À la Recherche du Temps Perdu: The episode of the hot dog

Stomping through tall, weedy grass, my mother in the lead and I, about four or five years old, on the way to the college theater, to see that new “Ewok movie.” Those were our days of graduate student housing, walls of painted concrete block and linoleum floors that were cold to the touch. Just the three of us. My father still with shaggy hair and mustache, he used to take me to the Weinerschnitzel, a shingled, red A-frame, where "drive-thru" really meant it and I delighted in watching cars pass through the building. But we never drove, we just walked there and sat outside, at plastic tables, under plastic parasols, striped in the colors of mustard and ketchup.