MendoLit: Ukiah, Denny’s-less

Another casualty of our times: the local Denny’s has shut its doors. Businesses come and go in our capitalist society, the force of creative destruction rearranging the means of production in order to pump out new and exciting forms of merchandise. The nutrient-rich corpse of one restaurant feeds the ghouls of shiny new franchises. This is to be expected, not mourned. With bated breath the economists assure us that this life cycle is natural, necessary even. Theory be damned. The local Denny’s was an institution.  

It sat right off of Highway 101, which runs through town and feeds the economy, infusing pockets with income and helping keep the lights on. There used to be luscious pear orchards that ran along the highway and kept a seasonal workforce employed. Those orchards are gone too, and the Denny’s sat across the street from the Pear Tree Center, where there are no more pear trees to be found. At this little corner small-town life went on for decades, bringing in crowds of truckers, local yahoos, and riff raff from the highway. 

No more. Denny’s has closed up shop. Despite not having a stellar culinary reputation, everybody seemed to go there. The fluffy stacks of pancakes topped with obscene amounts of butter served via a scoop were a sensation, even if there was so much butter that a ball of dairy remained on the plate long after the pancakes were devoured. Who didn’t enjoy a nice Grand Slam on a hungover Sunday morning, soaking up the remains of a rancid stomach with unhealthy amounts of sausage? It was the place to go when nobody could agree on where to eat, the go to, the old stand by. “Screw it, let’s go to Denny’s,” we would say after an hour of arguing. 

I’ve been going to this particular Denny’s for thirty years. The food, while cycling through an array of bad choices, remained largely the same. Eggs, pancakes, syrup, ham, hash browns, cheese, gravy. Mix it up in some combination and call it food. Add a never ending cup of coffee, and life is good. There always seemed to be elderly people eating their senior meals, which I was jealous I could never order. There was always some kid standing up in the booth and looking out at the other patrons. An old wooden sign pointed out how far away we were from interesting places, measuring the distance in relevance to our own local obscurity. 

When I was a child, Denny’s was always a treat for us, a big outing. It was an event with everybody getting their fill. It meant payday and good times for a few days. It meant family, and big stacks of fluffy happiness, a real restaurant to practice our table manners, not the fast food fix we were used to for celebrations. The adults would slurp down their coffee and I would wait, surveilling the neighboring table’s pancakes while I waited on my own. Then the moment when the server pushed that plate of magical pancakes, mandatory butter sphere, and cozy pile of sausages or linear arrangements of bacon. Conversation would flow in the dark chasm of history before cell phones, and I would look back and forth at the adults, wondering at the mystery of middle age. 

As a young adult, Denny’s played a different role in my life. Midnight games of Magic the Gathering and a mint chocolate chip milkshake, existential debates served with a side of fries, staring out the window and asking yourself: why am I at Denny’s at three a.m.? Listening to the hum of the highway and wondering where all these people in Denny’s came from, their backstories, it was enough to keep a person coming back for more. That and the prospect of eating an entire barnyard on a platter. The claw machine was my eternal enemy, voraciously draining my wallet of small bills and my pockets of change. A mummy-themed Kermit the Frog cost me ten dollars in quarters, and I went home without the cherished fuzzball, my friends giving me the “I told you so” when I complained of the highway robbery. I went there with different groups of friends, getting to know the Denny’s staff, a colorful crew of solid folks. 

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As a young father, Denny’s was my go-to on Sunday morning when my wife was working and I was alone with my youngster. We would split a Cajun Omelette and the servers would chat it up with him as we whiled away the hours until Mom got off work. As he got older he became the child standing on the seat, staring into the other booths, and I imagine dreams of pancakes running through his mind. 

I went to Denny’s less and less over the years as the cost of going out to a restaurant exploded due to my growing family, but it still held a special place for me, a cozy warm pancake on the complicated Grand Slam that is Ukiah. 

It was more than a franchise. 

Denny’s closed abruptly, to the great shock of Mendocino County. It was the talk of the town and people responded with passion. It marked something bigger than the usual act of creative economic destruction. Social media went into a frenzy, and conversations with locals were laced with sadness. A piece of history was lost, a slice of old Ukiah, the tinkles of spoons on a coffee cup echoing through the void.

Memories tend to stick around in these parts. The ghost of the old Sizzler restaurant rears its head when you ask people of a certain age for directions. It’s by the old Sizzler, the old timers say to the confusion of newcomers. By the concrete block that used to be Wendy’s. Down the street from where the old Safeway was, where I used to buy sodas from the vending machine for a quarter, a block or two from the old Post Office, which stands defunct and empty. My parents told stories of the old smorgasbord that stood where the In N’ Out now stands, in the phantasmal shadow of Masonite, where a generation earned their pay. I drive by Grace Hudson School and think of the Buy Low, Montgomery Ward’s, and Thrifty, cheap ice cream cones, my grandma, and when Santa Clause would visit. I get lost downtown by the courthouse, looking for Wildburger’s and cheap sourdough rolls and the game store where I spent my youth steeped in nerd culture. I rub my eyes and wonder at the spread of dispensaries, which are popping up everywhere. 

Ukiah is a town bursting at the seams these days, spilling out from its old city limits into novel and exciting big box frontiers. A new generation is rising, and the town is growing, shedding its old skin, emerging a shiny new organism with new possibilities and new challenges. Perhaps this new generation will build their own stories in this expanding era of Panda Express, Costco, and Chipotle.

Businesses open; businesses close. That’s the story of America. What new wonders will the future bring? The storied mall that I have heard about for the last thirty years? What new shining franchise will emerge from the ashes? As I ponder that mystery and wish the entrepreneurs the best, I still look backward, visions of Denny’s in my mind. I raise a coffee cup to memories and think of days gone by as the time rolls on like sausage links, tenuously connected, ready to be snapped apart by a hungry diner. The building remains, a maple-soaked Ozymandias, a testament to our times. 

R.I.P. Denny’s.

Call for Submissions

The ethos of Mendocino County, its grit and beauty and history, is often lost in the stodgy language of newspeak.

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To capture the essence of our vast vistas, MendoFever will be featuring a new section we’re calling “MendoLit” that will showcase poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and vignettes that put to words that hard to pin down feeling we call home.

We invite all writers, of all ages, of all genres, to submit their work to us at matthewplafever@gmail.com. Please include your name, your piece, preferably an image that relates to your piece, and maybe a description of your creative process.

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