I tend to gripe a lot about the lack of variety in restaurants around this area. One of the small pleasures that we experience is finding a nice out of the way place to eat that isn't a chain or a glorified hot dog stand. I'm not sure if we're just extra picky, but that seems to be a challenge for us.
This last weekend was our anniversary (34 yrs), and we wanted to go to a nice, quiet place so we could enjoy a decent meal and talk for a while. I thought we had found a place that was near us that fit the bill as far as we were concerned. It's small, sits on one of the many lakes in this area, and doesn't look like a dump. We had eaten there once before and the food was good and the atmosphere seemed nice, so I made a reservation.
When we arrived and walked in the door, we were immediately assaulted by something that resembled singing. This was coming from an old lady who had elected one too many face lifts and was dressed in her best Swillmart paisley top and matching lounge pants. She was standing in front of a two guys playing a Casio keyboard and a saxophone, and was belting out some ballad that I didn't recognize.
Jan, who is usually the most laid back person on earth, turned to me and said "Let's get the fuck out of here!" Okay, it looked like this old bat wasn't a regular singer, or at least I hoped she wasn't, so I told Jan to hold it a second, because I thought she was just up there screeching away on a whim. And, as it turned out, she finished her "song", bowed to the crowd and rushed by us out the door, leaving a trail of stale perfume vapor. I was secretly hoping for an encore, but figured that Jan would grab my keys and leave me there, so it was just as well that she left.
So, Jan was placated and we took our seats at a table overlooking the lake. It was then that I started looking around. The dudes on the Casio and sax were still there and started playing again. And not softly. In fact, it was kind of loud. I suppose we should have just got up and left, but I guess we both thought that they had to take a break sometime, so we stayed.
One of the things I love to do in a restaurant, is make fun of the other diners. Jan doesn't usually do this with me, but it was hard for her not to join me in this place because the average age of everyone else seemed to be 96. We're not exactly spring chickens and haven't seen 50 in a while, but we felt like teenagers in this crowd. The aisles were littered with canes and walkers and I swear one woman (man?) at the next table looked like the picture in the upper right corner of this page, which didn't really help my appetite.
After a while, even making fun of people got old, and we tried to talk about other stuff, but Mr. Yakkety Sax and his sidekick, Casio Boy, wouldn't give it a rest and were going through their arsenal of Prohibition Era classics, which I thought was odd, because even the oldest of old farts in the crowd probably wouldn't have remembered them.
And then people started dancing. I guess some people find the sight of older people dancing to be sweet, but I just find it horrifying. One guy was even dancing while holding his cane.
We had almost finished dinner, and our conversation had deteriorated into "What?" and "Huh?" because we couldn't hear each other thanks to the Dynamic Duo, who were playing louder than ever and seemed hell-bent to give the management their all by not taking a single fucking break.
Jan's right eye had started to twitch, so I knew she was about to blow. I paid the check and we ran a flying wedge through the shuffling dancers and escaped to the clean, perfume free air outside.
I guess our first visit had been a fluke, and I'm not about to try this place again, so I guess we'll eventually search out another place.
Maybe a fish fry in Wisconsin. Right ...
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