Hoot no more

Hear the news? Hooters went belly up. (Something about that lede seems way too physical. I didn't mean to be offensive.)

Apparently, the promise of women proud of their up-fronts wasn't enough to score customers who went down the street for their hot wings, where the scenery might not be as billowing, but the food was better.

I remember when Hooters first appeared. Made the Calvinists gasp, me included. (Read the next line with a husky anger!) "Shameless--absolutely shameless!" 

That was 41 years ago. News stories, like most things, get, well, droopy. Still, even though chicken strips couldn't compete, you might have thought, like I did, that their unique calling as an eatery would keep men especially hard and fast customers. Nope. Things tailed off.

So today, they're flat finished. Once upon a time, when I was a good deal more Puritanical, it was nigh unto impossible for me to imagine being in a place where some young thing asking me what I'd like to drink when all she's got over her hooters is a shirt proclaiming the, well, . .breasts. But they did,

Once long, long ago, my parents found themselves in some kind of place--maybe a Hooters. Maybe not. My mother's story featured a waitress with barely any shelter over her, . . well, hooters. It's hard to imagine what--good night!--they were doing there, but Mom swore (no, she never swore) she claimed it was the truth: the waitress had almost nothing on!!!

That wasn't the point. The point was to bathe her husband in derision by telling us that Dad, completely undaunted, acted as  if was nothing at all that that waitress leaned into him, the customer, and just about smooched his cheek with one of her ample blessings.

"And he just sat there and said 'Diet Coke,' or whatever," she told us. Poor Dad.  "You should have seen him look, as if all that bosom was no big deal."

Anyway, 41 years are gone, and I'm a little wistful, this Calvinist never having darkened a Hooters doorstep, never ogled one of those hooters. I'll never get a chance to order a Diet Coke. Is Pepsi okay?

Well, I can still dream. And if I get depressed, I can go to the fridge and fetch a couple of Ruthies. They're solid.