National Waiters And Waitresses Day

Greek Festival, 5 ...Memorial Day, 18

This is National Waiters and Waitresses Day. One of the four major elements in the restaurant organism (cooks, management, and customers are the others), service people probably contribute more to the personality and success of a restaurant than any other force. Every survey ever done on the matter has shown that service is more important to restaurant diners than anything else. If you want to get better service, make up your mind never to give less than a twenty percent tip. A server can smell that fact about you, and will respond in a way that will be worthy of that gratuity.

Today is Southern Wild Blackberry Day. At this time of year in the New Orleans area, blackberries and the closely related dewberries are coming to fruition wherever they can. This is rather hard to predict, we find. Over here on the North Shore, we always find lush stands of dewberries everywhere around us, but rarely on our own property--even though we have quite a few wild dewberry vines growing. They're a little frustrating, because the vines grow nothing but leaves and thorns (the latter are tenacious and aggressive if you get caught in them), but no berries in their first year of rapid growth. Those shoots will flower and give berries next year--maybe. We have a few blackberry vines, too, producing juicier berries, but no more of them. But we still have lots of fun going out there and picking the ripe, black ones, eating as we go. We never get enough to do anything with them. One day, I hope to find out what we have to do to get as many berries as once grew over a neighbor's lot until he mowed it down to build the house.

Rib Mountain is a long ridge rising some 700 feet above the otherwise nearly flat terrain in central Wisconsin. It's the main feature of Rib Mountain State Park, and is near the Big Rib River, a challenging stream for canoers. The hardest part is Rib Falls. All of this is just west of the city of Wausau, which is where you'll have to go if you're looking for something to eat. Try Fazoli's, a mile away from the mountain. It's on US 51, which is a direct 1171-mile route back to New Orleans.

If you have to choose between ordering breakfast a la carte or getting it from the buffet, the presence of fresh blackberries on the latter tilts the decision toward the buffet.

dewberry, n., A fruit resembling a small blackberry, growing on a brambly, thorn-covered vine. They begin as white flowers with five petals, then produce small green fruits that go through shades of red as they grown, becoming dark purple or black when they ripen. They are edible, with a tart flavor. They're so small. however, that the typical picker eats them as fast as he picks. Dewberries are not grown commercially, but are much liked by people who have large patches of them. They grow for two years, first putting forth unfruited vines, then flowing and growing fruit on them the following spring. They leave behind dead canes afterwards that have a way of getting hooked on clothes or skin.