Cake. Pinups. Cherry.

In Plymouth, a little town off the Albemarle Sound, I stopped for coffee. This is how old Plymouth is: It is so old that the streets leading from the highway downtown to Water Street are named for presidents. Washington Street was blocked off for roadwork, so I took Adams downtown and Jefferson back out. On Water Street I found the Plymouth Bakery, where one table was occupied by two men and a woman, probably in their seventies. One of the men was hitting on the waitress, who was maybe sixty. Her name was Cherry. She asked if they had saved room for a piece of cake.

Glass cases lined the walls, and on the shelves of the cases was antique glassware — piece after piece, goblets and pitchers and bowls in fancy cut patterns and all kinds of pastel colors. You might expect this at a tiny restaurant in a tiny town that looks to have been hanging on by its fingernails since 1960. What you don’t expect is to find, among the antique glassware, black and white pinup photos with strips of paper pasted over the naughty bits. Autographed by Hollywood starlets who appeared on film or in person at the Plymouth Theater, which I guess to be long closed, and now in the glass cases on the walls of the Plymouth Bakery.

I should have asked about the theater and who collected the photos. Next time. I think Cherry knows some stories.

The coffee was pretty good.