ALL YOU CAN EAT SUSHI

This place used to be called "All You Can Eat Sushi," and Steve Hardy and I used to do just that and beyond.

During my high-school years, this place was called Zorba's.  And they made some pretty good burgers.  I stopped there a few times on my way home from school.  For some reason, I remember how good their coke was; the carbonation must have been fresh.  When the restaurant was All You Can Eat Sushi, Steve Hardy and I used to eat here at least once every two weeks, maybe more.  We got to be such regular customers here that I think that the owners/managers got nervous about profits seeing two tall guys walk in and sit at the sushi bar and go through several bowls of soup, a few cups of rice, followed by a more than one request for extra ginger at no cost.  So the sushi chefs began serving our sushi with more rice than fish.  Steve and I saw this and didn't appreciate it.  If they were going to advertise "All You Can Eat," well, we were there to test that theory.  But they would not relent.  We were getting filled up on rice sooner.  Steve called our sushi "Arroz Montana" or "Montana de Arroz" in protest.  We'd gone there so often that we knew the manager and he was regularly very kind to us and always happy to see us.  In fact, we were there one time when Kirk Ludwig and his wife were there.  Steve was congenial; I shrunk.  But it was good to see Kirk; I did not recognize his wife.  Kirk and his brother, Kevin, produced this fantastic video when we were in high school, where Kevin rides down a gravel pyramid and crashes his bike.  Kevin is sprawled on the floor from apparent injuries, and his bike was mangled.  The ambulance arrives.  The EMT guys step out of the ambulance and over to Kevin.  From the back of the vehicle (a borrowed station wagon), they withdraw a stretcher and placed it on the ground between Kevin and the bike.  Each EMT takes one wheel of the bike, carries the mangled bike and places it carefully on the stretcher and loads it into the ambulance and drives off, leaving Kevin to rise from the scene unaided dusting himself off trying to make sense of the scene.  The Ludwig brothers are genius.  Loved their sense of humor.  It was hysterical.  A star was born: Kevin Ludwig.  And since then I'd always admired Kirk's artistic ability and smart sense of humor.  My one and only girlfriend from high school, Sylvia Schiaveto, lived around the corner at Highland and Second Street.  I liked her so much that it completely overwhelmed me and I didn't know how to act.  Sorry, Sylvia.  

In this same complex were automotive shops.  One, in particular, was John's Auto, a German man with a terrific sense of humor.  His name was John Janek.  My friend, Ron Palige, his dad knew and worked with John a few times.  He always helped with repairs on my dad's '62 Volkswagen.  Dad went to him repeatedly.  John was always fixing something on my dad bug.  I remember when I was visiting John on my own with my cars, my 1980 Volkswagen, that John was had gotten to be a lot nicer or patient.  I had my Volkswagen from 1975 to 1978 when I purchased my first new car, a truck, actually: a 1978 Toyota long-bed truck.  I remember that Pat Moore pointed out to me that one of the plastic frames that captured the brake light and reverse light was off-color.  It was grey when it should have been black.