Breakfast at Tiffany's

I don’t remember why I left Dairy Queen, but one summer when I was in college I decided to apply at the Colonial House of Pancakes. I had good memories of rainy summer mornings at the pancake house, when we were tourists rather than residents. I always had the same thing:  chocolate pancakes drizzled with chocolate syrup and covered with whipped cream and a cherry. My brother had something called a “funny face plate” which was a pancake with bacon, cherries, and eggs on it to make the shape of a face. What was not to love? Summer mornings were busy at the pancake house, and I was tired of minimum wage—I imagined my apron pocket bursting with bills at the end of the day.

The “colonial” theme was still going strong, but that would change over the years. I am not sure what our forefathers would have made of deep-fried potato nuggets, or the bright red "strawberry" syrup at each table, but we had uniforms to help customers make the connection. Our first uniform was exactly like a French maid outfit but with a longer skirt—a black dress with a flared skirt, white piping on the neck and sleeves, and a white apron. I know we probably didn’t have a bonnet but we should have. I ended up giving the uniform to a college friend who wanted to dress like a “slutty maid” one Halloween. That was after the colonial theme had been dropped and we were now known by the name “CHOP.” We were instructed by management to call it "CHOP," too, not by the old name, which (inexplicably) resulted in many customers inquiring whether we were now a Chinese restaurant. If the new uniform revealed a clue to the revised theme, it eluded us:  it was the single most matronly outfit I have worn in my life—a cheap, calf-length polyester wrap-around skirt in industrial blue, with a brown plaid button-down shirt and navy apron. So cheap that the material had no weight to it, so cheap it wouldn't get wet when immersed in water.

A few Gilford students worked there—Brett, who graduated the year after us and whom I remembered for two things:  he was Erin Stimson’s boyfriend, and he had achieved an “A” in Mr. Lord’s physics class while I had barely scraped by with a D. Mary, who had the nicest hair I had ever seen (long, straight, shiny, and naturally blonde, in the late 80s when everyone wore it frizzy, processed, and huge.) But mostly, I remember Tiffany (not her real name). Tiffany was not from Gilford, but she knew a lot of Gilford people. She was someone my mother might call “a piece of work.” Tiffany had bleached blonde hair, a constant tan, and a raucous laugh that you could hear from outside the building. Although she was a waitress, she had the most expensive car in the parking lot, customers included:  a bright red Camaro complete with vanity plates that she always parked diagonally in two spots. She was older than the rest of us, but not by much, and her approach to her work was to make every customer hers—she would sit on bikers' laps, hug the regulars when they came in the door, joke with the older men, tell the women how beautiful they looked and how cute their kids were. We all thought she was a big faker, but she raked in the tips. This ambition was not limited to the pancake house—Tiffany was enrolled in Master’s Program and had big plans. Next to Tiffany, I felt like an immature slacker, even though by then I was in an MA program myself. The exchange with customers went like this:

Oh, you’re in a Master’s Program? Like Tiffany? I hear she’s going to open her own business.

Not like her program. In literature.

                   Pause. Oh. What are you going to do with that?  

The 1980s did not end well for Tiffany, or, for that matter, for the Colonial House of Pancakes. An unexpected pregnancy, the loss of her first professional job,   and all sorts of complications led to her transformation from object of scorn and envy to cautionary tale (“Don't spend more on a car than you can afford...look at what happened to Tiffany." "Tiffany was cheap with the busboys' tips, too, and look how she turned out.." )

As for CHOP, it became an Italian restaurant for a while and then closed for good. An internet search of “Colonial House of Pancakes Gilford” led me to a business trademark website that showed the various logos of pancake houses. Underneath the silhouette of the man in the colonial hat serving a big dish of pancakes were the words: “trademark: dead."


Which I guess is just as well. Visiting friends in Champaign, Illinois one year, we went to an "Original Pancake House" (a chain) and they served, instead of the little containers of half-and-half, pitchers of heavy cream to go with the coffee. You poured it in and it separated into chunky curdles. They garnished the pancakes with ice-cream scoops of butter. It was much easier to gain weight at the pancake house than at Dairy Queen, and that's saying something.