BIG RACKS

My college dorm room overlooked a Rax. It was alarming to see how often ambulances were called there.

 

That's beautiful.

 

I was at the fishmonger across the street from the bay Sunday to buy scallops. Place is busy. Woman about 35, wholesome-looking face, extra-big ummm rack in a halter top, walks in, female customers keep talking, not a male voice could be heard ... like THAT, the instant we caught a glimpse. Then the place returned to normal. A few minutes later, she lifts up the glass covering the oysters and clams and starts photographing them. I said, "Excuse me, are you taking photos of the shellfish?" She very pleasantly said that she had moved to Michigan a while ago and was sending them photos of the seafood "just to tease them." Perfect setup line, but then I am a married middle-aged man and she seemed really nice. And then I understood where the idiom must have originated before Shakespeare immortalized it ... the world is her oyster.

 

Frank, pic or GTFO!!!

 

No photo, sorry. I didn't want to treat her like a mollusk, umm, I mean an object.

 

I don't know if it was true, but in college in the early 2000s my group of friends proclaimed the Rax in Athens, Ohio, as the world's last standing Rax. I hadn't seen another since the early 1990s. It was like stepping back in time. It became a Sonic by the mid-2000s.

In the same vein of extinct restaurant chains, I went by a rural Indiana town last year that had a Bonanza steakhouse. I felt like Marty McFly.

 

Dunno about the rest of the country, but Ranch House was a sad loss in my area. Haven't seen one in years, but maybe they still exist somewhere else. Would make a good road trip to eat there again.

 

Fifty nerd points to the person who figures this out without blinking.

 

Rax lives ... barely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rax_%28restaurant%29