Family Food and Family Fences
Before leaving Malone, New York, we decided to go to the restaurant across from the gas station to get some supper. It turned out to be a fun choice.
The vintage sign and the carved bear by the entrance matched . . .
. . . the antique and homey design we saw inside. Above the mantle was a photo of Ed Sansone Sr. selling watermelons out of a truck in 1914.
The Sansone family established the restaurant in 1939, while America was still suffering through the Great Depression and two years before Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor.
As we waited for our take-out, we had time to explore the antique artifacts around the restaurant, including these ice skates (from the 1800s) and roller skates.
The tables were conversation starters. One table had once been a wagon wheel. Others were more traditional square or rectangle shapes. All had a layer of glass over a wooden tray partially filled with sand. Eclectic vintage objects were scattered on the sand. I saw earrings, beads, marbles, and a local county sheriff patch, . . .
. . . a bumper sticker encouraging voters to choose President Richard Nixon for a second term, . . .
. . . and the metal insignia for a Belvedere, a car made from 1954 to 1970 by Chrysler’s Plymouth division– among dozens and dozens of other little things.
As I chatted with our young server, she told me that she had only been there for two weeks, but that it was a great place to work. Maybe that’s a key to staying in business for the last 78 years.
I told our server that we had been out to the Wilder farm. She told me that her great uncle made the split rail fences we saw there. She told me that her great uncle is gone now, but that all of their family’s houses have his fences.
I also told our server that we were headed for the Adirondacks. When we got our food, she had decorated our box with this greeting.
Family food. Family fences. Working together. Sticking with it. Serving one another. Appreciating one another. Family is a blessing and the work and sticking with it and serving one another and showing appreciation are worth it. Families bless their members and they bless the world. God planned it just that way.
Be devoted to one another in brotherly love;
give preference to one another in honor;
not lagging behind in diligence,
fervent in spirit, serving the Lord;
Romans 12:10-11