Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1902-08-14

When the great majority of the
quick-lunch-room proprietors of New
York agreed last week to raise the
price of beef an" also of ham an, y
from 10 to Is cents, and their momen-
tous decision was duly, if somewhat
jocularly, recorded in the papers, the
surprising fact developed that there
are actually to be found men and
women in this city who do not know
what beef an is, says the New York
Tribune
Beef and what?" asked a downtown
business man, as he read lis paper go
ing home on the L.
We'll, you don't know beans, for q
fact his companion laughed.
That's it, eh?'' said the first. but
how should know whether it is beans
Or cabbage? l never go to that sort
Of a place to eat
And there are thousands more like
this man, who never went to that
sort Of place" to eat, or have care
fully forgotten that they ever had to
How 'the other half eats is unknown
to them. They enter a cafe where
the linen is liberal and snowy, give
their order confidentially to silent
waiter, and by and by their fooi
comes to them under a cover. There
is something private, even intimate
about the whole process, however
crowded the cafe. They do not know
the strange sensation-strange al
first-of having ones order "belloweG
through the hail. of drinking coffee
out of handleless cups so thick they
stretch the mouth to rim them; and
greatest loss of all, they do not know
the curious system of abbreviatior
that prevails in such places-abbre
viations that are often metaphors in
the rough, and of which ham an
is only faint suggestion.
If you are new to this style of g
lunch-room, you enter, sit down at a
bare and not too clean table and wait
quietly to be served. You are likely
to wait some time, but while you wait
you hear a bare-armed waiter roal
down passage, "Sind up the goat.
That's easy. You know he wants
more butter. Then he cries, "Beei
an" and you know that plate o
Bostons" isn't hard, either But Make
it two, sunny side up" is a staggerer
However, the solution is simple-twc
eggs fried on one side only.
Finally you get tired of waiting
and by pounding a glass with a spoor
and sundry gesticulations you get &
waiter to come to you. "Give me some
poached eggs on toast" you say, 'ant
cup of Coffee
The waiter turns toward the kitchen
and shouts, 'tNoah on a raft" Their
he wheels toward the steaming
polished coffee tanks and cries, "Drav
one!"
"Say," you call, with an after
thought, 81 guess I'll make thai
scrambled eggs on toast"
Wreck Noah," calls the waiter
solemnly
The strange thing may well seem tc
be that you get what you ordered.
There are many such phrases, some
Of them common to all the 'tgrub-on
the-run'' places, some of them local
ga little on the COW" is milk
DRAW one-black" is coffee without
milk. Zone up" is not golf, but sym
Dol meaning that the waiter who calls
has another cup of coffee coming to
him. "Off the griddle" means butter
cakes-those deadly bullets, or
rather, small cannon balls of dough
which are commonly known to the
hardy eaters thereof as "sinkers," but
which it is high treason to call by
that name within the lunchroom.
"Put up the flag" means macaroni
Just why, no one seems able to ex.
plain, though there is vaguely felt to
be some subtle reference to Yankee
Doodle and the Stars and Stripes
Brown the wheats" means simply
an order of buckwheat pancakes,
while 1.-TWO in three" signifies that
somebody wants two eggs boiled three
minutes. "Red, white and blue" is
a plate of mixed ice-cream.
The crown Of the collection, however
is to be found On the Bowery, where
there is much poetry in the block, any
way. There if you should happen to
have the sort of a taste that demands