AN AIDE TO MEMORY

For some reason which I cannot figure out, free coffee refills were in my head while waking up. When did those disappear? Years ago I would relax for two or three hours at Ping Yuen reading several news papers, doing all the puzzles including the New York Times crossword, and leave high as a kite on free refills after a slice of pie. Ping Yuen no longer exists.
Puzzles don't rope me in anymore. Newspapers are largely crap, mostly folded.
And free coffee refills are no longer offered.

Long sit-down counters are also a thing of the past, along with ashtrays and near-industrial lighting so that you could read news print. Or, hypothetically, a recently purchased collection of poetry you brought with you.

People drink raspberry syrup frappays while scrolling through memes.
Not Six Hundred More Poems From The Tang era.
Bi-lingual. With notes.


And I strongly suspect that university press editors are putting together scholarly collections of of memes, annotated and explained, in short sentences of simple everyday hip words, no more than two syllables, only one sentence per idea.
For your scrolling pleasure.

Where is Miss Nancy with that floating pot of coffee?

Well, the coffee IS better now. Although a lot more expensive. And those places that are still serving the same pallid swill crap as years ago have raised prices and cut off refills. They no longer encourage dawdling or literacy.


I would really like the old-style lunch counters that stayed open till nine or ten in the evening to come back. Daily specials like ox tail on Thursdays with rice or potatoes, plus soup and a hot roll, clam stew on Sunday, a wedge of pie or ice cream afterwards, and perhaps a table and chair with an ashtray out back near the garbage cans under the overhang for those old fossils who still smoke. If Miss Nancy is still alive she'll float by with the never-empty coffee pot with bad coffee. "Freshen your cup, dear?"

We've really lost something.

Well, I have. You haven't, because you're probably reading this on your cellphone while waiting for your bowl of designer ramen in a vegan blade-runner themed restaurant.
Your significant other, right next to you, is scrolling on his or her device.
Neither of you have spoken a word since breakfast.
Both of you ordered off the app.



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