Breakfasts with Josh

This photo was taken six or seven years ago.

The Cheyenne Diner no longer exists. It served solid

 if unimaginative food. The best thing were the acoustics: 

no matter how crowded it got you could always 

hear yourself think, and talk.

Josh was my friend of many years.

We had dinners, yes, and other contacts, often including my wife Pam and daughter Cassandra.

But frequently my meetings with Josh were for breakfast, fresh with the inspiration of morning. The places we chose were fairly limited in number and frequently repeated but otherwise the normal standards applied:   the chats with the waitresses, the willingness to try, and to get me to try, [so that in turn he could try], various items I would otherwise have passed by, such as Cuban rolls infused with lard. At one point Josh suggested going to a place called ‘The Pink Teacup,’ nearby up Bleeker. Aptly named. It had frilly pink curtains in the windows, pink lace tablecloths, pink lampshades, napkins, the works. As we sat there in the overwhelmingly pink glow of morning, Josh’s answer to the question of how come we were there, even as he speared a piece of my home made pork sausage, was that it was difficult to find a place where they made soft scambled eggs with just the right touch of softness, and that the ladies who owned The Pink Teacup knew the secret.

I thought at the time how Josh paid attention to and enjoyed so many things in life, including the small things like soft scrambled eggs or the health of his succulent plants in Brewster. Reflecting now, I know that had I walked past a place with pink curtains I would have kept going, probably with increased speed. Josh’s reactions were different, because he started with a ‘what if,’ and always seemed to have the drive to pursue the answer.

I do not remember a moment of silence. The breakfasts were a never-ending conversation, sometimes personal, sometimes abstractly serious, often fantastical. Josh had the most wonderful ability to take a well-worn topic and, with only one sentence, to set it askew, so that new ideas could build and vector through the crack into a suddenly-fresh reality.

 I will miss Josh for many, many reasons. But I do not think I diminish the others by saying I will miss the banter. When you think about it, banter is not so simple. It requires inventiveness, the ability to take as good as you give [the little sarcastic swipes], and in a very strange way, noncompetitiveness.  Josh had all those qualities, and more. He delighted at any sign of life from others, and, as the most important quality for bantering, he lived for playfulness.

George T. Bujarski