Eatin' good in the neighborhood

While traveling from St. Paul to a Chicago suburb yesterday, I stopped by an Applebee's outside of Menomonie, Wisconsin to grab a bite for lunch. The restaurant was relatively busy, as a group of high schoolers in the booth next to me eagerly gossiped about who had kissed who, while several middle-aged couples filled the majority of the eatery.

Then the strangest thing happened. A couple – probably in their early 30's – walked in, sat down at the bar and produced, from their pockets, two cigarettes. The bartender promptly produced an ashtray. The tobacco was lit and, before long, smoke was pluming upwards, into the bar lights.

Living in Madison, and spending a great deal of time in the Twin Cities these days, the site of smoke in a restaurant or bar is a rarity for me. And yet it was fascinating to watch given this relatively new perspective. The teenagers weren't coughing – in fact, despite sitting a mere 5-10 feet away from the smokers, they probably couldn't even smell the cigarettes given the upward flow of the smoke. The other adults didn't complain – there were enough tables that someone could have gotten up and moved to a booth in some remote outpost of the Applebee's, and yet no one did.

Even the bartender seemed unaffected, occasionally filling drinks and keeping tabs of the basketball game on television. There was no coughing or wheezing or comments about the unpleasant odor, likely because he, too, was completely unaffected – well out of the upward stream of smoke.

When exiting the restaurant and walking back to my car, I noticed a fresh layer of snow on the ground that had fallen while I munched on my boneless wings and burger. The sidewalk was slippery, the parking lot wasn't plowed and both my feet and vehicle's wheels knew it.

Don't get me wrong, I made it out of Menomonie safely. But I sure was in a lot more danger navigating that unkept parking lot than I was sitting a few feet away from a couple of smokers.