Fields

This past Sunday I went to Chicago with my new friend, John, and his girlfriend, Kate. We wanted to check out the city in Christmas-mode. Our first stop was Marshall Fields - specifically the Walnut Room, which is supposedly the place to eat when doing your holiday shopping. We had to wait in line for an hour, just to get a pager. That was at 11 o'clock. They told us they could seat us at 2 - probably. So, we wandered the downtown, went to eat, looked at the windowfronts and shopped a little, while we waited for our table. Yes, we ate, while waiting to eat.

At a quarter to 2, we went back to the Walnut Room floor. They had not paged us yet but said that we could get in line anyway. We still had to wait another 45 minutes to get a table. Then when we finally sat down, we realized that half of the tables were not even set - they were trying to create the heavy demand! This pissed us off, but we stayed anyway.

The big attraction of the Walnut Room is the giant Christmas Tree in the center of the dining area. Sure, it was nice, but I don't think it's worth waiting 4 hours for. Plus, you can see it from the furniture department directly above the Walnut Room. Another drawing point of the restaurant is the Fairy Princess. This is a woman who goes to all the dining tables and sprinkles fairy dust (actually just mundane glitter) on all the children. She's dressed up in a fancy dress and she has a wand. I'm sure she's magical to little kids. Anyway, the father at the table next to us pointed out how great it would be if "the big kids" at our table were sprinkled with dust too. Kate full-heartedly agreed and John and I agreed too, but not nearly as emphatically. It made for some great pictures and, if Kate gets them to me, I'll send them along to you. The princess fairy took a great deal of liberty when sprinkling John and me. John's hair looked white with glitter. And hours later I was still shaking loose pieces off of my head. It wasn't until I went swimming the next day that I finally lost all of it. Even the pizza guy at dinner asked us, "Dude, what's with all the glitter?" It's fairy dust, buddy, and it makes me fly.

At one point in our shopping, Kate suggested that I buy the fancy chocolate from Marshall Fields, which is called Frango. She and John insisted that it's good enough that I should bring some home to my parents for Christmas. Though not wanting to sound too snobbish, I declined, explaining to them that my hometown has it's own chocolate provider, Gertrude Hawk. I went on about Moscow (as I tend to do) and talked about the recent fire at the chocolate factory and how Mr. Hawk is a volunteer firefighter with my sister. Kate and John listened politely, but still said that I should pick out a small box and try it. I looked around and then discovered that each box of Frango's chocolate was stamped with the message: "Manufactured by Gertrude Hawk Chocolates, Dunmore (football team rival of Moscow), PA." The parenthetical information was not stamped on the box, but it should have been.

True Story.