Have a Nice Day

Some recent management handbook must say that the restaurant host, while seating you, should ask, "So how are you doing today?" I heard those exact words twice last week, first at the IHOP near my home and again at the Olive Garden in Fort Collins (hey, don't judge me – Olive Garden has great salad).

On the surface, it's a harmless question. You're supposed to answer, "Just fine, thanks." But my first instinct is to answer honestly. I doubt if the host wants to know about my sucky day; that my foot hurts and I just backed into another car. What if I just came from the doctor having learned I have a terminal disease?

Less intrusive but still annoying is the common wish people bestow upon strangers: "Have a nice day." At least with that one, there's no opening to discuss my sore foot.

A lot of people don't like "Have a nice day." It doesn't always ring sincere. I've been tempted to answer "Have a nice day" with, "Too late!" But I never have. When you think about it, even if it’s not sincere, the person saying it wouldn’t necessarily want you to have a bad day.

While sometimes irritating, I think I'd rather have these courtesies than the grunts of surly, snarly wait people and store clerks found, for example, in some east coast establishments. They don’t even say thank you, let alone "Have a nice day."

Given the choice I'll take false friendliness to open hostility.

A friendly thank you or even "Have a nice day" shows that a server at least has good manners. And good manners help to keep society civil, which judging from the House of Representatives (brought to you by the Tea Party), is not a bad thing.

So now that I’ve made a hostile comment about the Tea Party, I will sign off. But before I go, I really do hope you have a nice day.

You Know You’re from Scottsbluff If …

There is a big new trend on Facebook: hometown nostalgia pages. The one I'm interested in, You Know You're from Scottsbluff If ..., has become so popular I can't keep up with all the posts.

Not surprisingly, food figures prominently in the discussions. It's not for nothing that the Nebraska city was once named one of the fattest in the country. It seems people scattered around the world savor the memory of  Scotty's burgers and fries, rumbas, a rum flavored Coke beverage from the Dash In (Dash Out to the Dash In), and Taco Town.

Of course, non-food things are also remembered such as the elevator at Penneys when Penneys was downtown, stores staying open late every Thursday, the zoo being free, and a hair salon which used its phone number in a catchy radio jingle that remains entrenched in our minds four decades later (Six Three Two, Thirty-Two Ten, The Barber Den).

I only lived eight years in Scottsbluff, compared to 22 in Denver, which I consider my home town. But I have to admit that those eight years were formative, and since I was graduated from high school there, I suppose Sco-blo deserves at least honorary hometown status.

In the 70s (maybe still today), bluffers were a very proud people. We were different from, better than, the rest of Nebraska which was flat and humid and boring. Our town was built, along with twin city Gering, at the base of the magnificent bluff where trapper Hiram Scott was said to have died in the 1840s. Easterners (that is, people from Omaha and Lincoln) had no idea what a treasure existed way out in the panhandle.

 Scottsbluff wasn't huge but it had two TV stations (both now defunct, I think), an airport, traffic jams (when you had to wait for a long coal train at the crossing), movie theatres, a symphony, an art center, and lots of shopping which attracted those unfortunates who lived in smaller panhandle towns. Around 1980 when the mall opened we thought we were really big stuff.

Scottsbluff was a good place to be a kid. You could ride your bike everywhere including the zoo and the movie theatre. There were enough people there to make a lot of friends, but few enough that you always saw someone you knew when you were out.

Certainly there was no anonymity. Corporal Paul Manley of the Nebraska State Patrol (who had his  own radio spots – think the Shane Company but about driving safely) went to our church and reported to my mother that I'd run a stop sign. Yeesh. There was another time when I was goofing around in the street with a friend and a woman yelled out her front door, "Bill Calkins, does your mother know what you're doing?" I'm not going to say what it was. You'll have to guess.

Coming out as gay in Scottsbluff was very public regardless of whether I wanted it to be. Like all small communities, tongues wagged. Minds weren't always open and many of us fled at the first opportunity. I couldn’t wait to escape to the urban east, Lincoln, where indeed I did experience more diversity. I've since learned, however, that closed minds and gossip aren't limited to Scottsbluff or small towns in general. You can find ignorance everywhere.

I suppose we get nostalgic about hometowns because they help define who we are. The common experiences of a having shared a high school, dragging Broadway, and eating cabbage burgers at Bailey's Town and Country unites many of us who otherwise would have very little in common.

Bailey's and the Dash In no longer exist. But I understand Scotty's is just as good as ever. I feel a road trip coming on ...