My family and I enjoyed dinner at Perkins recently and we got to thinking of how many memories our family had there. Isn't it funny: memories at a restaurant?
But let us think back...
My family has always liked Perkins. After one of us had a preschool show or event, the whole family would hop in the car and celebrate with a Perkins lunch. (I still walk past that preschool regularly; although I can't remember any specific days, I always get the feeling that an event just ended and that I should be going out to eat!) We had a round table in the back that became our favorite.
You had to love the atmosphere. You were greeted with pink, green, white and brown; cases full of baked goods; Give Kids the World advertising; a claw machine; and numbers. Scattered throughout the ceilings were number lines going from 1 to 10 (or 13? 15? 16?). When an order was ready a number would light up, playing a doorbell sound.
The kids menus were titled Kid Perks and featured a boy in a backwards baseball cap giving a thumbs up. On those were various activities. (Later, they would be activity packets with characters such as Kelly Cookie which my sister with the same name was the butt of many jokes about). I remember my best friend showing off her cursive letters on one of those kids menus once.
But food choices were always easy. I always got a chocolate milk complete with a plastic cup, and the Perky Bear Pancakes. Those were three chocolate pancakes with chocolate chips. One was the face and two smaller pancakes were the ears. These were topped with a dollop of butter. (They still give you butter scoops, often in their own cups). Another favorite meal of mine was the Captain's Catch, a plate of flounder, fried clams, shrimp and fries.
What to do while waiting? There were the kids menu activities. Mom would always pack the crayons in her purse when we left, When my youngest sister was very young, she would have my mom sing the ABCs and when she'd finish, it was assumed that the food would be ready. Mom obviously didn't know how long it would take, so she'd begin and make mistakes. When a mistake happened, she's have to start over. My sister never caught on! What we also loved to do was stack the half and half cups and jelly pouches to make towers. If my grandparents were there, we'd often help my grandpa stir creamer in his coffee, and pick out the right sugar pack (a blue Equal).
On the way out, it was home to check out the dessert. The pies always looked pretty, with swirls of topping and peanut butter cups and chocolate shavings. It was the cookies we went for, though. If my grandparents were there, Grandpa would always insist on getting the buy 3 get three free special. If it was just me and them, I'd go home with a lot of cookies! The brownies were tempting, but they were topped with nuts (no thank you). Mom always went for elephant ears, which looked like huge sugar cookies.
There was one last step: the claw machine. Ours has never worked well and is pretty much a scam; the claw is too loose to grab anything well. Still, it was always fun to try; Mom digging out quarters from her purse. We may when won two or three times. But the best was when I was with my grandparents and sisters. The youngest wanted to try for something, so we did, knowing it wouldn't pan out, likely. Completely by accident, the beak of a stuffed eagle got stuck on the claw and l held on until it moved back to its original position! We hadn't even tried for that but it remans a memory to this day.
Any particular places my visitors liked eating at?
