Buttered Toast

I grew up in a tiny Missouri town, population 103, about 40 miles east of Kansas City. Sometimes on Saturday morning we went to “The City” in our green Plymouth sedan, my dad at the wheel, cruising at 40 mph on Highway 40 toward our shopping mecca.

Downtown Kansas City then was a busy retail center with locally owned department stores such as Harzfeld’s; Adler’s; The Jones Store Co.; and Emery, Bird, Thayer*. For two hours Mother and I went from store to store, looking for whatever my mother, a clotheshorse, had in mind – high-heeled shoes from Harzfeld’s for her, a coat for me at Adler’s, or white gloves for church at Emery, Bird, Thayer.

All this time my dad, not a shopper, sat in a huge waiting room equipped with comfy leather chairs at Emery, Bird, Thayer. About noon Mother and I met him there and we all went to lunch, sometimes at Myron Green cafeteria or the Forum cafeteria, but often at Emery, Bird, Thayer’s lovely tea room.

One of my most vivid memories of lunching at Emery, Bird, Thayer was the day when, after perusing the menu, I announced that I wanted buttered toast.

“Shirley Carol, you can have buttered toast at home,” my mother scolded. “Order something else.”

I don’t know what I chose in lieu of buttered toast. I only know that I was embarrassed to prefer a lowly, homey food to the more elegant offerings.

Seventy years later I still prefer buttered toast. Now I don’t order it in restaurants because their’s doesn’t hold a candle to the buttered toast I eat at home almost every morning. Still, I’ll always wonder how the buttered toast at Emery, Bird, Thayer would have tasted.

*Although the Emery, Bird, Thayer Co. building was on the National Register of Historic Places, it was torn down in 1971. For a history of store go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emery,_Bird,_Thayer_Dry_Goods_Company  I borrowed Wikipedia's illustration for this post.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer