The Sluice Restaurant: In the Business of Building Memories

The Sluice Restaurant was an award-winning institution in the Black Hills for 13 years.  It was known for its 30-plus page menu and unique environment utilizing many of the historical artifacts of the northern Black Hills.

The employees went through an extensive ten-block training and visioning program.  Three principals of service instilled in the vision were:

• We are not in the business of cooking and serving food.  We are in the business of building      memories.

• Understand the 10-10-10 Theory.  You can ruin in 10 seconds what it took us 10 years and and 10 thousand dollars to build up.  CONVERSELY,  in 10 seconds you can provide what  would take us 10 years and 10 thousand dollars to build up.

• When you place food in front of our guests, know that they probably hired a baby sitter, drove 40 miles, and were on the waiting list for an hour.  It had better be good.

I would love to hear from anyone who has a Sluice memory.

Introduction to Kaleidoscope Blog

I am beginning a blog that provides the opportunity to reflect on and share the many and varied interests and experiences collected in seven decades.  Retirement is a time when a person can feel increasingly irrelevant.  Hopefully, one way to bring more relevance to a lot of yesterdays and fewer tomorrows is to share, kaleidoscopic like,  bits of experiences held loosely in a rotating life that has brought continually changing patterns.

I have written several poems, loosely connected under the title,  Boyhood from a Distance. One poem serves as a brief reflection of times we all experience:

Good Old Times

Once is something old

carried around less time than you want but

longer than others care

So it is finally rolled in a paper bag and

dropped along the way

but then kept always

 inside you

and rubbed smooth and shiny as

a memory