Four friends and I left the Salsedo Press party at 4 AM and squeezed into the gray Toyota I was driving that night. Ann, Ingrid, David, and I know each other from Ann Arbor; Mattias is from Sweden and is in the U.S. working on his dissertation on the sociology of religion, specifically Louis Farrakhan. As we headed north, a consensus emerged that in order to fulfill our proper role as cultural ambassadors, we should show Mattias something uniquely American. We decided to go to the “Be a Millionaire” diner on Irving Park just west of Ashland.
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The Be a Millionaire was the only thing lighted up on its side of the street, and although it is a weather-beaten sort of place, it looked gleaming white when the five of us walked in there at 4:30 or so. There was a small white counter, maybe a dozen seats with round spinning stools, white linoleum, and a Seeburg 100
In short, the Be a Millionaire is the kind of place that Ed Debevic’s has so successfully imitated. The food is probably better at Ed’s, but the Be a Millionaire has authentic short-order cooks. The staff at Ed’s is made up of college kids wearing goofy buttons who have been told that it is cute to act obnoxious. The night we walked into the Be a Millionaire, there were two gruff but friendly guys working there, who looked as if they belonged nowhere else in the world but behind a counter at 4:30 AM cooking food for strangers.
The guy taking the orders asked Mattias, who has a very noticeable accent, where he was from and where he was planning to go. The order man then told us that he was from North Carolina, but that he had been all around the world, to all the port cities. Eventually it occurred to me that the cook and the order man must have been in the military, the Navy, most likely.
“I can’t stand hearing about this,” David said, and left the room.
“Did that guy–you know–did he have kids or anything?” I asked.
