The homework wars have started – three weeks ago – and I am letting loose of my last thread of summer vacation. Raising just one single child can deflate a person, so I hang onto threads of glory. Summer trips are woven of especially strong fiber.
We were in Wisconsin. If there is a place less exotic I cannot name it. We like it like that. Mickie’s Dairy Bar is in Madison, 100 miles south of, and world’s apart from, Appleton, where I was born and spent my first nine years.
When I was a collegiate dilettante in Madison I could never get enough to eat. Teen metabolism is a miracle. Mickie’s malts were a mainstay (morning-after medicine) and they taste just as good now. The burger buns have improved – immensely. Homemade now, slightly sweet and tender, with a dairy-state butter burnished top, they are the perfect burger envelope. We were not unhappy with the potato salad either.
Meal times in Wisconsin can be brain stumpers. Do you have room for a sandwich before that dessert?? The dessert part was a given.
The gateway to Door County, Sturgeon Bay, is a short ways up Wisconsin’s “thumb” and home to Perry’s Cherry Diner, where they do make excellent pie. I’m suspicious of pie in public places – have to inspect it closely from all angles, smell it, and poke at the crust a bit before venturing a taste. Ate it all up at Perry’s, same as the last 10 years.
“North of the tension line” is Washington Island, remote, windswept, bright and beautiful.
A snappy, mustard-dressed brat to wet my whistle for the…
ice cream! At the Albatross, a 32-year-old drive in on Washington Island.
About bringing up a boy, I’ve said this before and now I’ll say it again (these are not my words, alas): The hours are interminable and the years evaporate. An hour spent with a third-grader in front of a mess ‘o homework is in-effing-terminable. The homework itself is not the obstruction. It’s the getting to, sitting down with, finding the pencil, remembering the assignment, messing around, fidgeting, resisting, objecting, daydreaming, mom mom momming, that drains me dry. I believe the same is true for much of daily life. Resisting compounds the difficulty.
And now back to ranting about the Olympic athletes promoting McDonald’s. Try explaining that to an 8-year-old.
The Lunch Encounter 
OMG that is totally true about 8-year-olds and homework!
only i have now have to toss in football practice three times a week.
I feel for you with the football. I eagerly await the day my son gets his black belt in tae kwon do and we can stop going twice weekly!
This is all making me so homesick I could cry. One of my favorite memories from my wedding weekend is people meeting at Mickey’s on Friday for breakfast. It was the first time (some of) the Lippincott side met the Gabel side…over Mickey’s gigantic pancakes in my ‘hood, it was a beautiful thing!