake crazy mixed with Chuck Mangione bizarre.
The hostess is wearing an apron and her hair pulled back. She is one of those people whose age is hard to read. She could either be a leather faced 40 year old who looks 60 because her life has been so hard. Or she could really be a leather faced 60 year old who is lucky to be alive since her life is probably a lot more complicated than pancake batter and pork chops.
She leads me to the booth. I gaze at the fabric which is spotted purple, green and brown. It looks like a microscopic snap shot of Ecoli.
“I’ll be right back sugar,” the woman with crooked teeth and a curved spine says.
I sit down and inhale the ambience of time lost.
Behind me is the Black version of the Captain and Tenille. They are a friendly couple in their early 60’s. He is wearing a captain’s hat and polyster everything else. He has a warm welcoming face. I imagine he could have been a sailor, or a clerk at the local Five and Dime. His date? I only know she is black. The only feature I can remember is her protruding eye patch. It is stuffed with gauze that extends from her face like a cyclopse.
I wonder if her injury is pancake related? Did she somehow miss a sausage and stab her own eye? And is my waitress trained in triage like some front line army nurse?
Then there’s Connie sitting at the table directly across from us.
She is staring, so I wave.
I pull out my iphone and begin to record the room.
If you went to Machu Picchu wouldn’t you document it?
This IHOP provides me with similar photographic needs.
“She stuck her tongue out at you,” my friend blurts out.
I play back the video. High chairs, a tainted orange room. Zombie patrons from a time long ago forgotten.
And there at the table next to me; Connie, sticking out her tongue.
Connie is another non-descript white woman from 1976. I cannot tell you what she was wearing or anything about her. I assume she was clothed but in what I can only guess was from the Brady Bunch Collection.
She is like the wall paper in this IHOP, unusually unexceptional.
“You stuck your tongue out at me Connie?”
“Yes I did,” she says.
And that’s it. The conversation goes no where like Edith talking to Archie.
I stare at the menu. It’s a laminated heart attack.
Every conceivable egg breakfast competes for my attention.
Eggs smothered with bacon. Eggs smothered with cheese. Eggs smothered with eggs. Bacon with a side of bacon.
It’s a 1970’s truck stop with all the fixin’s.
The only thing missing is a CB handle.
“Breaker Breaker 1 – 9. We gotta stop at this choke and puke and take a 10 – 100”
“What can I get ya Sugar?”
“You all got eggs here?” I joke.
The 60 year old – forty year old stares at me and calculates my words.
She breaks out into a wonderful smile revealing a crooked tooth and unique tobacco stain.
“Oh sugar. We got eggs.”
“Ok,” I laugh. “I’ll have this one,” pointing to a massive looking newspaper sized egg burrito under a layer of bacon.
“it’s a disco ball of breakfast,” I proclaim.
The woman scribbles something in cyrillic and moves toward the kitchen.
By this time I shot the sheriff can be heard on the speaker system.
I look at the stack of high chairs by the host station. I look at the little napkins and cheap silver ware on the table.
IHOP is the studio 54 of cholesterol and chest pain, but I love it.
It’s a throw back to another time another place where calorie counting was not allowed or understood.
The wall decor is breakfast skillets and dripping syrup.
The booths are ebola under a microscope.
The table is old fashioned formica from a diner your dad took you to after a fishing trip.
The coffee is in a urn, half a gallon high. No charging extra for coffee here. You want more coffee, pur it your damn self.
My waitresses looks Alice from the brady Bunch with worse teeth.
Everyone is dressed as if it is halloween and they purchased their clothing at the nearby thrift store.
My breakfast arrives. It is a plate wide and a salt shaker high.
It is delicious. It is eggs on top of eggs, slathered with bacon and future heart ailment.
I don’t care. Thanks 1975.
“Everyone was Kung Fu Fighting” fills my ears as I chew.
“Those cats were fast as lightning.”
IHOP. The machu Picchu of eateries.
10-4 big buddy.
And that’s Crazy™