As with any group activity, my experience was colored by the people I worked with. As before, I was fortunate to work with Curtis and Joseph, whose perceptive ability and sense of humor made learning a pleasure.
Happenstance led to our choice of Top of the Hill Grill as our object of study. We were en-route to the Dunkin Donuts in K-Mart across the river in New Hampshire when Curtis noted that he was hungry, and suggested a stop at the grill on the way. We surveyed the place, peeking into the dining area to make sure we weren’t the only occupants. Craning his neck for a better look in the window, Curtis wondered aloud, “Isn’t that… ?”
We went in. “Oh, this is perfect!” I looked at the pair seated near the door. I asked, “So, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do next. Pat, can you tell us?”
Minutes later, Pat Moran and Mike Jerald decided it was a good time to wrap up their lunch meeting, so we were on our own.
• • •
We each took copious notes, furtively glancing at groups at nearby tables for visual and auditory details, straining our ears in their direction for snippets of conversation.
I focused on capturing the scene, feeling at sea without it: visual description of the materials and colors surrounding us. When we compared notes afterward, it was intriguing to discover how differently we each observed the scene; our different personalities yielded different perspectives.
Our respective vantage points were another factor influencing what we observed. We sat only a couple feet from one another, yet the result was like gazing at a prism from different angles and seeing different colors. From where I sat, I could see what one man was wearing, and wrote it all down: jean jacket, jean pants, black Timberline t-shirt. Joseph, two feet away, could read only his hat. As the man departed, Curtis was the only one of us who had the man’s posterior view, and wrote about what was on the back of his jacket.
Joseph commented on something that Curtis and I found unremarkable at first: that each of us wrote about people as a mass, not as individuals. Our further discussion peeled away interesting layers. We realized we didn’t notice individuals because each table formed an impermeable unit, unto itself, away from groups at other tables. No conversation passed between tables, but only within the tight-knit congregation at each. We heard their conversations as a murmur punctuated by the occasional burst of enthusiasm.
I thought about how representative of America — in microcosm — this restaurant was. We tend to be quite insular in public, sticking to ourselves when alone and to our groups when we’re with others. We are generally exclusive of outsiders. We avoid eye contact with those we don’t know. We can all sit in a single room just inches from one another, yet never acknowledge each other. Except in bars, where people are loosened to friendliness with the aid of ale, most of our feeding spots are like this.
Some restaurants are noisy, and as Americans we intuitively (or observationally) know which these are. At this restaurant, as in many upscale places, we knew to keep our voices quiet, so as not to penetrate each other’s worlds. Only once was the drone pierced, when a woman belted out a line of a song that was playing on the radio in the background. She seemed a little less “put-together” than the other patrons; she may or may not have been of a background other than the middle-class majority. By breaking into the “public airwaves” she had busted the code a bit, which delighted me. It was as though someone had tossed a ball into the air; I grabbed it and said something silly to her. We had a brief conversation before withdrawing again into our respective worlds.
It is interesting that in this country we often go outside the home to eat, yet when we do, we stay as separate as if we were in our own dining rooms. Eating in a restaurant becomes a social activity that is quite antisocial in context.
Joseph pointed out how different restaurants are in Namibia. There are fewer of them, for one thing. And when people do go out, the activity is social inside and out. As we demonstrated in our presentation, there aren’t reclusive bubbles of people, but rather feasts of food and conversation all around: an atmosphere of welcome and ebullience quite opposite what Americans know.
• • •
It was interesting to “unpack” — through discussion with Curtis and Joseph and my own rumination — something I take for granted: the cultural atmosphere of a US restaurant. I never would have thought I’d have been surprised at Top of the Hill Grill, but I was. That’s one of life’s joys at my age: to see something where I expected there would be nothing.
The food was good, too.