Mac's Old House is a roadhouse.   A genuine roadhouse just like the one in the Postman Always Rings Twice, that play and film which involves no postmen, no doorbells, and no repeated ringing.   But it is a real roadhouse and it sits on the edge of the town where I grew up in Northern California.   It has an old-fashioned neon sign with an arrow, and it is a big, sprawling bungalow with a bar in what was probably the living room and a restaurant in the rest of the house.   Since it is probably 80 years old, at least, the outlines of the “house” are getting a little vague, but it is quite a place.  

I had dinner there twice when I was in Antioch last month.   You might think that this was a story about returning to a place where I had enjoyed myself as a kid, but that is not what this is about.   This is about status and class, history and memory, and the recalling of events from years past.  

My parents and I never went to Mac's Old House.   No surprise there.   If my parents ever went to any place that served alcohol, or as my mother colorfully put it, “likker”, it had to be deeply camouflaged behind a distant bar and provided by a host or waiter who looked as if the service of alcohol was an enterprise to be tolerated, at best.   The idea of having to push your way through a crowded bar to find one's way to the restaurant was completely beyond parental pale.   I suspect that the bikers and their girl friends lounging on the front porch and the stable of “hogs” in the yard would have contributed to their reluctance.  

We never went there.   My parents were lower middle class working people but they—especially my mother—had a very highly developed sense of class and position.   Based, of course on nothing but illusion, but there, nonetheless.   My mother had grown up very poor indeed, and she struggled to get where she was, struggled in a way that my generation could never really appreciate, and this upward struggle caused her to have very definite ideas about certain things that our family did not do.  

And going to a place like Mac's Old House was definitely one of them.  

So, you can draw your own conclusions about the significance of my deciding to dine there twice during my brief visit to the town of my youth.  

The Bridgehead Drive In Movie Theatre Used to be located across the road from Mac's.   And we all know the role that Drive Ins played in rites of maturity for teenagers in our country.   It was there that we broke away from parents—even though we usually had to borrow dad's car to get there—and there that we began to experiment with life, love, and yes, sexuality.   The Drive In is gone.   It was torn down years ago, and across the road now is the local dealer and repair shop for Harley-Davidson, the purveyors of the motorcycles that sat in front of Mac's.   It struck me that this was a helpful efficiency, and I had this brief reflection of guys bringing in their bikes, leaving them for service, and striding across the road for dinner at Mac's.   

Mac's is a bargain.   Compared to New York City, almost anything in California, outside of San Francisco is a bargain.   But there is something to be said for a place that offers cocktails for $2.00, a double for $3.00, and a triple for $4.00.   Actually, I have to confess that I did not even know that there was such thing as a triple, but, after all, why wouldn't there be?   They specialize in roast prime rib of beef, which looked pretty good to me, and was accompanied by watery spaghetti with not quite enough sauce on the pasta.   The menus are printed on the place mats—this is a place with a highly developed sense of operational efficiency.   Nothing on the dinner menu is over about $14.00, and I think that the fourteen-dollar item is the tabloid sized prime rib that hung off the edge of the plate.  

People say that meals are important symbols for us, and that many of the significant things we do involve important meals.   I would not go so far as to put Mac's Old House in that kind of lofty category, but it was an important aspect of my creating a rich, interesting visit to the town where I grew up.   It was equally wonderful to spend an afternoon looking through the pages of the Daily Ledger, the old newspaper which once ran a story about me when I was seven.   It was even greater to spend an evening in the restored movie and vaudeville theatre where my mother and father went to the movies back when they were young and so was their love.  

They say you can't go home again, and I understand that, I really do.   But you can provide little vignettes of history to consider and enjoy while remaining a denizen of the 21 st century.   I think that was what I was doing when I spent two nights in a sparkling new Ramada Inn out by the freeway (an area which was grape vineyards in my youth, I think)   and then went into town to dine at Mac's Old House and to sit in that ancient theatre where my mother once held my father's strong hand.  

You didn't ask, but that is some of what I did on my summer vacation.   I hope you had one, too, and that it was equally delightful in ways suitable to you.  

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The Rev’d Lloyd Prator, Rector
Saint John’s in the Village Episcopal Church

New York City