SEPTEMBER 15, 2019 – Metaphors can work like 3-D glasses in a movie theater, revealing features not readily discernible otherwise.
Consider for a moment, eating establishments—dives, diners, delis, oyster bars, steakhouses, club houses, fast-food franchises, and upper crust/uppercut restaurants. They’re as varied as people.
Speaking of whom . . . I often wonder what contrasts might distinguish people’s public statements from their private thoughts; their public appearances from their dirty laundry—literal and figurative; the façades of their houses from the face of their tweets. As I contemplate the possibilities, I think of restaurants.
Most eating establishments are separated between “back and front”; between where the food is stored and prepared and where it’s presented and consumed. Take the simplest eating establishment—the hotdog vendor on a crowded street of the central business district. The vendor sells “all beef” dogs out of an aluminum cart, fully equipped with mustard and ketchup dispensers and packets of relish. He also hawks chips and soda. To retrieve a steaming hot dog, he opens a lid on the top of the cart and reaches in with a pair of tongs.
As with a lot of people, what you see is pretty much what you get: hotdog in a white bun, condiments, chips in a bag, Coke in a can. Fine. But how long have the dogs been steamin’ there under that lid? Where were they before that? And what’s inside those hot dogs? You might not want to know the answer to any of those questions.
Likewise with the person who seems to hold no secrets—examine the person’s inner secrets too closely, and you’d wish you hadn’t.
Now try the opposite end of the spectrum—a restaurant where refinement of fare and surroundings win acclaim and command high prices; metaphor for an Ivy League alum, smart, well-to-do, tan (but not overly so), a regular at the opera, a champion of charitable causes, charismatic in every way and the Democrats’ best hope to unseat a Republican in the next Senate race. A six-star restaurant and a six-star candidate on a five-star chart.
In the kitchen of the fancy place you might find quite different conditions from the posh, subdued dining room, where the waitperson in formalwear pours fine wine while the music of Vivaldi sounds softly in the background. Back where the food is assembled, you stumble over boxes of weary produce in need of a power-wash and see cuts of raw beef patrolled by flies. You encounter platter scraps being auto-scraped into receptacles; a foul-mouthed sous-chef spraying his saliva over chopped romaine as he grouses about his pay; on the receiving end, a chef with a ready temper wielding a very sharp cleaver. A few minutes in there and you think twice about the complimentary review you’d planned to post about the Caesar salad, the filet mignon, and the overall “fine dining experience.”
Similarly, the “six-star wonder” running for Senate might be wearing yesterday’s socks and thinking dumb, smelly thoughts behind that smile and those melliferous words.
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
