A Moveable Feast-City Cafe maybe a drink at Bless Yer Heart or somewhere else

The readers digest version as some of you have requested.

What: Friday Night Moveable Feast

Where:
The link and address
City Cafe Diner
511 Broad St,
Chattanooga, TN 37402

When 8:00pm Friday October 3rd.

Maybe:
Bless Yer Heart bar

"Suddenly. life was more than French Fries and girls." is the tagline for Barry Levinson's 1982 movie Diner. It is a coming of age movie coming to screens right as I was coming of age. All of my gang was graduating the following year.

Some of you are looking at your phones and calculating. Yes I am that old.

In the movie there was the one particular diner. For our gang growing up there was no one particular place, a Friendly's Ice Cream, a late night drunken grand slam Breakfast at Denny's, and others but always the same crew.

Like the movie I grew up with a group of guys who my best friends mother, the woman who actually raised me referred to as the animals. I remember her crying when we had invaded her house after we all had just graduated. All of us feasting on bushels of corn we had bought at a roadside stand. She said she was crying because though we did not know it, she said it was the last time we would all be in the same place together. The last moment.

She was right. We were too caught up into the moment to realize this was not something prosaic, but a poetic moment the few of us that still hear from each other talk about.

One left for Basic training then Germany, Several to Ivies for school, another to an Upstate SUNY School to learn a new fangled thing called programming. Most of us simply scattered across the map. I was starting a gap year to figure some things out. I don't know that I figured anything out, but I too left the following year for the exotic place of Alabama to go to school.

A preppy new England kid stepping out on the surface of an entirely new world where they talked different.

Another just disappeared. Never to be seen or heard from again. Even in todays internet none of us can find him. I guess he left the map behind.

This is a little nostalgic and not so funny. I had a call last week. It is one of those calls you never forget and suddenly life is a little clearer and immediate. I won't get into it. I can't, but it concerned news about someone I grew up with.

The last couple of weeks I have seen a lot. That call was the final thing. I have been put through a lot, but the pizza, laughs and conversations from the Friday Night Southside Pizza meal were what I needed. Happiness, laughter, conversation and good food.

I want to keep them going.

I had a recent conversation about how you need to stop and enjoy the moments occasionally. I hope that person does. I am certainly trying enough for either one of us to do just that.

Life really is too short not to.

“Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.” Anthony Bourdain

I was doing these meals every Friday. I think I will try every other week.

That way you don't get tired of me.

Who could get tired of me?

Apparently the list for that is long and distinguished. Like...

I will behave. (Secretly hopes no one has watched Top Gun another, but really huge eighties hit movie)

Anyways, the people around the table may change as life goes on, that is okay. Life is like a bus, it requires change. Let's just go to the diner and have a nice meal together. Enjoy the moment. I might be funny. They got a buttload of different stuff on the menu. A buttload is a lot by the way.

Maybe go to a local pub after and grab a Negroni.

I can't bring back the Denny's late night drunken jaunts, or the patty melts from Friendly's who had great fries, but I can share a meal with you. Life did definitely became more than French fries, but girls?

Some people (me) never learn!