“Should we stop for bagels?” I asked Barb on Sunday night as we closed in on the Touhy exit on the Edens Expressway. It was late, we were coming home from watching “The Lehman Trilogy” a three-hour play at Water Tower Place, and I was tired, so I stayed in my lane and sped past the exit ramp.

The store we bypassed was the New York Bagel & Bialy shop. We passed it this week, but for many years it was a regular Sunday night stop for us. That was family night, as we packed the kids into the minivan and visited my parents and aunt in Rogers Park.

Some nights my mother would cook–her Weiner Schnitzel is still one of my all-time favorite meals — most weeks we would visit a local restaurant. Bones in Lincolnwood was a consistent favorite, and it continued to be one after it was rechristened L. Woods. Or we might venture to Hi Howe for a Chinese feast (something my dad would never have consented to when I was growing up.) And no one ever complained if we drove to Wilmette to enjoy breakfast-for-dinner at the original Walker Brothers location.

Once the seniors were settled back in their apartments, we turned west on Touhy and headed for home. But nine weeks out of ten, just before we reached the Edens entrance I would pull into the narrow parking lot in front of New York Bagel & Bialy.

In those days the store was open 24 hours a day. I’d walk into a steamy miasma, the odor of baking bread filling the air. The same counter woman always took care of me, whether she recognized me I could never tell. I would ask her for a dozen bagels, balancing plain, sesame seed, and poppyseed varieties. And there was always a 13th bagel, the baker’s dozen bonus, for us to split up and enjoy on the rest of the car ride home.

I know my health is better off for my not stopping to grab a dozen bagels last week. And I am pretty sure that the taste just wouldn’t be the same as the melt in the mouth goodness I remembered from 30 years ago. But next time I am driving onTouhy or flying down the Edens I think I’ll make that bagel stop one more time.

Make that bonus bagel a sesame seed, hot out of the oven.

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