Restaurant

There are two December birthdays in my wife Sally's family, so we usually get together for dinner in a restaurant, then go back to someone's house for cake and some gift openings. Saturday night we showed up at a restaurant a few miles west of my house, a place called Madeline's. I hadn't been there before, but knew as soon as I walked in the door this wasn't a place where you ordered anything but manly fare. There were elk heads mounted on the walls, and the restrooms were marked Cowboys and Cowgirls. We were the first ones there and asked if there had been a reservation made. Nope. So Sally put in for a party of nine. Everyone in the family expected someone else to put in a rez, and no one did.

The manager came bustling out. "Are you the party of nine? I'm sorry, I won't have a table for at least an hour and a half." Other members of the party of nine showed up. Only now it had swollen to a party of thirteen when my nephew, his wife and two teenage kids, showed up.

Sally's sister Sharon--and say that real fast three times--headed up the street to see if a restaurant called the Oyster Bar could take us. She gave us a call on the cell phone. Yup. We all piled in our cars and drove a mile up the road to the Oyster Bar. When we got there Sharon told us, "Problem. This town has an ordinance that no one under 21 can be in a club where drinks are served, even if it's also a restaurant." OK. That let out the Oyster Bar. Right next door was Market Street Grill, which is a seafood restaurant, owned by the same folks as the Oyster Bar. Oh yeah…they also serve drinks. But they are primarily a restaurant, whereas the Oyster Bar is primarily a club. Fine. We got inside and the maitre d' said, "No problem with seating. Shouldn't be long."

Famous last words. The "not long" turned into the original hour and a half we were told we'd wait at Madeline's. The party ahead of us, who were taking up the tables for parties our size, wouldn't leave. They dawdled at least twenty minutes after paying their bill, finishing their drinks, talking, sipping water. Hey, no hurry, right? Let the other people wait. I thought I might go stand by them and let them hear my stomach gurgling from hunger, but the restaurant was so noisy and so crowded they wouldn't have noticed me.

Those folks finally got up and left and we got our seats, and by this time my legs hurt from standing for so long. I got to look at people while I waited, though. I noticed that everyone in the restaurant was white. No Asians, no Hispanics, no African-Americans. I guess that's odd until you realize that the town where we were is Yuppieville. The people of color were probably in the kitchen, and sure enough when I walked by the kitchen to go to the restroom--this one marked Men, not Cowboys--I saw the people of color, working diligently to make sure us overfed white folks got our dinners.

I also noticed a family of really tall people. Two men, probably brothers, were easily 6'5" or 6'6" tall. Their wives were also in the 6' category. They had little kids, just barely walking. My thought was, how do such tall people get around in a world not really built for such tall guys? Probably just fine, thankyouverymuch. When those kids grow up those families will look like a copse of trees walking around.

By the time we finished our dinners and our server, who looked like she was rapidly running out of gas and running on fumes, served up our bills, my legs were no longer hurting, but my butt hurt from sitting. Despite it being a seafood restaurant, my nephew's teenage kids, a boy and girl, each ordered hamburgers. You know the Miller High Life commercial where the Miller's driver complains to a restaurant owner about an $11.00 hamburger listed on the menu? Market Street Grill's price for a hamburger is $10.99, and for that the kids got what looked like a quarter pound hamburger with some French fries on the side and a couple of pickles on the burger. That outrageous pricing was immediately rectified when my nephew saw the hamburgers weren't listed on the bill. I told you the server was tired. I was sorry they got stiffed, but $22.00 for two burgers…c'mon. Even in Yuppieville that's high. My suspicion is that when someone orders a burger they send a bus boy over to the local McDonald's and order a Quarter Pounder, which they then plop on a plate and serve up.

The party at Randy's afterwards was the best part of the evening. That's when we have the conversation, the cake and ice cream, and the honorees open their gifts. Randy, Sally's brother, who turned 57, had a surprise for us. He showed us his new Private Investigator license. So now not only does he get his birthday presents, he gets to be Magnum, P.I., too. And yes, it's a real license, not something out of a Crackerjack box, and it means he has 15 years at least of law enforcement investigatory background. I'm sure he has more. But how cool is that? Very cool. I said to him, "Congratulations, Shamus." That's what a private eye used to be called, for all of you youngsters who don't remember Sam Spade.