take off your top hat and gloves

top hat and gloves, originally uploaded by jill y.

I got an email today saying the Hat was closing. The Hat, as was generally known, was the longest operating restaurant in Edmonton, having opened its art deco door in 1912. According to this, it was also the longest cafe in Alberta. And I believe it having schlepped burgers and milkshakes there for a while. I wish I had a good shot of the inside. It went straight back. Booths lined the wall each with a little juke box. Back then they also had all these original old movie posters that they restaurant would get from the Paramount theatre next door. I bet it was really something something back in the 40's and 50's. Go see a flick at the Paramount and then grab a booth at the Hat. Jeannie was the tea leaf reader for probably 20 years. And that was the thing to do: Go to the Hat and have a plate of fries and get your leaves read.

I was a waitress there when I was about 19 or 20. I had the back 20 booths or so. It was dive. A real sketchy sketcherama. I remember these insanely steep stairs that went down into the basement where the bathrooms were. No amount of scrubbing would ever get that place clean. Even the spoons were greasy but people ate there all the time. Regulars would come in for coffee. Punk and teenagers sharing plates of fries and ketchup. Breakfast was served all day. I'll never forget the time I ate a burger on my break and ended up in the hospital a week later with E-Coli bacteria. I got fired for being "unreliable" because I had been sedated with Demerol, close to death and unable to call in.

I used to know these 2 guys that would come in and have fried egg sandwiches and a side of pancakes every Saturday. Once they wrote me a poem on a napkin as a tip. I kept it all these years:

Ode to the Hat

Haven, sweet haven
this chicken tastes like raven.
And the soup, oh the soup
such a swill, I am craving'.
Pour me a coffee.
Cut me a pie.
Fill my troph in this sty.
Let the music fill my heart
as I vomit up a tart.
No, but really we just jest
for in our eternal restaurant quest
for fine cuisine and service best:
We found a place our soul may rest.
But that was never so before,
this place pack then was such a bore.
A dreary luncheon it sure was
and that is so because because
there wasn't Jill and her cute fuzz
Oh, such a girly there never was.
Thank you Silk, for your warm magnesium milk.

Kisses, Brett and Geoff

and on the back:

In a world that can do nothing but hurt,
these pancakes will exist with a quick squirt.

That pretty much sums it up. So long Silk Hat.