"The eggs are burning! The eggs are burning!" Such was the panicked late-night cry of a short-order cook at an east-side Montreal eatery in late November 1947.
Most diners would have ignored the cries.
They would have arched an eyebrow and continued ingesting their nickel hot dogs or stirring their forlorn coffee, staring blankly into the eternal abyss of the spoon funnel stir.
But Marcel Desrochers, 18, of 1728 Panet was cut of a different cloth.
The young boomer was chowing down just a half block from his house at Restaurant Roger, owned by Roger Brunelle.
It was at 1349 Lafontaine and the action took place on a Saturday night after Desrochers was drinking.
Desrochers, upon hearing the news of the eggs burning, asked for change for a quarter.
He marched to the pay phone and dialed up the fire department, urging them to rush to the scene of the egg fire.
The firefighters soon arrived only to note that there was no blaze whatsoever.
We know all of this because Desrochers had to explain his actions to a judge.
"I changed a quarter and called the fire department," he told a Montreal court on Dec. 2, 1947.
Desrochers admitted later that he had been drinking.
A judge ordered him to trial December 9, 1947.
His punishment remains unknown.
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| 1728 Panet in 1974 |
The young Desrochers would be 88 now if still living.
The sweet little place that Desrochers called home in 1947 included an archway to allow horses in. It has since been demolished and turned into a park.
Restaurant Roger is now a corner store, or depanneur, as locals tend to call them.