Fleeting Memories

I have always enjoyed eating out, not because my wife is not a good cook, because she is. I just really enjoy going to a restaurant. This is something that I can’t really do, not with the coronavirus loose in the land, at least not right now. The first really good restaurant I remember was the Swanky Club. My parents took our family there a couple of times, but not often. It was a lot more expensive than most cafes in Boulder City. I remember that there were so many different kinds of food you could order. I remember eating at the Flamingo in Las Vegas a couple of times. I saw the Flower Drum Song there. I was pretty new at the deciding what to order, and my Dad helped me out. I ordered, with his help, squab, which of course is pigeon, a thing I didn’t know. It sure wasn’t much to eat. They say it tastes like chicken, but there wasn’t enough of it to really tell. I’m sure my dad got a kick out of watching me try to find something to eat. Years later I took Joy out there to se...

From the time I was a sophomore in high school until the summer after I graduated, I worked at the Frosty Freeze in Boulder City, Nevada on the highway that went through town. There were other jobs that I had at the same time, but the Frosty Freeze was a fun job to have in the evenings. I usually closed up after eleven at night. The Frosty Freeze is where I first heard of flavored chipped ice as a drink. We would freeze a mixture of concentrated flavored drink. We used a Kool-Aid type powder with a lot of sugar. When it was frozen, we would bring it out of the freezer and begin to chip it up with a tool that had four metal-like spears coming out of a handle. Well, when I say we, I mean me. I was the one who had to chip all of the flavored ice in a five-gallon bucket, to be ready to dip out and served. I can remember getting a blister on the palm of my hand from chipping. I always hoped that no one would like it, and then they wouldn’t sell it any more, but everyone liked it; I ev...