Penmanship counts!

NOTE: There’s never been an established timeline for I WRITE GOOD although I’ve fallen into the habit of posting each Sunday. Well, today’s Monday and I was late because of Rory McIlroy. So blame him. Otherwise…

Recently, it occurred to me that the title of my weekly exercise in Substackishness — I WRITE GOOD — could refer to penmanship rather than a pleasing narrative style. Y’know: riverine cursive or an architect’s blueprint-style printing.

Here’s what happened.

I meet with three similarly aged male friends for lunch every few months in the same casual family restaurant, the sort of place you can get breakfast any time and daily specials are hand-inscribed on a hanging whiteboard.

The only rule we observe is that there are no discussions of politics or our medical problems. As such, for 90 minutes, we largely sit in silence save the for the scratch of cutlery as we negotiate our meals or answer the motherly waitress as she occasionally drifts by and asks, “More coffee or Diet Coke, suge?” or “Anybody want pie or bread pudding?”

I realize I’ve sketched out a scenario you’d expect to see in a television commercial for a “retirement community,” and it’s true most of the business-card display ads that festoon the paper placemats are for direct-to-the-public coffins or discount crematoriums. But there are always a few younger folks eating there, too. It is good food and reasonably priced, and there’s a nearby high school providing roving bands of hungry pupils.

(Just curious: does anyone in the Education Industry still refer to students as “pupils”?)

At our most recent gathering, we were squinting across the dining room at the Daily Specials whiteboard, which was cheerfully hand-printed in various festive colors as though advertising Mardi Gras rather than “Chopped Steak w/ two sides ($17.95).” One of us remarked, with the awe and appreciation of a fellow beholding Pieter Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow, that whichever staff member had legibly lettered the menu had conveyed a spirit of happy certainty that we would partake in a joyous repast!

This was instantly followed by a discussion exploring the reality that any restaurant or bar still utilizing daily whiteboard or chalkboard specials needs someone on staff with superb and creative penmanship.

Was this The Menu Artiste’s only job at the restaurant? Or did The Menu Artiste also bus tables, or slice apples for pie filling, or wash dishes or greet customers when they walked in the door?

“How many in your party today? Just let me wipe the ink stains off my fingers before I hand you your prefabricated menus. And the daily specials —” sly chuckle “— are on that white board suspended from the ceiling under artisanal track lighting. Note the visionary collision of colors in empathetic union with the tantalizing delicacies described thereupon.”

Was there a drafting table in the back storage area, next to wire rack-shelving holding bags of onions and huge industrial-sized cans of tomato paste? Was there indeed a Gauguin-worthy array of tropically colored dry-erase Sharpies with which to craft the Daily Specials “canvas”?

Has there ever been a gallery or museum show devoted to the works of Menu Scrawlers? And if not, why not? Certainly, from all the daily specials boards in all the restaurants in the world, there must be a few Banksys, Basquiats or Harings, right?

Eventually, we paid our tabs — separate checks, of course, and plenty of “exact change” calculating whilst digging in our respective coin purses — and doddered off into the early afternoon sunshine. As I approached my car, I saw a young guy with a backpack and the requisite ear buds headed into the restaurant. He was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a black metal band. It was impossible to tell which band, though.

Y’see, by design, black metal and death metal bands and other assorted purveyors of sundry devil music styles all have Gothic-based logos that are so ornately constructed and, well, demon-y, that they’re almost impossible to read. It adds to the mystery, I suppose.

For example, here’s the logo of Mayhem, acknowledged by most to be the originators of Norwegian black metal.

Given that my friends and I had just been speculating on the bubbly quality of the restaurant’s hand-crafted daily specials board, I suddenly had a thought. What if the young man wearing the devil band shirt wasn’t going inside to eat but, rather, because he was about to apply for a job doing the restaurant’s specials board lettering?!

What if the current Special Boards Artiste was leaving to study at Rhode Island School of Design or start a business doing wedding invitation calligraphy? Maybe creating counterfeit twenty-dollar bills?

And now this young dark metal enthusiast, eager to make a few bucks with a part-time job before graduation from high school, was hoping to become the new whiteboard menu scrawler!

And what if he gets the gig?!

In my scenario, the next time our Codger Group convened at the restaurant, we’d be in line just behind a happy family eager for breakfast.

“I hope they have chocolate chip pancakes,” says one kiddo. “Or I can make up an omelet!”

“And I want biscuits and gravy!” cries another.

They’re in luck! On the specials board:

Oops! The family ends up with two children in therapy and a third who only mewls and stares menacingly at the moon.

Meanwhile, I tried the biscuits and gravy. Pretty damned good.

Oh — and how’s this for my new logo?