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| Billy's Diner - Sigfried's Haunt |
Nashua holds a lot of good memories for
me. I almost married a gal from there,
my college sweetheart. As we got closer to the city I started recognizing a lot
of places from that time. A couple
places she would drop me off or pick me up as I hitchhike over to Keene to see
her as well as a bunch of other locations we had shared together. I was tempted to take the turn off for her
old house to pass by but I’m not sure the kill order against me has been
rescinded yet so I passed on this potentially dangerous situation. My wife was less than enthused by my reminiscing
but since she was headed to shop she bore up under my assault of nostalgia.
One of the other impressions as we traveled
through Nashua was that I could not believe how much had changed. The sleepy road from Milford to Nashua had
been transformed into an almost continuous series of strip malls along with what
seemed to be dozens of traffic lights. While
this was frustrating to drive through my wife was extremely pleased with the
shopping opportunities offered. The trip
to Best Buy proved fruitless but my wife was ready with a list of stores we
should hit on the way back to Keene.
We compromised and had her pick out one store
that she just had to visit. She promised
she would only be ten minutes while my friend and I waited in the car. My friend and I laughed out loud at the
prospect that she would only take ten minutes.
Forty-five minutes later she emerged apologetic but burdened with some
of the needed buys. My friend and I had
used the time to use my I-phone to check on nearby stores to confirm that the
TV we were looking for wasn’t available.
We stopped for lunch at a place called Joey’s
Diner which featured a very energetic waiter named Siegfried. He was a lot of fun and the food was good and
the companionship better. I really liked
the décor of the place which had a car emerging from the wall. After a stop off to release a very
appreciative Buddy my wife dropped off my friend and I at the Elm City Brewery
while she headed for some of her favorite Keene shopping haunts.
My friend and I linked up with our favorite
bartender who remembered what my drink order was even though we hadn’t been
there in months. We arrived just in time
to see the start of a very entertaining college football game. Alabama and Georgia were playing to see who
would play Notre Dame in the college championship game. I kind of lost track of time and the number
of beers heading downrange but before we knew it we watching a subsequent game
and the question came up, “Where was my wife?”.
It had been nearly five hours and when I
called her she was incredulous that it was after 8pm as she had lost track of
time as well having as much fun as we were.
She finally arrived at the bar and sent some challenging looks at the
attentive bar tender (who’s young enough to be my daughter). A very
entertaining dinner at Margaritas followed.
We ended the night back at my friend’s house where we watched a movie
that he had given to me as a joke birthday gift. It was a movie called The Arousers which was
showing at an adult drive in theater when we were young. It became legendary when the marquee listed
it as The Grousers. We were trying to figure
out what a “grouser” was for a long time.
We all laughed at the time and one of our other friends, now in
Pittsburgh never misses a chance to remind us about it. It was an old Roger Corman movie that seemed
incredibly tame by nowadays standards and could be possibly one of the worst
movies ever made. It was a fitting end to a great day.
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| An Earlier Photo of Keene Friend and Favorite Bartender |
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| Dinner at Margarita's |
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