Disappointment, on a plate.

Life is full of disappointments, especially for the young. I guess once you have experienced enough of them you probably stop noticing them. It probably just seems like most of your great disappointments come from childhood. Of course, there are disappointments and then there are disappointments. Not all the disappointments of childhood would scar you for life. I have one in my mind that stayed with me all these years. Not a life changing event but since it still lingers, it must have had more significance than I thought.

We weren't poor when I grew up in Nova Scotia. Not poor, but not rich either. My Dad was a laborer, he had steady work but he didn't make a lot of money. Both my parents had survived the depression. The depression was one of those experiences that you survive. You don't just live through it, you survive it. It shapes you, it changes you. We have all heard the comedy sketches about how our parents walked to school, barefoot in the snow, uphill both ways. I had heard them a hundred times. Only a lot of it was true. My Mother would tell us how she only saw an orange at Christmas. I knew it was true. My Dad would tell us how my Grandad had shot five moose one winter it was the only meat they had all winter. My siblings and I relived the depression vicariously., through my parents stories.

The depression may have been over but my Mother wasn't totally out of it even in the sixties. She made the money that my Dad brought home go a long way. We always had food on the table, but it wasn't necessarily the same fare others ate. Steak for instance was not on my Mother's shopping radar. We got ham, we got chops, we got burger, but steak was not on our menu. It was something I had eaten a few times, at my older sister's, while on the farm where we ate our own beef. I am sure we had it at home, I just don't recall It. One thing I for sure had never had was steak in a restaurant. We didn't eat in a lot of restaurants and when we did they weren't often the ones that sold steaks. Generally they were the basic places, on holidays we would always stop for a treat at one of the hundreds of drive-ins on the way down to Yarmouth down the Annapolis valley. They were small places with huge parking lots. They always had the word Dairy in the name. Dairy Dream, Dairy Freeze, Dairy Stop, like that. We always got a soft serve cone, usually dipped in chocolate. I always felt gypped if they didn't have chocolate dip. We would often get restaurant food when we got home from holidays too, KFC, yummy hot chicken, what a treat. Other than that it was the occasional diner or the restaurant in the K-Mart or the Met. Not really steak places.

When I was old enough, my Mom made it clear that I was to get a part-time job. I liked this it gave me some money and some independence. One day my school chums and I were on our own in downtown Halifax on a field trip. I had a few dollars in my pocket for lunch which would not be from a brown bag on this auspicious day, no sir we would be having lunch in a restaurant, without parents or older siblings to supervise us. We were on our own. The sun shone brightly as we walked briskly down Robie street past the Hospitals, past the Public Gardens, past the blocks of Victorian houses. We reached the Willow Tree, one of the busiest intersections in Halifax. There stood the Holiday Inn. One of my pals, Mike, Martin, Jed or Lorne said "Hey, there;s a restaurant in here!" We were all hungry and with youthful enthusiasm we filed in and took a booth. The waitress brought menus. We each got one, just like adults. I opened mine and the choices seemed endless, my eyes scanned the pages, but soon they lit upon a culinary delight. Steak!. My mouth watered, in my mind I could see it, seared to perfection, the grill marks, the faint blush at the center, delicious.

The most important thing was the price. It was no more expensive than any of the other items on the menu. Odd, I thought but I wasn't looking a gift piece of beef in the mouth. The waitress arrived and the guys gave their orders, spaghetti, a couple of clubhouses, a burger or two, were they crazy? Not a single one had ordered the steak. I placed my order with gusto. The waitress never even blinked. She must have recognized me as a man of means a fellow of some import who was used to ordering steak. My friends too had totally ignored the steak on the menu. Should I apprise them of their omission? Should I extole the virtue of glorious steak? How could they settle for pasta and burgers? Especially when the price was the same? Maybe they ate steak at home all the time. Maybe they were used to steak., even tired of steak. I shuddered, how could anyone tire of steak? I kept quiet. All too soon they would see me slicing open that tender cut of beef, soon they would be watching my plate with envious eyes, wishing they too had ordered the steak. I sat a little taller in the booth. I carefully arranged the cutlery the waitress had brought. She had given me a steak knife, a large one with thick wooden handle and deeply serrated blade. I took special care to line it up straight beside my plate, it's gleaming blade facing away from the plate.

The food began to arrive and my hungry chums descended on it like wolves. Not me I thought. When my plate arrived I would spend time savoring over it. This was a moment of grand importance, my first restaurant steak. This was like a rite of passage! A highlight in the journey to manhood. I would cut it into bite sized chunks first and savour each one. I would ask for steak sauce! That's what I would do, steak sauce! That would get the boys goat. What a moment that would be. I looked the length of the table, everyone was eating busily. And then, across the room I saw the waitress, she was carrying the oblong platter, not a plain round plate , but an oblong platter, needed to hold so fine a feast. I wouldn't even touch the vegetables till I was totally done the steak. I didn't want to fill myself up on veggies. I could have those any day.
The waitress slid the platter in front of me. I looked down, my world which had been spinning so swiftly suddenly came to a screeching halt. I half expected plates to slide from the table. For there in front of me was a hamburger patty smothered in gravy.The waitress looked at my face. She said "Something wrong, honey, you did order the Salisbury Steak didn't you?" .
Like I said you get the most acute disappointments in childhood. I was in Salisbury this summer, that's what made me think of this trauma. You know what, don't even order the Salisbury Steak in Salisbury England they won't know what you are talking about. It is not named after them. Lucky buggers.