A light rain this morning, crows talking to each other through the trees.  Blueberry pancakes for breakfast reminded me of something I saw recently: an old menu from IHOP with a listing for silver dollar pancakes–whatever happened to those? I remember finding them on the menu at a pancake house when I was a kid while we were on vacation. This struck me as impossibly exotic: a plateful of a dozen or so small pancakes, served in stacks–who knew there were such things in the world? So what is the history of silver dollar pancakes and why have they disappeared? I wish I knew. They are mentioned in a Wikipedia article that gives interesting information on pancakes in general, national and regional variations (and in some cases perhaps permutations, which gave me lots of ideas for future pancake experiments) and even a photo of a stack of silver dollar pancakes. But no history. However, there are recipes out there for silver dollar pancakes, including one recipe that bills itself as the Best Silver Dollar Pancakes Ever. And, to my great surprise, I found a website for a restaurant called  Silver Dollar Pancake House. To my great dismay, it’s in Corona, which I found upon further research is in southern California. I’m in Minnesota. Still. I have a brother in Oceanside and an open invitation to visit. Would I go all the way to Oceanside to then go all the way to Corona (dare I do the math?) just to eat the silver dollar pancakes at Silver Dollar Pancake House? I just might.

Why a Silver Dollar Pancake House pilgrimage?

Because they have not only Silver Dollar pancakes on the menu, they have Manhattan Pancakes (sour cream and powdered sugar), Iowa Corn Cakes, Potato Pancakes, French Pancakes (crepe style with strawberry jam), Pineapple, Pecan, Chili (seriously),  Buckwheat and more.  And you can order them individually. Come on! Here’s the other cool thing about this pancake house: they open at 5 a.m. weekdays-Saturday and 6 a.m. on Sunday. These are the hours of serious breakfast people. You might point out that pancakes are available 24 hours at some restaurants, but  I’m talking about an authentic place (”a Corona tradition since 1922″). I’m an early riser, awakening naturally at about 5:30 a.m. each day, and even designated breakfast places aren’t usually open yet (except for the chains). I’ve saved the best for last. The restaurant has been through some serious evolutions. In the 30s it was The Circle City Drive-In Car Hop Restaurant, in the 40s a Chinese restaurant, in the late 40s a Mexican restaurant, and in the 50s it became the Silver Dollar Pancake House. Even better: the man who owns it now with his wife (Robert and Diana Hernandez) started there at the age of 13 as a dishwasher. I have to go there. The place has achieved mythical status for me. And I suspect it could be a mystical experience as well. I realize I’ve just given a restaurant review to a place that I’ve never been, but I feel confident about this.  And I’m going. I cannot leave this earth without going there. I may have  higher aspirations and I may have deeper aspirations. I may or may not achieve them. But I’m going to the Silver Dollar Pancake House someday.

Tonight I made Boozy Baked French Toast, which is not as perilous as it sounds, because the alcohol will bake off in the morning when it is put into the oven.  It has in it Bailey’s Irish Cream and Frangelico, as well as cinnamon.  It is a cool evening for August 1. It has been this way all summer. The nights are as crisp as fall, although the days sometimes warm into the 80s.  Just now there are a few scattered clouds around the setting sun; their edges turning golden.  I think about how this night will never come again; no night will ever be exactly as this. I was reading an entry earlier in The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Three. The entry was dated October, 30, 1952 and he described it thus: “Yesterday we were raking leaves in the front avenue and burning them—nice quiet work under the sunlit trees. Cars came slowly through the smoke.” It gave to me such a sense of that long ago day, of the October coolness, the burning leaves,  the cars proceeding carefully through the hazy fragrant avenue. Such a simple description, so evocative. It brought back to me the feel of a thousand October nights, and a sense of those long ago people of Merton’s October, most of them gone now, I would think.  I recall walking out of my high school into an October day that I immediately named “a blue and gold day” for those were its colors. I still remember it, the sun streaming down on 24^th street and on the people and the buses and the cars and the leaves. We are distracted from the loveliness of ordinariness. We have been primed to seek “larger than life” moments—but what is larger than life than this? The sun is setting; I have made a breakfast of bread and milk for the morning, my dog is lying by the front door, Geoff is reading on the steps above me, for I am sitting on the stairway in order to be near the west window.  It is quiet. The sky is rose.  And it is always all that we have…this moment, and it is enough.