Tuesdays with Mom

Welcome back to Retirement Acres, friends and readers.

As some of you may recall, I was recently elected to drive my mother on a field trip to meet old friends. It was successful. And by successful, I mean that I am not the one who now must attend driving school.

But we enjoyed the trip and the company (but not the food, which was both expensive and not well prepared.), and I suggested that these Tuesday outings might need to become a regular part of the enrichment program for those of us in Retirement Acres who live in Chez Auto. Of the three of us, I’m the only one who has regular contact with the outside world, and I sell comic books.

I explained to Dad, who immediately objected on the grounds of spending money for food, that a little more apartness on a semi-regular basis was a lot less expensive than therapy, which my doctor said he would mandate if I ever came in again to ask him to double the dosage on my anti-depressants. Which led to an entirely different and not very productive discussion of all the forms depression can take and what might inspire it in a middle aged woman living in her parents’ basement.

I digress. While mental health is an important and worthwhile discussion, it only has a non-speaking role in today’s story.

Last week we went to Antonio’s, a local establishment that makes its own pasta, sauce, and bread on site in a rainstorm that can only be described as “biblical”. Did I say rainstorm? I did. I need you to understand that it lasted nearly 48 hours and caused a considerable amount of flooding, and then we nearly got hit by a mail truck on the way home.

It’s also worth noting that this near-collision happened while traversing the hill up to Retirement Acres, which sits at an elevation of about 900 feet above sea level. That day, it was more like a salmon run in that it was sitting in water, which is generally not a phenomenon one expects while driving up at hill at a roughly 37 degree incline.

To tell you the rest of this story, I have to tell you a different story.

As you may have guessed, I am a person of refined tastes who only enjoys the best culinary treasures our area has to offer. So naturally my favorite restaurant in Long John Silvers.

Unfortunately for me, our local Long John’s closed down quite a few years ago. The closest one now is in a neighboring state. (In my previous life in Retirement Acres East, the nearest one was in a tourist town more than 2 hours away. Only the best, friends and readers. Only the best.)

Having not had my fill of chicken and crispies in nearly 8 months, Mom and I set out last December to the nearest Long John’s, which I have mentioned is in a different state. While the food was exactly what I was hoping to have, the experience was somewhat less than the 5 Star treatment to which I’m accustomed. We ordered chicken platter and a fish platter plus two drinks. We were given an order number and instructed to listen out for it. We chose our booth.

A scant few minutes later, a young lad came to our table and placed a wrapped item on it.

“Your fish sandwich was ready first,” he explained.

“We didn’t order a fish sandwich,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“You must have,” he remonstrated. “It’s ready.”

He pointed to it.

I tried again.

“We ordered a chicken platter and a fish platter,” I argued. “This fish sandwich, while lovely, is part of neither.”

“But it’s ready now.”

At this point, an older gentleman sitting across the restaurant ambled over.

“I can solve this problem. The fish sandwich is mine. I ordered it 20 minutes ago, which is when I got my fries. The sandwich is not ready early.”

At that point, the young lad held up his hands and advised us to take it up with a manager.

The fish sandwich-less man and I approached the counter, me carrying the disputed sandwich.

“I don’t care what happened, I’m not giving away food,” the manager was saying. Upon hearing this, I immediately produced the receipt for my food, and clarified that since I had paid actual money for it, by nobody’s definition was she “giving food away”. But there was no way on this earth I was going to eat a fish sandwich when I ordered chicken with extra crispies. At that point, the lady with the elderly gentleman said “Oh. Did you order these? They brought them to my table. I’ve eaten most of them, but you’re welcome to the rest.”

I then patiently explained to the manager that I would be taking delivery of the food for which I had ordered and paid, and would also not be accepting a half eaten boat of crispies. The manager then turned to the young woman operating the cash register, my receipt clenched in her fist.

“Why did you call for a fish sandwich, which is number 3, when she ordered chicken, which is a number 6?”

“I don’t know which of these meals is which,” the young lady explained. And apparently that explained a LOT about what had been transpiring in that restaurant that Sunday.

Finally, the manager acknowledged that everyone should get the food for which they paid, and was heard to sigh loudly that perhaps the fast food industry is not for everyone. It may not be, but that sounds like an issue for training.

The older gentleman received a new fish sandwich and more fries for his pains, and we took the wrapped but otherwise untouched fish sandwich home to Dad, who pointed out we could get the wrong food in places much closer to home.

Today, as we were venturing out, I asked Mom whether she had a preference in restaurants. She said not really, so I suggested Long John’s. She was happy with this suggestion, so after a quick pit stop for gas and a lottery ticket—another story for another day—we were off.

I have said before that “Chattanooga” is a Cherokee word for “Riverbend”. I suspect, but cannot prove, that it is also a much older indigenous word for “it’s always construction season”. We noticed a significant amount of non- moving traffic on the opposite side of the road, which was the route I had planned to take home.

“Remember this,” I said to Mom. “We’ll go home another way.”

We arrived, after a time, at the Long John’s.

Readers, it was closed.

Nor for the day, not after the lunch rush. It was abandoned. Empty. Not serving chicken platters or fish sandwiches to anyone.

It sits (sat) immediately adjacent to a Civil War battlefield. It has been there since Sherman marched to Atlanta. The only building in the town older than Long John’s is the hospital. It is the same hospital to which soldiers were evacuated from the actual battle until it reached capacity and the wounded and dead were then placed on the front yards of the homes that faced the battlefield. When viewed from one side, it appears to be a small, modern-ish hospital. When viewed from the other side, you know there are still leeches in use on the upper floors. It’s terrifying.

“Wait!” Mom pointed out. “It says they’ve moved! Perhaps they’re open in a different location after nearly 200 years.”

“I wonder if they just locked the doors and those cute booth seats with boat names on them are still in there?”

(As a side project, last summer I bought the most irresponsible car available at my price point. It could use new seats. And what would be cuter than converting vinyl boat panels into seat covers? About seven thousand things, according to Dad. He thinks working brakes should be a priority. We’re still discussing the possibilities breaking and entering to cut the old booths apart might offer.)

“Focus,” Mom offered.

A scant 10 minutes later, we located the newly constructed of chicken gloriousness and ate our fill. Mom swears she ordered a fish platter but received a chicken one. I think her memory is not what it once was. We ordered Dad a fish sandwich to go, little realizing the longest part of our journey had just begun.

Friends and readers, it took us more than 2 hours to get back home. We encountered a wreck at a major intersection known for fatal accidents. This one featured an SUV flipped over so its tires were now where the roof should be, and no other damaged car to explain how this might have happened.

We avoided the route we had taken from the house in favor of one that might not be under construction. We encountered a second, much worse accident that appeared to have happened when two cars traveling in opposite directions on a narrow road known for bad accidents both decided to take their half of the road out of the middle and collided. There were ambulances and police at the site. The road was closed. We were instructed to turn around, which nearly spawned several secondary accidents when people realized their vehicle could not, in fact, make the very tight u-turn and who remedied that by throwing their vehicles into reverse to try a three-point turn without actually taking note of whether there was an entire lane of stopped traffic immediately behind their moving car. (And do you know how it’s going to look when you’re explaining to some poor officer who has to write up the accident that you were not moving, but the guy in the 1 Hour Plumbing van backed into the driver’s side of your stopped car? And did I mention that the peculiar geography of this road is a massive hill on the northbound side, and a 100 foot drop off on the other?)

We turned around and started again. We sat in traffic on the road we had sworn to avoid.

“You could always just drive across the pedestrian bridge,” my mother suggested. I had to think for a long time before ultimately rejecting the idea. Mostly because I didn’t really want to get stopped by a parks officer in a golf cart and asked to explain myself. In addition, I didn’t want to end up in a conversation about who is supervising whom with my brother when his news station was inevitably the first on the scene.

It wouldn’t have mattered. The pedestrian bridge is also under construction.

Fish yeah, friends and readers.