"Sweet Concoction" revised

It is nearly impossible to pick as single food that stands out to me but a drink does jump into my mind, an Arnold- Palmer. It is a strange combination of lemonade and tea, bitter and sweet. This drink was named for a famous professional golfer born in 1929. It is a popular drink in northern West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and parts of the south. But that history of the drink holds no significance to me. In my history with Arnold Palmers they have come to be a symbol of sorts for my favorite restaurant, La Fonda.
Saturday afternoons always meant a family trip to La Fonda, a local tex-mex restaurant. The Arnold Palmers were always just a part of the things we ordered, a thanksgiving meal of a sort. There were always the same things at the table: fried rabbit, supreme nachos, margaritas for the adults, and those Arnold Palmers, with a few infrequent substitutions. It wasn’t the food that made the meal but rather the company and the environment.
Before being able to explain my direct relationship to the restaurant it is necessary to provide a brief history. Opened in 1957 by Mr. Lee- Bob Cox it soon became a favorite hang out not only for the restaurant but for the bar as well. We were not the only family whom frequents La Fonda but one amongst several others including the founders family. These Saturday afternoons soon became filled with stories of our parent’s past. When I asked why we always ate at La Fonda, since truthfully other places in town had better food, my dad explained that as a child they would have to drive from his small town of Franklin, Louisiana to Lafayette to go to the orthodontist. They would always pass La Fonda while in town and beg their mom to stop to eat lunch. He said, “I figure I just started coming when it was one of only a few restaurants and still see it as the same treat it used to be.”
The first time I had that symbolic drink it was given to me by Mr. Lee-Bob. We were standing in the waiting room as he showed me two pictures of my dad; one showed him as a long haired hippy in college and the other as a I knew him a business man standing in front of an oil rig. I didn’t know this at the time otherwise I would have understood why Mr. Lee-Bob had a picture of my dad with long hair but my dad and his friends would drive from school in Baton Rouge to drink at La Fonda. He said it was “the only place where you could get kicked out one night and welcome back the next.”
I feel as though La Fonda has grown up with me, when we first started going or rather when I first remember going Gabe was a young bartender. Now he is the manager. Even though we still go with our families on Saturday my generation of La Fonda kids have begun our own traditions. We would go to lunch at least once a week after school. Gabe always gave us a smug look when we came in, not that we didn’t deserve it we have caused our fair share of trouble. We would usually just walk into the kitchen to eat food and hang out with the cooks; he didn’t like it too much.
My last night in town we had a last supper at La Fonda for those of us leaving for college that week, every La Fonda kid of my generation was there. We ordered multiples of those two staple dishes and that one special drink, along with a few margaritas to add to the celebration. This meal turned into five or so hours of reminiscing about La Fonda and Lafayette. The changes the restaurant had undergone physically, the walls are now covered with caricatures of the regulars. The wait staff has had a few come in and out but the most important waiters are still there, we made sure to have our favorite, Max, on that last night. We talked about how one day we want to be the ones on the walls bringing our kids to eat. Mr. Lee-Bob even picked up our entire tab at the end of the night. That last night was everything La Fonda and Arnold Palmers should be a little bit strange but none the less enjoyable.
Though I may not live in Lafayette right now or maybe ever again I know that every time I visit will mean a trip to La Fonda. I can always count on knowing someone when I walk in. Arnold Palmers are simply a symbol for my second home, if I drank a bottled one with the perfect ratio of lemonade to tea it wouldn’t be near as good. The personal feel of the restaurant and the drink is what I truly love. It represents a coming together of all the people I have cared about for so long, even after my parents divorced they would get along on Saturdays at La Fonda. It will always be a place I feel comfortable and somewhere I see as the greatest on earth.