Do Mom proud!

I don’t think Jeanne has mentioned this in her stories yet, but she has a thing for dive restaurants. Sometimes these culinary adventures lead us to a great little place with good food if strange atmospheres. Mom’s Gatehouse was not one of those gems. As we drove along, the neighborhood got a little scarier with each passing block. The businesses all had bars on the windows. There was an air of neglect to the properties and the pedestrians all had a run down demeanor. But we decided to stick it out and made our way safely from the car into Mom’s.

The waitress did her best, but I think that our party of four in addition to what little ‘usual’ lunch crowd they had was too much for her. I’m not going to go into all the details of the experience, because that’s not where this story is going. Let’s just say we never had a hankering for Mom’s cooking again.

Tonight I was half listening to the evening news, and they were showing tape of a robbery in progress at – you guessed it – Mom’s! There didn’t appear to be any customers in the dining area. This white guy in a Green Bay Packers coat was dragging the employee to the register to get money and then ran off. If I were going to rob a business, I think I would select a location that actually might have had some paying customers.

The news story switches to a shot of the police dragging a white-trash-male from the back of a cruiser. I would remark on his teeth, or lack of, but right now I’m not judging anybody’s grill. He’s yelling things to the camera, but his whole attitude seems to have a surreal, almost jovial manner to it. His rant went something like this “Hey Bro! Just because I’m a white guy with a tan coat means I robbed Mom’s? I didn’t rob nothing, I was home drinking a fucking bottle of Bacardi!” The reporter said the police suspect he used the booty from the robbery to buy said bottle of Bacardi. I mean, a pint only costs like $7 so I guess it’s possible that he could have gotten that much. They also suspect he robbed a convenience store earlier while wearing a tan coat.

So where did my curious little mind go after hearing all of this? How did he know there was a tan coat involved? Was I witnessing in real life one of those brilliant police tricks where the suspect admits to something he could have no way of knowing? Does being too drunk on rum really qualify as an acceptable excuse/alibi? And if so, can I take back all the apologies I ever had to make the morning after a rum drunk? Will all of this publicity turn things around and make Mom’s the next hot spot? Will we then be able to brag that we knew about Mom’s for years and all these new customers are just posers and treat them as such?

Yep, I bet there’s a proud Mom out there somewhere, but it’s probably not his.