Trees, Vines and Bushes

Here’s an excerpt from my weekly, Substack, newsletter, called Love Me Avenue. You can subscribe HERE, and never miss an edition, no matter substitute mail carriers and nonexistent paper delivery people and paywalls and robot messages reminding you that you should be ashamed for getting something for free. At least, that is, until the greed sets in here on the Loveboat.

The Coffee Shop

Random destination is the Culinary Institute of America and a collegiate course called “Coffee Shop,” in which the students run a diner called “The Coffee Shop”—trading off duties of cooking, cleaning, and dishwashing—ensuring an absurdly high level of quality in all areas—in other words, how all restaurants should be run. As described by Jane and Michal Stern in the 1977 edition of Roadfood. The Sterns, no strangers to the hit and miss nature of the “greasy spoon,” found this culinary oddball to be a surreal experience—and were we to use our time machine, so would we—especially as far as prices go, compared to today. You can find some old, archived menus on the C.I.A. website—amusing—coffee 25 cents, pie 55 cents, etc. I decided I had to pick one fancy item suited for my diet, so I landed on: “Trees, Vines and Bushes”—seasonal fruit with their own sherbet, or yogurt, or cottage cheese, and their own dressing—for a whopping $2.25. I didn’t go so far as to examine their current course of study (or tuition), so I’m not sure if they still have the diner course or not (maybe someone will let me know), or if they have courses in restaurant politics, and dealing with substance abusing co-workers, etc. The map of the area, along the Hudson River and Highway 9, near Hyde Park, NY (just north of Poughkeepsie) shows no less than six restaurants on campus, with various themes—and also a student cafeteria called “The Egg.” Egg is a really funny word—and it’s also a versatile food. As chicken eggs have eclipsed caviar, price-wise anyway, I’ve temporarily altered my everyday menu. Tofu is and always will be a funny word, as well. We might be the last generation who ate eggs at diners (as well as the last who remember diners). But I won’t continue with this pessimism, for now.

Young people rarely (i.e., never) ask me for advice, due to my lack of success (most people assume they can figure out how to be a loser on their own), but were they to, I’d recommend going to some kind of college related to what they want to do—as much as anything, for making contacts that will help them out, post-school. Everyone knows that, though (well, I didn’t), but how to decide what you want to do—and to pay for tuition? Don’t ask me, kids! Maybe learn skills that will still be skills after the ridiculous pace of technological change makes so many skills obsolete. Cutting hair, for instance—hair continues to grow. Try to predict what might have a “comeback,” like actual drums, and written language. And you could do worse than learning everything about cooking, and I’m guessing there are many fine schools—some, even, close by. This C.I.A. looks interesting, to me—and it’s funny they call it CIA, which is also the name of a band (plus a few other bands), and the California Institute of Abnormalarts, and the U.S. government Central Intelligence Agency—who, like Subway, are “always hiring.” Though, I guess, soon to become the A.I.A. Anyway, chef school—you could do worse. If it doesn’t get you a job, it’s still true that the way to a man (and/or woman’s) heart (and, by extension, pants) is through their stomach… so there’s always that.

And if anyone knows where I can get an order of Trees, Vines and Bushes—locally, and preferably for delivery—on a Sunday evening, let me know.

—Randy Russell 3.9.25