Happy Anniversary!
An alternate title for this post could just as easily be, How’d She Do It?! Yes sir, tomorrow my wife and I celebrate 18 years of wedded bliss. Way back at the end of the 80’s, I bumped into the green eyed exotic beauty who would later become my wife. Laugh if you want, but she knocked me out when I first looked into her eyes over the top of my bacon double cheeseburger.
We met at the Coach House Restaurant on Paterson Plank Road in Jersey City, New Jersey. I had been eating at the Coach House since I was a little boy, where it started life as a small stainless steel diner run by John Pappas Sr. He was the owner and manager - he managed to do the cooking, managed to serve the food and managed to clean up - you get the idea. It was always a clean place with good food and a regular stop for us as children whenever the family could afford to eat out.
Much later the steel diner was removed and a larger restaurant built, which was expanded and modernized by his children several times throughout the years. This is the counter my wife worked at as a hostess when we met ….
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It was funny she use to tell me she was a hostess, and I would always ask “
| Twinkie?” but she failed to get the joke - my wife was born in Mexico City and grew up on the Yucatan Peninsula. She had no more heard of Twinkies than I had heard of the Mexican equivalent Gansito.
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[Edit: My wife corrected me a few days after my initial post. They did sell Twinkies in Mexico (she just sang the spanish commercial for Hostess Twinkies so I believe it!) Her not getting my joke was just one of those lost in translation things.]
This is the counter where I sat so often I should have had a chair named after me; just beyond the edge of the pictures right bottom corner is the table where I first sat and talked with Patty.
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I have many wonderful memories of this place, the times shared with good friends, family and finally the jewel that is my wife.
Happy Anniversary baby. You have made me happier than any man deserves to be.