 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Over breakfast is talk of tragedy
By MATTHEW WAITE
© St. Petersburg Times, PORT RICHEY -- There are few places more American than Stout's Cafe, and there are thousands of places like it across the country. The diner near the corner of Embassy Boulevard and Little Road is a monument to old-time cafes, with a lunch counter up front, husband and wife owners-waitresses-cooks running the place, and everything made from scratch. There are regulars at Stout's, people who are called by name when they come in. And each morning, Kay Stout said they "run the world from behind this counter. We solve the world's problems every day here." On Wednesday morning, there was plenty to talk about, and few answers. "The word that people have been using universally is "unbelievable,' " Kay Stout said, her husband, Tom, making breakfast in the kitchen nearby "It's amazing to me the broad range, from people who are knee-jerk almost racists to people who are showing restraint." Newspapers were scattered over the tables and the counter up front, people buried in the words or talking about what they just read. Over breakfast, Laura Kurish and Judy Licari talked about having to tell their sons, 5-year-old Wally and 4-year-old Joseph II, about the tragedy. "I didn't really tell (Wally) about the terrorists, but I told him about the crash," Kurish said. She said he replied with a child's innocence that hours later made her want to cry: "I know all the people who were hurt went to heaven, Mommy. It's okay." Curt Romanowski, a lieutenant and paramedic with Pasco County Fire Rescue, was at the counter, grabbing breakfast before going to give blood. After a short chat with Kay Stout about a class he'd been to recently on how the county would respond to terrorism, Stout bought his breakfast, saying she was grateful to him for what he did. Romanowski said he'd never want to experience anything like what happened in New York. "It's like going to war," he said. "It opened our eyes to the possibility," Romanowski said. "Those are things you don't think about. We live in a care-free society." Stout said she believed people kept watching Wednesday, hoping that something would make sense, that something would click. She said people needed something good to talk about over breakfast, and throughout the day. "We need that pendulum to swing back to stories of remarkable survival," she said. -- Staff writer Matthew Waite can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times |
