We cannot lie. We went for the fried clams. We went for the Greek salad, the lemon meringue pie, the cheese spread and cellophane-wrapped packets of crackers. We went because in less than a week, when Pilots Grill closes for good after 62 years, we won’t be able to go.

But, when all is said and eaten and done, we might not find ourselves missing the food at Pilots as much as we miss the thought of Pilots. Don’t get us wrong. The food at Pilots is (notice we’re resisting the use of past tense) consistently trustworthy.

It’s just that Pilots, which opened near the runway of Bangor Airfield in 1940, has come to stand for so much more than food when it comes to the Greater Bangor community.

We could list the many stories about on-his-knee proposals of marriage, the interviews for jobs and appointments, the announcements of government candidates, the appearance of entertainers, and the many, many airline and military pilots who made the dining spot famous here and beyond. We could talk about funerals and weddings and birthdays and graduations.

Or we could talk about the baked stuffed lobster.

But Pilots represents an aspect of city life that is indisputable and indispensable: the restaurant as cultural institution. Every city with character has one. It’s the place where we are publicly yet personally comforted by the freedom to commiserate, initiate, celebrate, have a date and, let’s not forget, masticate. It’s a place that passes through many generations but not so many redecorations. An institution, it must be said, is not afraid to grow old. Nor is it afraid of old people. In fact, an institution loves the elderly.

Yet it is the very aging of the place, of its workers and of American ideals that inspired Bill Zoidis, the owner, to retire his managerial apron and close the place.

The other day, Zoidis and his daughter and business partner Paulette Zoidis, were sitting leisurely in one of the green banquettes with vaulting windows designed by Eaton Tarbell to create a vista out of the Bangor airport. They had just served more than 200 lunches, which has become a daily practice since last month when the restaurant announced its intentions to close.

Zoidis won’t say it outright, but the proliferation of pre-fab restaurants, where the men don’t

wear ties and the women don’t wear hats, and the waiters have replaced old-fashioned manners with a TV-learned perfunctoriness, has made Pilots obsolete. If it were to remain in business, it would have to be trendified, colorized, modernized.

Of course, obsolescence is the hallmark of an institution and sitting in those dining rooms is like being in a 1940s black-and-white movie with nice people, and waitresses who think everyone’s name is “dear.” And the kicker is that it’s not retro. It’s the real thing.

But the Zoidises are certain that they are at the end of an era. Paulette, who is a trained art historian and anthropologist, hints that she would have taken the reins if her siblings wanted to join her. But they don’t. And if it’s not a family business, if there’s not a Zoidis in the kitchen, in the dining rooms, at the door, well, she just isn’t interested. Since she grew up in the restaurant, had every birthday at the place, she knows of what she speaks.

“The British have their pubs. Americans have their restaurant,” says Bill Zoidis, who inherited the family business from its founders: his father and two uncles. “My father had a vision that he wanted to have the best restaurant in the city and the best food, and he wanted to cater to everybody.”

So what will we do now?

Many of the paintings and photos of airplanes will be donated to a museum. Employees will retire, or the Zoidises will help them find new jobs. The building and its 81/2 acres will be emptied – after an overbooked New Year’s Eve party when the liquor license and the institution run out at midnight.

And Bill Zoidis – football player, military man, civic leader, restaurateur, husband, father, grandfather, host and pal – what will he, at 72, do?

“Nothing,” he says, but the sparkle in his eye and the spunk in his step suggest otherwise.

Institutions end, it’s true. But they never go away. Even in memory, they get better with age.