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Shanks and Schnitzels

We decided to have lunch somewhere interesting, just because
autumn is in the air.  We settled on a German restaurant
in Uptown:  Let us call it, "The Schwarzwald Inn";
something like that; something close enough to that.

Mari said that years and a marriage ago she had eaten there,
and the Black Forest Schwarzwald Inn has been on a list
of places we should go to, sometime.  Today was sometime.

The door was unlocked.  Over in a corner, a Lonesome
Soul was sitting alone, imitating a Lonesome Dűrer.
The patio was unpopulated, but pleasant, with a fountain,
so we sat there until the Black Forest fountain spilled over
and started to flood the brickwork.  "The Rhine is flooding!",
we told the waitress, and moved inside.

We weren't there for the Oktoberfest; just a nice lunch.
While in Portland, Oregon, we had gone to the Berlin Inn
and had splendid food in a converted house.  I wanted
more Vienerschnitzel, and Mari ordered pork shank.
I paid extra to get veal instead of pork because, as it turns out,
it is much easier to crisp a piece of veal than it is pork.

What a miserable and wonderful lunch!  The Rhine wine
was exquisite, and the sauerkraut was not just sauer, but cranky.
Mari's pork shank was pork.  And the veal cutlet that I had paid
extra for was a model for people who like their bacon crisp.

It was a pleasant lunch.  Almost nobody was there.
We tried our best to remember whether we had ever
eaten worse food.  We are still working on that.
It was so bad we enjoyed it.


Ruth Davis used to teach mathematics at Luther College.
"That," she said when she came out of the college chapel
for the first time, "is an experiment I will not repeat!"
I wish Ruth could have been with us this morning.

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