Saturday, July 25, 2009

Big Boy

I think I've given up on doing comprehensive Wilcox Family Tour recap posts. (I'm a little slow to embrace reality sometimes--the rest of you probably gave up weeks ago.) But I am going to try and post a few brief stories, along with some of the few (iPhone) photos we have. To refresh your memories, in mid-June we traveled to Louisville, Kentucky to see Dave's Dad and Jan. From there we zipped up to Michigan, where we made a couple of stops and got to see much of Dave's Mom's side of the family.

While traveling in the South and Midwest, we encountered a species that I thought was long extinct: Big Boy Restaurants. I remember eating there on multiple occasions when I was a little girl, but the last one near my hometown in Northern Virginia must have shut down 20 or 25 years ago. Not so in Kentucky and Michigan.
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On the day that we traveled from Holland, Michigan to Merritt, Michigan, where Dave's Mom and Tom have retired, we decided to make our lunch stop at a Big Boy. I was slightly apprehensive, expecting the place to be a dive, but the other option was McDonald's, and we were sick to death of fast food. In fact, Big Boy provided one of the most peaceful, overall enjoyable meals we had during the whole trip. The place was clean and in good repair, the staff was friendly, the food fine, our kids were obedient and they actually ate what we ordered for them with little to no resistance!

(Of course, there was that part where my stomach suddenly freaked out--we're talking no warning whatsoever. My digestive system held me hostage in the handicapped stall of the ladies' room for 15 minutes straight, and BOTH of my kids were in there with me. But we won't go into any more detail about that. Especially the part where Matthew lay down on the floor, hands and face in full contact with the tile, while I helplessly begged him to stand up.)

The most memorable part of this stop for our kids was the indispensable Big Boy statue in front of the restaurant. Meg talked about him for weeks after the trip. She especially liked how he carried a plate with a hamburger on it.

Gee, Big Boy, thanks for the memories. We might never have known what we were missing.

1 comment:

Mama-cita Whitney said...

this post made me laugh, cara. especially the part about matthew on the floor in the bathroom!

by the way, congratulations! looking forward to meeting/seeing and hearing about wilcox baby #3 on your blog!