The Kindling Humor Magazine

By Nic Sadelski

Behold a shrine disguised as a small mom and pop breakfast and lunch counter tucked into the Midwest, where this good old-fashioned, hardy, good-for-the-soul, homemade, with love, home-cooked meal energy blasts through the door alongside the smell of toasty griddles and bold coffee and flavorful bacon and warming steam that tickles your facial pores. Where plates arrive heavy and proud with meaty magnificence and eggs that wobble like home-grown eggs, and pancakes that manage to be homemade, made with love, and home cooked all at once. Where every delicious bite contains a scrumptious parade of butter and salt, insipidity and love that slides straight through the soul. Where time slows down just enough so you can savor that last warming, plentiful, bold forkful and consider ordering one more plate just to feel alive again before you DIE, as death is inevitable and it knows your name and probably how you like your eggs, and it will arrive someday, but for now it can wait its turn because you are busy chewing, looking around at all the elders that frequent this establishment. This place with deep community ties is the last bastion of normalcy for them, as to step foot outside the building is a step into an unknown world that waits for no one. This establishment stands still in the face of time, because how can oblivion compete with hash browns this crispy, this flavorful? If the universe is expanding toward heat death then at least let it pause while you sop up gravy with a biscuit that dissolves into a good memory. Coping with mortality is mostly about finding a booth and realizing that being alive is less a grand thesis and more a series of homecooked meals, because if everything ends then everything also begins again every morning at 6 a.m. for our early bird special, a constant cycle of decay and rebirth. Because the trick is not to defeat death—no one wins that death match—but to distract it with pancakes stacked so high they require OSHA approval. Or enter our 21+ gambling room and turn further inward, developing an unhealthy relationship with our home cooked slot machine, because meaning might not be eternal, but it can be delicious and filling, because laughter slips out between bites when you realize that the same hands that will someday let go are currently holding crispy, buttery, homemade toast,. Existence may be absurd, but so is a gravy boat shaped like a rooster so here we are, if death is the long night then breakfast is the bright comforting lamp you carry towards it, humming softly, saying eat, breathe, stay a minute longer, we have pancakes, not to mention good old fashioned, hardy, warm meals, so come on down to Stevenson’s Family Restaurant, it’s like religion but better!