Bob Deakin Short Stories

One day, Margie said to her brother, “What’s with the long face, Timmy?”

Timmy sullenly looked up and said, “Our favourite restaurant, A Bottle of Bread, burned down and now I can’t go there to see all of my friends.”

“Well Timmy,” she said, “Sometimes restaurants catch on fire and the brave firemen aren’t able to put the flames out before the restaurant turns black and smells like charcoal.”

“That’s just not fair,” he chirped. “Everyone should have a place to go where they can eat good food and see all of their friends.”

That got Margie thinking. Maybe they could buy their favourite restaurant, fix it up and bring all of their old friends back. They could name it after their two favourite actresses; Hope Lang, who played Mrs. Muir on the TV show, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” and Olive Oil, wife of the strong-armed, spinach-eating sailor. They considered other names for the restaurant as well, including A Loaf of Milk, A Pint ‘O Beef, and The Colon Clogger, but settled on Hope and Olive.

They could make the restaurant look real sassy and hire some very, very people to work there and invite lots of friends with stupid names to come and visit. They could make the place turn groovy with some music and fun shindigs and serve some all-real, all-yummy vittles. Being restaurant owners would also give them the excuse to order cases and cases of nitrous oxide canisters so they could do whip-its and get higher than Richard Pryor.

In any event, they each had some loose ends to tie up before they could make the plunge into their new passion as restaurateurs: Margie worked full-time as a Pinkerton and Timmy had his gig as a shepherd, but they were both determined to make it work. They each had to accept the idea that there were other people who could patrol parking lots and tend to ruminant mammals of the genus Ovis, of the family Bovidae.

What hit them the hardest, however, was that they would each have to retire from their night gig as go-go dancers for The Nut Busters, a happening local band that had built a strong following in the thriving North Hampton music scene.

Success does not come without sacrifice.

“What if we bring in local bands to play so that our customers and friends have fun and keep coming back. The bands get more exposure, bring more friends into our restaurant and make really small amounts of money that they can joke about later if they make it,”said Timmy, with much self gratification.

“I think that’s a very effective marketing ploy,” said Margie, playing the diplomat. “And we can buy meats and produce from local purveyors and pot head organic farmers. We’ll buy beer, wine and liquor from salesmen who have the best deals that particular month. We’ll hire local contractors to fix the place, share laughs with health department inspectors and local politicians, and get somebody else to pay for the whole floggin’ thing”

Their plan was coming together. The only thing they were missing was a third party to act as business manager and run the kitchen: Enter Mae.

Mae was a friend of both Margie and Timmy and had managed A Bottle of Bread during its last tenure when the three of them became friends. She knew all of the best pot head farmers, local purveyors, local politicos and previous customers. She was a no-nonsense gal, fit with a strong work ethic, a demand for excellence and a distaste for lazy douche-bag waiters.

There was something magic in the air. Margie and Timmy just had to get their friend on board for the voyage to grooviness.

The logical thing to do at this point was to invite Mae over to the house to smoke some crack and watch The Wizard of Oz with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon as the sound track. When the movie was over, Margie fired up a blunt, passed it around and popped the question to Mae.

“Say, groovy girl, how’s about you, me and Timmy reopen A Bottle of Bread as our own place and live happily ever after?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Mae responded.

The three erupted with laughter and proceeded to dance around the house before teaming up to make a celebratory rope of homemade sausage links with Timmy, of course, manning the meat grinder.

Things kind of just fell into place after that fateful evening. They got their financing together, fixed the building, got all the permits and inspections, rounded up a hum dinger of a staff, decorated the place real sassy and invited their old friend, Dan Seward, to perform at the opening night gala. He brought down the house that night with his frozen chicken routine.

Margie, Timmy and Mae got off to a flying start with Hope and Olive and kept a steady stream of shiny happy people coming in every day. Their story has since been chronicled in The Boston Globe, among other pubs. Margie and Mae are wheelin’ and dealin’ some of the tastiest vittles you’ve ever seen and Timmy does a mean James Dean in the front of the house.

To clarify, that’s James Dean, the late actor, not Jimmy Dean of sausage fame, which may confuse some readers based upon previous sausage reference.

Copyright 2009