My Trails into the Past

I have many memories of eating out with my family. In the early 1960s, when we were very young, my parents ate often at an Italian restaurant in Antioch. It was the type of Italian restaurant served the meal in different courses. My parents ate the shrimp cocktail; we ate the antipasti. They had the soup; we ate the spaghetti. They ate steak; we ate spumoni. They might have paid a little extra to make sure we got our dishes, but probably not very much. One thing I remember most are the other diners who would stop by our table and compliment our parents on how well we behaved. Oh, we behaved well in restaurants. If we didn’t, Mom would squeeze our arm above the elbow and whisper quietly in our ear to stop whatever we were doing, and we would hear more about it when we got home. There were no devices in those days to keep us busy and quiet. We sat there quietly and spoke among ourselves. Later, when the family was complete with six children, we didn’t eat out much. Sometimes for trea...