This Month

THIS IS the season when the out-ofstate cars turn homeward. Their back windows, by this time, hear so many stickers of caverns, waterfalls, birthplaces, and spouting rocks that we can barely discern Doakes’s two extra suits hanging in the back seat. He has toured conscientiously, and if it took an extra fifty-mile swing for him to watch Overhanging Rock overhang, he did it and there is the sticker to document his feat. No use coming all the way East — or West — and not really seeing the sights, and there is certainly no use in coming this near to Griggsville and not having a meal at the High Tariff Inn.

What — never heard of the High Tariff Inn at Griggsville? Why, that’s the place that made Griggsville famous: terrific portions, wonderful old-fashioned cooking, everything homemade, meringue on their lemon pie that thick! The High Tariff is in all the books, too, and Doakes meets its first road signs a good three hours away. Even the signs themselves are famous; just “High Farid Inn— Home Cooking” — that’s all.

Doakes passes up several pleasantlooking alternatives on his sprint to Griggsville and eventually turns into the blucstone of High Tariff’s vast parking area. It’s full of cars. High Tariff is a bigger place than Doakes had expected, but he can make out the original building — the one that’s on all the postcards — between the two long dining rooms on either side of it. A third wing seems to be under construction towards the rear.

Doakes puts on a fresh jacket, locks up the car, and leads his family up to the old colonial doorway. The tiny hall inside is crowded. Hot too, very hot. They wedge themselves in and await developments. A drink will help, Doakes tells his wife, once they get through the crush. Some minutes drag by and Doakes is relieved when a competent-looking woman, plainly a kind of deputy hostess, finally greets him. “ Welcome to High Tariff!” says the hostess. “We’ll have your table ready before long.” She hands Doakes a ticket and shows the family into a large parlor. All they have to do is wait until the Doakes number — 517 — is called. No, nothing alcoholic at High Tariff. Sorry, but we’ve never gone in for that sort of thing — just simple home cooking. No bar, no cocktails, no wine, no beer — not at High Tariff Inn.

Some thirty or forty other people occupy the chairs and sofas in the parlor. About an equal number are standing around, like the Doakeses. At intervals, the deputy hostess appears in the doorway and calls out a number. She manages to make it sound as if the lucky ticket holders had just won the Irish sweep, and the rest of the parlor watches enviously their departure for the dining room. Between announcements she goes brightly about, explaining that there won’t be much longer to wait.

Forty minutes later the hostess calls the Doakeses’ lucky number and turns them over to a headwaitress who escorts them grandly to a table, hands out vivid souvenir menus, and disappears.

“Our Famous Twelve Course Dinner — $4.00” is the size of it, Doakes finds. In the half hour before their order is taken he has time to note that celery and olives are a “course,”so are the hot biscuits, so also are “Our Famous Assorted Relishes,” ditto the tea-coffee-milk listing, and so indeed “Our Famous High Tariff After-Dinner Mints (on sale in the High Tariff Shoppe).” Doakes can reason out only six other courses besides these; he decides that the twelfth must be either the salt and pepper or the salad dressing. But never mind that — here comes the first prodigious demonstration of High Tariff hospitality, as a waitress wheels up an assortment of cottage cheese, marmalades, jellies, pickles, chowchow, piccalilli, pickled mushrooms — more pickles, more cottage cheese, and watermelon pickle.

The Doakeses load their butter plates. For the next ten minutes they eat cottage cheese and munch pickles. Another beaming young woman appears, with a huge stainless steel container, and the Doakeses help themselves to hot corn bread and biscuits, a bit dried out from the high temperature of the container but piping hot. And now back comes that gracious child with the famous relishes, and the Doakeses accept more cottage cheese, more pickles, jam for the biscuits.

“Have you decided what you would like?” At long last, the waitress to take the Doakeses’ order. Her manner suggests that she has been in readiness for the past half hour, waiting only for the family to settle among themselves an unprecedented embarras de choix.

The Doakeses have long since decided to take High Tariff on its own terms and play the meal straight: soup all around and then “Our Famous High Tariff Fried Chicken with Pan Gravy, Sweet Potato Fluff.” Doakes feels, as the waitress nods approval, that they have chosen shrewdly.

Again the great tray of cottage cheese, jams, and pickles, the corn bread and biscuits. Then the cream of asparagus soup accompanied by a characteristic High Tariff extra touch, a cup of orange sherbet. The sherbet is that twelfth course, Doakes realizes — there all the time but he’d overlooked it on the menu.

The Doakeses are fairly well stuffed when the famous chicken arrives, but the sweet potato fluff (marshmallow top) is offered so enthusiastically that they all spoon out large helpings from the big earthenware dish. They work at their green salad and the Brussels sprouts. The girl with the cottage cheese and pickles eyes Doakes hopefully but he waves her away. “Won’t you let me bring you some more chicken?” asks the waitress. No? Well surely some of the renowned lemon pie with its towering meringue — and the Doakeses dutifully eat their pie, or most of it. Not even the children want a chocolate-covered mint, but they all take one. Doakes leaves a thumping big tip. They have been there almost three hours, he finds.

Months later at home Doakes is still spreading the news of the wonderful High Tariff Inn: more of everything than anyone wants, and even if Griggsville is out of the way, it s worth an extra hundred miles just to see that lemon pie come in — honestly, a meringue that high!

CHARLES W. MORTON