More times than I truly care to admit, in the past, my ever returning hunger has forced me to dine at the Salvation Army’s Red Shield Diner and Kitchen, 1001 N. Penn Ave., especially during those trying moments when the money and worse, the food, has spectacularly run out and you still have a small eternity until a few dollars might be coming your way again.
As I turned yet another year older last weekend, I thought deeply about those days dining alone in the Salvation Army’s mess hall; I decided that I would spend my last day as a 40-year-old returning to one of my most anonymous of haunts from a few years ago, the Red Shield Diner, for a lonely birthday dinner, if only to remember where I came from and, sadly, where I may return to someday.