CLAYBORN, IA — Donna Vesely audited her own menu Friday afternoon and discovered that, by the standards of the executive order signed in Washington this morning, she has been quietly operating a multilingual establishment for thirty-one years.
The order — designating English as the official language of the United States — does not, in any practical sense, require Donna to do anything. This has not stopped her from circling words on a laminated menu with a dry-erase marker until the laminate began to bead.
“I’ve got ‘panini.’ I’ve got ‘au jus.’ I’ve got a ‘quesadilla’ on the lunch specials,” said Vesely, owner and operator of the Hen House Diner on Route 9. “I had no idea I was running the United Nations. The ‘au jus,’ for the record, is a gravy boat of beef drippings. I don’t know what else to tell anyone.”
Further review identified the espresso machine — a 2009 De’Longhi named Bruno that has not produced espresso since 2011 and currently serves as a coat rack — as well as the Reuben, the à la mode, and a Tuesday breakfast item listed as “the Hen House Frittata,” which Vesely confirmed she had been pronouncing wrong on purpose for years to avoid sounding showy.
Mrs. Peterson, 78, who has ordered the same club sandwich every Tuesday since the Bush administration, attempted to calm the proprietor. “I told her, Donna, the President cannot see your menu,” she said, removing a packet of Sweet’N Low from her purse for later. “She did not appear comforted.”
Clayborn County Clerk Hank Tillerman confirmed by phone that the executive order contains no enforcement mechanism applicable to county-level food service, “though, historically, the absence of an enforcement mechanism has not once prevented anyone in this county from worrying about something.” Tillerman noted that the courthouse vending machine still dispenses something called a “Bavarian Cream Stick” and declined to take further questions.
By Friday evening, Vesely had begun drafting alternatives in pencil. The panini would become “the pressed sandwich.” The au jus would become “with juice.” The quesadilla, she conceded, was going to require a committee. The most-ordered item on the menu — a breaded pork tenderloin the diameter of a hubcap, served on a bun roughly half its size — required no edits whatsoever, a fact Vesely cited with visible relief. “Tenderloin,” she said, refilling a coffee, “is as American as it gets.”