Pancakes at Pammy’s

Yesterday (Monday, March 11th, 2013) -A) to rectify the fact the people who daycare my dog while I work out at the nearby Canandaigua YMCA, had not been able to pig out on pancakes at the world-famous Cartwright’s pancake emporium south of Rochester (N.Y.), due to its being closed Mondays, the only day my friends could go, and -B) in an attempt to offset the horrible fate I’ve been dealt — my wife died a while ago, so I’m told I need people — we decided to eat pancakes at the home of Pam Hoyle (“Hoil;” as in “oil”).
Pam, like me, lost her beloved spouse, but over a year ago. I am coming up on a year.
Like me, Pam used to work at the Messenger newspaper in Canandaigua. She was in Advertising, I was News.
Pam and her husband lived in the outback, extremely rural. They lived in the Town of Middlesex, but on a private road.
Their home was on a hillside overcooking distant Canandaigua Lake, but the south end, which isn’t busy.
There’s even a pond on her property.
Pam and I share a commonality, having both lost our spouses. We look out for each other.
Very depressing for me was seeing all the pictures of her deceased husband, Fred.
Fred, like my wife, also died of cancer, but his was melanoma. My wife was non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Both Pam and I lost really good ones. It ain’t easy!
I’d never been to Pam’s house before, but what struck me is how little the content seemed to have changed.
It seemed like the place included Fred, but of course Fred is no longer there.
It made me feel better about my house, which still seems to very much reflect my wife, although my wife is gone.
Just getting to Pam’s took almost an hour.
First to Canandaigua, then south along the lake.
The road I was on diverges from the lake, but then I turned west on a road down toward the lake to get to Pammy’s private road.
Actually her road is semi-private. It isn’t government maintained.
It’s a single-lane dirt-track, covered with slime, maintained by the various home-owners along it.
Pammy is not the only house along the road.
My first foray was to another house, and it wasn’t Pammy.
Then I recognized her car.
I’d found her house, so I called her on my cellphone, expecting no service (it’s very rural).
But she answered, then came outside.
I’d taken along the decaf I’d made at home that morning, primarily so it wouldn’t get tossed.
But her cat knocked over my mug, spilling my coffee all over.
We mopped it up. Pammy had also made decaf.
In not too long my friends who daycare my dog appeared.
They found it too. It’s like you almost needed a GPS, find it by satellite. But I doubt her private road would be in their system.
One would be homing on a pin, or winging it (as I did), if you hadn’t been there to drop a pin yet.
Pammy’s pancakes weren’t the all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes of world-famous Cartwright’s, but were fine, and her syrup was 100% pure maple-syrup. the Cartwright’s specialty.
And avoiding Cartwright’s we avoid all the drooling geezers with walkers. “Watch it, sonny!”
Most of our table-talk was about our former employer, how it’s no longer the great place it was.
The people who daycare my dog are also ex-Messenger employes. Pam was laid off.
So was pancakes at Pammy’s worth it?
Yes, but as always it was just a distraction.
I’m always aware of that.
Pleasant as it was, it’s just a distraction from the horrible fate that has befallen me.
I return to an empty house, and Pam’s house returns to just her alone.
And her private road is rutted and mud-slimed.
Not bad, but I’m tempted to patronize a car-wash.

• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city to the east nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles east. —I live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.)
• The “Messenger newspaper” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper, from where I retired almost seven years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]).
• “Canandaigua Lake” is one of the Finger Lakes, a series of north-south lakes in Central New York that look like the imprint of a large hand. They were formed by the receding glacier.