Familiarity breeds comfort. Comfort, and tasty cheeseburgers

The problem with literature is that it complicates things. That's sort of it's business: you can't have that many words about some topic like "love" or "politics" without introducing a certain amount of complexity.

Which is why, sometimes, for us lit-heads, whether we admit it or not, simplicity can taste so sweet. The comfort of something already known, the familiarity of re-reading an old book.

That's really why, I think, I turned to Pattern Recognition this last week. Life has been busy lately, every day bringing something new, something I can barely grab before I'm juggling it for the next falling object. It was time: I needed something I'd already had once. I knew these words, though I didn't necessarily remember all of them. It felt good.

I'm not often one for re-reading books. Though I love the idea in principle, I've been stuck for some time in the "But there's so many other books to read!" mentality. And even then, the "To be re-read" pile has grown at a rate comparable though not equal to that of the first-run TBR pile. I will re-read Dhalgren before I die. I will re-read Vurt for the eighth time. I will get Persuasion better than I got it the first time, the next time I'm in a mood for Austen.

And I shall introduce new complexities and understanding and intricacies in the process of walking these old paths once again; no matter.

Eddie's Grill knows what I'm after.

A mainstay of Ohio's own Geneva on the Lake since 1950, when (my girlfriend tells me) Eddie himself started his business with nothing but a hot dog cart, Eddie's Grill does not deal in complicated food. It does not deal in palates. It does a few things, and it does them simply, and it does them well.

When they say "Hamburgers" and "Cheeseburgers" they don't mean variety. They mean multiplicity. They mean quantity.

They make hamburgers.

They make cheeseburgers.

They make french fries in amounts that could be shared, but won't be shared.

The language on the sign might be about as complex as it gets here, this allusion to multiculturalism in the middle of what's one of the whiter places in the state.

It's true that the simplicity of the place ends for me around the menu. I have a bizarre, unexplainable fascination with Ashtabula County. I tried to blow up the city in the first novel I ever saw through to completion. (It didn't work. The city, albeit with fewer inhabitants, survived.) It's a fascination that extends to the state of Ohio itself, a state I'm convinced, though am not prepared to prove, has more going on for itself than anybody--Ohio itself included--gives it credit for.

Can you go so wrong with a state that endorses such healthy eating and pleasurable activity?

A state that boasts a historic putt-putt course?

(I won.)

(50.)

I did not grow up in Geneva, or Ashtabula, or whatever lays in that gray area past Ashtabula before you hit Pennsylvania. And yet it's curious how, every time I go there, it feels like re-reading an old book, one that brought me some curious pleasure once, and which I'm certain will do so again, the next summer day I need a hamburger, the next time I crave a cup of truck stop coffee.

It's complicated, you see.

--

A couple more (for now) photos here (more to come later, perhaps). Also, check out Erin O'Brien's far-more-comprehensive photo tour.