HOT ROAST BEEF WITH MASHED (2010)

Nostalgia can take you back, but it can't take you all the way back. Not in Salem, Illinois. They tore down the Starlite Restaurant.

It was located in Salem, Illinois. I have never lived anywhere near Illinois, and I dined at the Starlite only twice in my life, but this roadside cafe of my dreams occupies a special corner of my mind. On April 25, 1965, I was on the road for the second day of my first extended drive across the US. The day before, I had left my parents' home in Annapolis, Maryland, via US Route 50, my final destination being Colorado Springs, where I was stationed in the Air Force. I had been home on leave for nearly a month.

I had flown home. My parents helped me buy a new car, so I made plans to drive back. I got out the road atlas and chose Route 50, which would take me through Washington, DC, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and finally Colorado. I planned on being on the road four days and three nights.

On the first night, I stayed at a Howard Johnson's motel in Chillicothe, Ohio. The next morning, I got up very early, had breakfast and headed out. I was starving by lunchtime, but no matter what town I passed through, I didn't spot what looked like a good place to eat. It was drizzling and chilly, and I was getting tired of listening to the windshield wipers. But I just kept going and going.

Finally, about 1:30, I saw an attractive looking restaurant up ahead. There were a few cars parked in front, so I took a chance. It was nice and warm inside. I picked a booth by a large front window, and a very friendly waitress came over right away. I felt so lonely from being on the road by myself that I could have called her Mom. I glanced quickly at the menu and ordered the ultimate comfort food: a hot roast beef sandwich with mashed. Several minutes later, it was on the table in front of me, and what a pretty picture it made. On an oval plate sat the open-faced sandwich, flanked on each side by a large scoop of mashed potatoes (two scoops!), all covered with gravy. It was hot and delicious, and I felt like a king.

The following year, my Air Force hitch ended. I enrolled in college, graduated, got married and moved to New England. In 1971, my wife and I took a long vacation, driving slowly across the northern Midwest, down into Wyoming, and then to Colorado Springs. We took Route 50 on the way back home. One late morning, about an hour after we had driven through St. Louis, my wife said she was hungry, and I suddenly remembered the hot roast beef with mashed.

"It's around here somewhere," I thought out loud. "What's around here?" she said. "A great restaurant, but I don't remember the name. I once had a terrific lunch there. I hope it's still around." It was. A few minutes later, I saw it up ahead. "The Starlite," I shouted. "That's it. Let's stop."

It looked the same inside, and once again, the waitress was friendly. The hot roast beef was still on the menu, so after raving about it to my wife, we both ordered it. In a few minutes, they came out of the kitchen, two oval plates with mashed on both ends and the sandwich in the middle. I told the waitress my story about my visit in 1965, and she smiled and said, "We never change what works."

It's been 39 years since that last visit, but I still get hungry for the Starlite every once in a while, and I often wonder if it has survived the age of fast food and interstate highways. A couple of months ago, I tried looking it up on the Internet Yellow Pages. There was no listing for it, so I tried searching it on Google. I was overjoyed when I found this mention of the Starlite on the McWirter Family website, but sad to learn that the restaurant was gone.

Also on the family website was a mention of Stephen Frakes, a friend of the family. I looked him up and found several websites that indicated that he was interested in Salem history. So I called him, and he emailed me a picture of the Starlite, just like that. It gave me goose bumps when I saw it. It looked just as I had remembered. He also told me he knew Dean and Marilyn Wiggins, who owned the restaurant in the late 1960s and early 1970s. So I called them. Marilyn answered the phone, and I told her the story about the hot roast beef with two scoops of mashed. "Oh, yes. That was the Number 5. I was a waitress there when Dean and I owned it."

She told me that her husband's parents owned it in the early days, and he bought it from his aunt and uncle in 1968. Not long after, Marilyn sent me several more photos, and I interviewed Dean Wiggins.