There was no room at Denny’s ...

Tom Stafford

Commentary

When told there was no room at the inn at Bethlehem, the Holy Family’s situation was desperate.

But Ed and Jamie Meier may have suffered greater indignity when they were locked out of a Denny’s 2,000 years later.

The situation played out like a sequel to the “Home Alone” movies in which a now older Macaulay Culkin finds himself Away From Home and Alone at Christmas for the first time.

Ed Meier, a computer programmer now married and living in Springfield, was single and living in Huntsville, Ala., in the early 1990s. His younger brother Jamie, now married and working for Iowa State University in Ames, was single and living on a friend’s couch in Independence, Mo.

Then a recent college graduate, Jamie, who would be played by Culkin, was working at a Champs in a mall conveniently located across the street from his couch.

As low man on the seniority list, he was unable to get time off from crushing boxes and trying to avoid being driven mad by recorded Christmas carols.

That meant facing the prospect of being alone away from home at Christmas for the first time.

“I hated the idea,” said older brother Ed.

So he planned a kind of Seal Team 6 Christmas: Make the 11-hour drive from Huntsville on Christmas Eve, open presents and play Cribbage on Christmas Day, then beat it on back to Huntsville.

And he pulled it off, more or less.

The bachelors did bachelor things that Christmas: Stopped at Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums where the Chiefs and Royals play; drove through a deserted if well lighted downtown; and planned to eat where all good bachelors do: out.

“It never really dawned on us no restaurants would be open,” Ed recalled.

Just as the gospels differ over some events, the brothers recollections of that Christmas differ.

Ed says the desperate search for food was on Christmas morning and that he sought temporary relief for his rumbling stomach in soda crackers.

Jamie recalls the food crisis cropping up on Christmas Eve and having to chow down in the restaurant of a fancy hotel. (Two guys in flannel shirts show up at the Sheraton, where the hostess says, “May I offer you gentlemen jackets?”)

Despite the disparate details, Ed and Jamie are of a single mind about the sense of rejection they felt as they looked back and forth in disbelief from the dark interior of the Denny’s to the sign that said “Always Open.”

At this time of year, the Meier Brothers always have a special feeling about that Christmas when they couldn’t get into Denny’s.

And if anyone could ever make them a little shake up snow globe showing the scene — well, it’s hard to think of a better present.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.