During the winter months I’m inclined to look around the Writing Studio and Bait Shop and think to myself, Surely there’s a better way to organize this place. Then I take the dogs for a walk and the fit passes. Chris and Sonny Szejbach are made of sterner stuff. They’ve been rearranging the furniture at the Torch Lake Market. The deli and meat cases have been moved right up front, giving Sonny a lot more room to work.
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Not to worry–those empty cinnamon roll racks are full again, and the cafe is open during the remodeling. While I was there Jan and Joe Fritz came in for breakfast, looking pretty dapper.
Then Babs came in and the next thing you know I, too, was having breakfast, OK, second breakfast, and completely forgetting my main assignment. Chris, always on top of the latest news, had told me that Don Philion and George Drogt were putting the finishing touches on their new condo development next to the Day Park. [Update 11/20/2010: Sharon Philion writes that Don’s partner in the condo development was Dave Ellison, and that they were supervised by Dave Hoeft, who regaled them with stories about the history of the parcel. Sharon also points out that the property owner who retained this excellent development team was Sue Swain.] Eventually I trotted down there to see what I could see.
If I were a bird, I’d be calling my real estate agent right now about this exceptional opportunity with frontage on Torch Lake. (If I were Lee Scott*, I’d be remembering the last time a Torch Lake Views story flabbergasted me.)
*For those from Away, Lee Scott is the intrepid chair of the Torch Lake Township Planning Commission, beset on all sides by pesky reporters and the occasional blogger.
Torch Lake Views 
p.j. grath
January 27, 2010
Funny you should run a story about Sonny’s reorganizing. We hit our old Winn-Dixie grocery haunt recently on the very day that ALL the products were being moved about to new locations! Well, not all–the produce cold cases are still where they were. Still, the employees were handing out maps, and the next time we went everything was in place again. Now, my life? Another story, isn’t it?!
Gerry
January 27, 2010
The Eastport Market did a whole lot of reshuffling this past year and I’m still looking for my favorite lemon ginger cookies. Maps would be good. We should have maps. At Sonny’s they moved all the big stuff: the meat and deli cases, the produce cooler, the freezer. But they left the beer cooler in place, and that Anchor Steam Porter is still mine.
Maps to life are harder to come by. My mother-in-law, who is now my mother-out-law, but that’s not her fault, became frustrated during the era when Gail Sheehy’s Passages and other such books were in their prime. Where, she wanted to know, were the books by people a generation or so older than Sheehy? She liked Passages, but she’d already figured out all that stuff on her own the hard way. Now she wanted a little roadmap to where she was going next. Now that I think of it, if any of us had gotten that little roadmap and seen what the path ahead was like, we’d all have run screaming into the forest. I guess what all of us need to know is that adversity will come and we will deal with it and survive, even thrive. It helps to have a good life partner, a couple of supportive friends, a good dog or two, and a ready supply of wool socks. Any one of those can make all the difference.
Scott Thomas Photography
January 27, 2010
Sorry, couldn’t get past the cinnamon rolls. Glad Sonny has more room to create those good looking and I bet good eating meats.
Gerry
January 27, 2010
I’m pretty sure the actual creation of the meats is Mama Nature’s job. Sonny sticks to carving them up with practiced skill. The sausages, on the other hand, are true works of art. It isn’t often I can get past the cinnamon rolls either, alas.
Anna Surface
January 27, 2010
Oh, that market looks delightful! I would love to shop there as well as cafe. 🙂
Gerry
January 27, 2010
Well trundle right on over. Customers are thin on the ground this time of year, and all of us gathered at Sonny’s of a morning to solve the world’s problems over breakfast will greet you with enthusiasm. In the afternoon you’ll have to catch me over at the Eastport Market, which also sells excellent treats. We are spoiled for choice.
Carsten
January 27, 2010
If I ever come near Torch Lake, I now know where to eat breakfast.
Gerry
January 27, 2010
If you ever come near Torch Lake, you will have a whole pile of resources. Be sure to bring the camera. You can help Babs whitewash the fence.
Carsten
January 28, 2010
I was familiar with the term “whitewashing money” . Now I know that it could cover fences too 😉
Gerry
January 28, 2010
Ah. We “launder” money. Well, I don’t, except when I forget I have it in my pocket and run it through the washer by mistake. To “launder money” is to hide its illicit origins by creating a plausible explanation for the cash, so that “dirty money” becomes clean.
Whitewashing the fence is something entirely different. In the comments on A Fence Post I summarized the classic story from Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. I commend it to your attention.
Carrie Perez
May 18, 2010
We love the steaks and fish and everything is always fresh at Sonny’s. We are always sad when we can’t stop in during winter. We haven’t tried the cinnimon rolls. I make them for special occassions and try to limit it to that…however with all of the talk, now I might try one…but then might have too many.
Hey Gerry, I have to ask you if you know what is going on with Peterson’s? We noticed the phone number is even out of service. Just curious if you know the scoop?
Gerry
May 18, 2010
You . . . make . . . cinnamon rolls? Really? We must talk.
I would give you practically anything for a cinnamon roll, but I have nothing to share about the fate of the Peterson’s restaurant property. It’s sad. It would be very good to have a nice family restaurant in the Township of an evening.