A week ago, my worst fears came true. I had, for a good while, gotten out of it, but the kids were home, we were out shopping and, before I knew it, I was stuck.
They hit me up in Wal-Mart, you know, with "Daddy, let's go there." Here they are, haven't been home in weeks, giving me that sad-eye look. (One of them's pretty good at it -- making her bottom lip quiver, like she's just about to cry.) So I gave up. It was no pizza, no burger, not even a taco. Nope, we were going to The Fancy Restaurant.
Now, if you've been a faithful follower of the View from the Swamp, you know the only thing fancy about me is, well, nothing! I did wear a coat and tie to church Sunday -- well, it WAS Easter, and if I may say so myself, I did pretty well. I didn't even loosen the tie until I walked out the door at the close of business. And seeing how I went out there early for the sunrise service and helped cook breakfast, I was going for a record for the longest time I have worn that outfit in years. I've got to say that Momma was real proud.
So, to make a long story short, off we went. But in the car I was still trying to come up with a way to get out of it. "Wait a minute. Y'all know Katie won't eat anything but chicken and burgers. We can't go there," I said. But before the words came out of my mouth, they let me know that the place we were going actually had menus, real ones, that folded and everything, and they probably had all kinds of chicken and burgers on it. Dagnabbit.
Well, we pulled in the parking lot. "Hey, babe, they look crowded." That didn't work. So I tried, "I don't see a parking space," to which I received the reply of "There's three right over there in front -- you don't see them?" At this point I was beginning to think somebody up there doesn't like me too much, so I finally just gave up.
In the door we went, and it looked kinda dark to me. But before I could look for the light switch somebody forgot to turn on, some nice lady came up and asked us to follow her and she would show us to our table. That was very nice of her, but as we were walking over to the table I noticed something: Where's the buffet bar? I mean, this was supposed to be a nice seafood place, and you can't have a nice seafood restaurant without a nice seafood restaurant buffet bar. I went to open my mouth when Mel must have seen the look of confusion in my eyes and told me to hush. At the time, telling her I hadn't said anything yet didn't seem to be a good idea.
About the time we sat down, another nice lady came by and asked for our drink orders and handed me one of those folded menus I heard about one time. Nowhere on it did it say all-you-can-eat shrimp, crab legs or anything. Nope, it had some kind of fancy name for a shrimp dinner. Even the chicken dinner didn't say chicken strips; it had something about something like Southern-Fried Yard Bird. The steaks didn't say "big, grown, or if you can eat it we will give it to you." Uh huh, it was something about filet, New York strip, or something like soil-on something. Then when the lady came and took our orders, she called out about 15 different salad dressings. Now, everybody knows there aren't but a couple: Thousand Island, French, ranch and that stinking stuff called bleu cheese. Who eats bleu cheese?
Then about the time everything got set up, I got to noticing that they had a white dish rag wrapped around a couple of forks. That's nice of them to give you two forks just in case you drop one. I reckon they do get tired of having to go get another fork every time somebody drops one. But that dish rag, I've got to admit, was kind of worrying me. What if somebody had blown their nose in it? I wasn't all that keen about wiping my mouth with it. Still, I was there, so there wasn't much I could do about it.
About the time the salad made it to the table, it was pretty good, but where was the ham and the turkey and that chopped up kind of cheese and that extra scoop of macaroni salad on the side? When the nice lady came to clear the table, of all things, she took my extra fork. Better be careful; I've only got one left now.
And here comes the shrimp and the French fries. But where's the hush puppies? There are only two of them. Hey, I can eat a sack full of them. I wanted to say something, but about that time Mel looked at me again. OK.
Well, to sum it up, the food was great, the service was great and Katie even got her chicken strips (I don't remember what they were called; I just know it wasn't chicken strips). And I've got to admit I had a pretty good time. We even might go back ... in a year or two.
I just don't want Mel to get the wrong idea; she might think she's finally got a chance at changing me or something. Yeah, right!
Mr. Bruce is an Andrews resident. Reach him at robbinbruce@yahoo.com, or in care of this newspaper at P.O. Box 2778, Georgetown, SC 29442.