Horn Bar

 (click picture to enlarge)

my six year old nephew Zack loves multi-pocket cargo shorts.  The more pockets, the better.   I think he prefers ten pockets or more.   I’m not sure what he has to put in them, but he’s all about the pockets.

I thought of this as I threw on a good pair of my own cargo shorts (twelve pockets, thank you) to go out to eat with mom and dad tonight.  I wasn’t too stressed about getting dressed up, because we were on our way to Gene’s Root Beer Stand and Drive-In.   The Lemon Drop last week, and Gene’s this week.  We are livin’ the good life.  

I can’t say that I have a wealth of childhood memories of being car-hopped at Gene’s, but I’ve always enjoyed a good drive-in dog and root beer, and mom and dad have as well.  Seems like we should have been sitting in a 1957 Chevy Belair, but we were comfortable in Dad’s 2006 minivan, and I was able to stretch a leg out with the auto sliding side door wide open, while I chugged a chilled mug of  Gene’s finest, and ate my coneys.  Our girl even brought me an unsolicited free refill.  Nice.    There was a time when the root beer was transported to the cars on roller skates, but that time has passed, at least at Gene’s, although it’s entirely possible that our girl spent some time on skates in her distant youth.

While we enjoyed our dining experience, dad retold a story from this drive-in last summer.

Apparently, mom and dad had come to Gene’s for lunch one day last summer.   When they got home, dad discovered that his money clip was missing, which might not have been that big a deal, except that it had belonged to his dad, so it was really important to find it.  After a thorough search of the van, he decided that he must have set it on the console of the van as he paid, and it must have gotten wadded up in hotdog wrappers, and thrown into Gene’s trash.   So they drove back up to Gene’s, explained the predicament, and dad used a borrowed pair of disposable cooking gloves and some extra trash bags to sort through the trash can closest to their parking spot.  He found his trash, though I’m still uncertain how he recognized it, but the clip was not buried within.  After some time, and ketchup to the elbows, they gave up, replaced the trash, and drove home, disappointed.

When dad got back home, he thought it best to change out of his trash picking clothes, and that is when he found my Grandpa Ora’s money clip in one of the lower pockets of his brand new, first-time worn cargo shorts.  (Six pockets, if you’re scoring at home.)

My six year old nephew Zack loves multi-pocket cargo shorts.     

My dad, not so much.   I’m not sure I’ve seen him wear them since then.

But he did use grandpa’s money clip to pay our non-skating root beer girl tonight at Gene’s.

Mom and Dad are celebrating their 53rd wedding anniversary tomorrow, September 5th, and they haven’t decided where they are going out to eat, but I told them they would be hard pressed to beat tonight at Gene’s.   Unless they go to the Lemon Drop.