Dining Reminiscences

Hello again. Since it’s Lent, and many folks choose to sacrifice in the food department, let’s talk about dining experiences. Enjoy Friday Letter #89.

Moose chunks

We were attending the reception in the mechanic’s garage, after a rather big-time biker wedding.

Perhaps 250 people were there. The food was plentiful and attractively displayed. Everything was heated or chilled properly, the hot foods in steam table trays, the cold in shaved ice.

The presentation was quite nice, and I was hungry. It looked like a feast. Paper plate in hand, I made my way down the line. Yum. That tray of steaming hot meat cubes in a brown sauce was particularly appealing to me.

With a toothpick, I speared a largish cube of the meat and – without the manners I should have exhibited even at a biker thing – popped the entire morsel into my mouth. (I have always made sure to take small bites. This was way out of character.)

Then two things happened, simultaneously.

1. My host appeared at my elbow and asked, “What do you think of that moose, Tom? It’s from our hunting trip in Wyoming last fall.”

2. A large quantity of something that had the texture of beef had somehow found its way into my mouth. It did not taste like beef – unless it was beef that had been marinated in a mixture of water lilies and beaver urine, and had been smeared with black swamp bottom muck. It had a piquant fishy sort of flavor which had a way of clinging to the palate, fumes rising unavoidably to the nostrils.

I suppose my greediness saved me, in a way. With my mouth quite full of something my brain did not want in my mouth, I was only able to give a muffled response.

Had my host not appeared near me when he did, the hunk of mangy moose meat would have furtively departed my oral cavity and my taste buds in a trice. As it was, the groom stood there with an inquisitive look on his face. He was begging for a compliment, I knew.

There was no choice. I chewed. Man, was that a big chunk of moose to masticate quickly. Eventually, I got it down. I was afraid it wouldn’t stay down, so I took a big swig of beer. It helped a little. I made up some generality, a non-committal response to my host.

For the rest of that buffet event, I made sure to stick to my liquid diet.

The lost keys

Once again, the scene was a buffet.

We were in Boise visiting family, and it seemed like a good idea for us all to meet at King’s Table Buffet.

I was on my second trip through the line. My sister-in-law Bonnie was just ahead of me. A diner across the way reached across for something and bumped her hand.

“Sorry,” he said, to both of us. “Didn’t mean to bump your wife’s hand.”

At that point, Bonnie began giggling uncontrollably. What’s so funny, I thought. It would be a natural mistake, thinking my sister-in-law was my spouse. What’s so funny about that?

Back at the family table, Bonnie sat down but she kept laughing until finally, tears came rolling down her cheeks.

So I had to ask out loud. “Is it that funny, being mistaken for my wife?”

The laughing continued, but Bonnie stood up and wordlessly explained herself.

You see, it was her custom to tuck her car keys into the waistband of her slacks. She lifted her pants leg just high enough to point at those keys – trapped down at her ankle.

The keys had slipped down her hose at precisely the same moment the man bumped her hand, back at the buffet line.

Once again, nobody was laughing at me. It didn’t have anything to do with my little ego trip. It had to do with my sister-in-law suddenly discovering her keys were inside her pantyhose, at her ankle. Safe and sound.

The Diamond Horseshoe

My young wife and I had been married just a year, and we decided to celebrate.

We drove out to the best steakhouse of the time in Laramie, the Diamond Horseshoe.

This was before the interstate was built, and the ‘Shoe was a big truck stop north of town on Highway 30.

The dining room was fairly crowded, but there were only two of us. Seating wasn’t a problem – there was a little table at the side of the room quite suitable for just such a romantic duet.

We ordered our meals. We each sipped a glass of wine. (We were just 21 then. Imagine. Just 21.) After a suitable amount of time, the food arrived. I imagine one of us had ordered a steak with a baked potato and the other had asked for grilled halibut with mashed potatoes. Something like that.

The food was delicious, hot, flavorful, even artfully presented. We were feeling gratified, a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction.

After we had each taken a bite or two of our special, expensive, rare dinner, here came the busboy.

He chose our table to plonk down a huge collection of tableware wrapped in cloth napkins. I looked up in amazement, so shocked I said nothing.

Here came back again, with a tray of water glasses and a pitcher of ice water. He deposited these on our table as well. Then here he came with a stack of menus.

Then, as diners were seated, he came back repeatedly to take the tableware, water and menus to them from our little cozy table.

We were so abashed, and so young, that we said nothing. We finished our meals, but that sense of accomplishment, of celebration, had evaporated.

The next evening – the very next evening, damn the budget and damn the torpedoes – we went out to dinner. This time, we chose “La Mariposa,” which means the butterfly. It was a properly successful anniversary dinner.

We drive past the Diamond Horseshoe often, when we head out to Boise. The building is empty now, melting back into the Wyoming prairie from which it sprang. The Mariposa is long gone, as is the little West Laramie neighborhood of shacks in which it once was situated. I’ll never forget either one.

Handy Changing Table

It was the summer of 1998. I had just ridden my motorcycle across Idaho, from Challis on State Highway 75, through Stanley and through the beautiful Sawtooth Range on State Highway 21.

That route is one of exceptional beauty. But especially on a motorcycle, it’s a fulltime job to stay on the highway, shiny side up.

So by the time I got through all that beauty and all that grueling riding, I was tired and hungry.

I stopped at Banks. There is a little log-house restaurant there, perched on a cliff high above the rushing Middle Fork of the Payette River. I fueled the machine and went indoors for a burger, to rest and enjoy the picture-window scenery.

The meal was one of those I keep idealistically looking for but don’t seem to find. A big old juicy half-pound burger on a light bun, loaded with lettuce, cheese, onion, peppers. Fries on the side.

Man. What a feast. I cut the burger in two, picked up one half and took a big bite.

That’s when she came in. A mountain mama with a baby in a pack thing in front of her, cigarette dangling from her pouty lips.

She sat right down at the next booth, facing me. She proceeded to roll the baby out of its swaddling.

If you’re shuddering at what came next, you should be. She flopped the infant up on the table right in front of my eyes. Three feet away from me, and she began changing its seriously soiled diaper.

It stunk. She apparently didn’t smell it. I objected. She apparently didn’t hear me.

I stood up, put on my coat, went and paid for my one-bite meal, and left. My appetite didn’t come back until I got to Pendleton.

Ah. Dining in the west.

-0-

Word of the Week: Oxymoron. It’s from two words in Greek – oxys, sharp, and moros, foolish or dull. It defines a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas are combined, as in jumbo shrimp, military intelligence, thunderous silence, sweet sorrow. Got a favorite oxymoron? Send it to us!

Next week’s word: Speculum.

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