The Remote and Ridiculous Memory Palace that promises to Flicker Back To Life (again and again)

This could have been a day we visited the
Morrice Restaurant.  It's at least the right era.

Another early memory.

After church on Sunday, once or twice, my family left the town of Perry, Michigan where we lived and drove across the cornfields for 2.9 miles until we arrived at the even tinier town of Morrice, Michigan.

There we ate at what I considered one of the most exotic establishments offering the greatest of all culinary delights.  A cheeseburger.  There was something about that hamburger that elevated it far beyond the Burger Chef fast food simulations or even any of the good hamburgers I had had during cookouts.  The bun was delicious but not overwhelming.  The burger melted in my mouth.  The cheese was perfectly melted.  I shouldn't stop before I describe the fries.  The home fries were nothing like any potatoes I had eaten before.

Beyond these features of the perfect meal, I had a sense that this restaurant had a real HISTORY to it.  The wood panelling seemed ancient.  The fake leather vinyl chairs evoked something even older than the panelling.  The round wooden tables and the flickering electric candles on the wall?  All of it evoked a comfortable, familiar, ancient place that I had never seen before but always suspected might exist.   I wanted to have a life with this much *past*.

And because of these feelings?  EVERYTHING about the restaurant ended up feeling remarkable.  The paper printed placemats with local ads on them.  The used old menus.  The tired waitresses and the polyester uniforms.  These expressive domains that actually reference working class comfort, and dependable diner food?  Came to be a glorious ineffable category of possibility for me that I have been delighting in ever since.

I'm not kidding when I said "once or twice".  We couldn't afford to eat out and we didn't.  I haven't been to Morrice Restaurant in more than forty years and it doesn't exist any more so I never will again.

And the thing that I'm valuing today isn't actually the Morrice Restaurant.  It's these primal experiences that shape our delights.  They look so small, inconsequential, even ridiculous from the outside, but from our point of view they're like the portal into Narnia.  A Narnia that exists just alongside of our everyday lives.  A perpetually appearing door in the wall like HG Well's story of the same name that affords us entry to the unexpected and beautiful world just beyond.  And if we dare to enter, the outlandish and small pleasures we'll (re)discover will be a balm and a wonder on our weariest days.

#50thingsofvalue