17 jan 2012

in this town, there used to be a chain eatery called bonanza. bonanza offered a variety of meats grilled over an open flame and served up on a sort of 'tin plate' type of plate, supposed to look like cowboy plates. another chain with a similar theme was called ponderosa and if you're familiar at all with vintage television, you can see where they're going with all that. in its heyday, bonanza was THE place to eat. when they put in the full-size hot & cold food bar and the ice cream machine... well, that was really the beginning of the end. by the time liquor by the drink came in and o'charley's got established, bonanza was about ready to call it a day and ride off into the sunset.

when they did close up shop, they gave away some of their plates and whatnot to loyal vendors, the meat guy, the cola guy, the bread guy. we ended up with two plates, a fork, and a spoon. an odd lot. the plates are fun, but awkward. the spoon is well-shaped, solid. but the fork - ooo, stop! that fork is my favorite in our whole drawer of flatware mutts. the other day, it went missing.

i knew it had to be me that mislaid it, because i make darn sure i'm the only one who uses it. he never notices things like weight of flatware, how it feels in his hand. he's just not sensitive to that sort of thing so it's not like i am shorting him at all, at all.

back to the point, i mislaid my favorite fork. i racked my brains for where it could be and realised i'd last used it to eat a potato from jason's deli. omg, i threw my little darling in the rubbish bin.

i realised this on, like, saturday. the trash goes out on tuesday. i knew what i had to do, so i waited. tuesdays i work at home. after he'd left for school, i pulled the bin back into the garage. right there in plain sight was a plastic trashbag tied with a bow, from the top of which poked the plain brown handle of a jason's deli bag. i pulled open the bow and peered in the bag and bingo! there was my precious, half under a potato peel, its tail resting in a container half-empty of dried out sour cream.

retrieved, washed, restored. ah. my precious is home.