Goines On: Breakfast out

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A week after Goines’ 77th birthday, the Goineses had buffet breakfast in Chapel Hill at the Carolina Inn’s Crossroads restaurant. A friend had given them a gift card for dinner there, but they opted to use it for a couple of breakfast outings, so that they could overeat early in the day and not have to risk lying down on a fullish stomach. Also not have to drive at night.
    The outing seemed magical. The Inn’s renovations were new to them. Goines couldn’t remember when they had been there last. Even a waitress’ bumping her elbow on a partition and spilling coffee on the table and a bit of coffee onto Mrs. Goines didn’t spoil it. Goines even remarked to the waitress at the table they were moved to after the spill (Alice) that he felt sorry that the other waitress’ day had to start with an accident like that, and would Alice please tell her he hoped her day would be better from there on out. Alice said she would and asked whether they would like a glass of orange juice. They would.

    Goines started with his favorite that he had more than half the time at home: granola on plain yogurt. He topped it with some fine-looking blueberries, blackberries, and sliced strawberries. A server at the buffet counter asked him what kind of milk he would like for the cereal. “Skimmed,” Goines told him. Back at the table, Goines saw that a little pitcher of milk already sat there, and he poured the whole thing onto his concoction and started to eat. “Not overly sweet,” he exclaimed to Mrs. G, who smiled and nodded with pleasure. The server arrived with a pitcher of skimmed milk, and Goines said he’d gone ahead with what was on the table. “That was cream,” the server said. It was delicious, Goines thought, and beamed. Most creamy!
    After a plate of scrambled eggs, potatoes, grits, bacon, a carrot-&-bran muffin, and a pain au chocolat, Goines just sat there feeling royal. Mrs. Goines, too, who had started out with a plate – but with sausage as well, although not the potatoes or pain au chocolate – sat there at perhaps equal ease.
    Alice came and asked whether they would like for her to remove their plates. “Uh, no,” said Goines, “not yet. I’m just resting.” He smiled and took a languorous breath. Mrs. Goines said, “We have already eaten quite a bit more than we would have at home.” Goines smiled and continued to rest, looking around the restaurant, out the window along Cameron street, where, just a block away, he thought, to the left, his high school Latin teacher had belonged to a fraternity before his graduation from Carolina in 1950. Nineteen-fifty, Goines thought, seventy years ago this June. And the teacher had visited them in Chapel Hill when he came for his 40th class reunion….

    Goines said to Alice, “Alice, before you were born, we and our children spent our very first week in North Carolina in the Carolina Inn.” “That was in June 1983,” Mrs. Goines said. “The University still employed the Inn’s staff then,” she added.
    Alice left them to contemplate what else they might serve themselves from the buffet, but in short order Goines realized that he was already feeling over-full, and no more food could be on his breakfast menu that day. Mrs. Goines observed that it took a few minutes for such realizations to set in.
    Goines’ friend who had given them the gift card had informed them that the Carolina Inn was now managed by Hyatt, so it was a Hyatt gift card. And when Alice returned, Goines showed an image of the card’s bar code (it was in his Apple wallet on his iPhone), and she wrote down its number and pin number and said she’d be back with his receipt. In five minutes, another member of the staff came out. “We’re trying to figure out how to process a gift card,” he said. “Sorry for the delay.” The Goineses just smiled. They were in no hurry to leave. “Would you like to see it?” Goines asked the staffer. “It wasn’t a physical card; I got an email.” Goines found the email and clicked on its link to the card. He showed the screen to the staffer, who said, “Ah,” and nodded. “I hope it won’t be much longer,” he said.
    Afterwards, Goines enjoyed texting his friend that his gift card seemed to have been the first one that the restaurant had to try to figure out what to do with.

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