Milkshakes and tavern employment
Nov. 21st, 2018 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lifeonthepike"Aren't you going to have some dinner?" Maggie asked me as we waited for my milkshake and her french fries."
"No. A milkshake is a meal."
"Ok. But you said you were having ice cream." That seemed to be irrelevant at the moment as we were talking about a meal."
"Well, a milkshake is ice cream."
"It is not!"
"Sure it is. What is ice cream? It's milk. And a milkshake is half ice cream."
"A milkshake is most definitely not ice cream."
"Yes it is. And it's a perfectly well balanced meal. Milk, ice cream, peanut butter!"
"You're going to write a blog about this."
We were stopped at a drive up ice cream stand in Starke, Florida, with curbside service. We had a similar conversation a few hours previously. "You're going to write a blog entry about this, aren't you."
For that, it was about a tavern. We ended up in Fernandina Beach yesterday for lunch, a town I've been to a number of times but most recently nearly a decade ago now. I took two days to drive down because I wanted Maggie to be able to sight see and stop off a bit. She has never traveled further south than Raleigh in the United States and she is fascinated by cultural differences and so forth, so I've had wide latitude to vary our route a bit. Fernandina is a nice town to stop and walk around, so I made plans to stop there. We wandered down the main strip a bit, then I saw a sign pointing to a couple of places on a side street. I noticed a bistro and the Green Turtle Tavern so we headed down that way.
We walked past a man in a wheel chair sitting in front of a house that appeared as if it might be a knick knack art studio of metal objects and he greeted us. The next house was the Green Turtle - wrap around porch on one side, open doorways to a bar, and a garden with tables, chairs, and corn hole set up. We decided to walk in and check it out.
"Do you serve food here?" I asked the bartender.
"No, not in the daytime." As we started to leave, he added, "But across the street is the Red Tomato, and they have the best barbecue in town. If you'd like to get some and bring it over here, I can make you a cocktail."
We did, although Maggie wasn't that hungry and has a preference for foods that aren't meat, so it was me with a plate of smoked turkey barbecue, baked beans (cooked with pork), and potato salad with chips for her. We came back inside the tavern and sat down and I asked for a beer ($2 for a Negra Modelo, today only until 6p.m.) and the bartender made Maggie a cocktail (vodka based, no dairy or coconut, and a bit sweet please).
Maggie had learned to ask if the person behind the bar was the owner. Yesterday we had been in somewhere that seemed as if there were a sole proprietor operating it and the man behind the counter turned out to be merely an employee. He wasn't the owner. He explained that the bar had been there since 2003.
"And how long have you worked here?"
"Well, on that side of the bar ten years, and on this side ten months!"
Sitting next to us there was another old character with long gray hair who followed with, "Maybe if I sit here for another nine years, I'll get a promotion!" And that was Fernandina.
We had stayed in Darien, Georgia, overnight Monday night, not far from Brunswick, the county seat of the county that issued me a marriage license once upon a time. Darien is along the coast of Georgia probably an hour's drive from Savannah. I like that area more than Savannah though. The people are more welcoming and there seem to be fewer divisions.
Maggie and I went out for a run yesterday morning and we encountered some interesting but friendly characters. There were two old guys cutting stone in front of an old bungalow, freshly restored with a painted tin roof, and then down the street from there was a man dressed like Van Gogh. He had round glasses, dark hair, a bit of a beard, and was young enough that I was sort of wondering why he wasn't working. He was pulling his garbage to the curb at 9:30 in the morning.
"Hello there! You guys are being healthy!" he called to us.
"Yes, well, we're trying!" I was huffing and puffing a bit from the humidity and mold along the coast as it always takes me a day or two to adjust. One other character called out to us that way when we were running. As we were nearing the end of our run, we stopped to walk. An African American man pulled up down the street from us and parked and called out, "No! Keep running!" We laughed a bit and obeyed. He kept calling after us, "No! I was only joking!" I don't remember what else he was saying, but it's interesting to see how the reactions differ a bit when I am out doing things with Maggie versus myself or other women I have dated, and often in surprising ways. Often conversations drift towards food an other things a bit more immediately, especially when we are dining out. Rarely do they drift towards "Where are you from?"
We've been talking about this ability to walk up people and start conversations. I used to be painfully shy and never would have known what to say, but now I know it's a different matter. You just ask what you want to ask, but understand where you might end up being presumptuous.
Anyway. It's nice to have time off from work. Later we will head to the beach for a bit with my sister. She's on her own this week because my brother-in-law is back in New York hunting.
"No. A milkshake is a meal."
"Ok. But you said you were having ice cream." That seemed to be irrelevant at the moment as we were talking about a meal."
"Well, a milkshake is ice cream."
"It is not!"
"Sure it is. What is ice cream? It's milk. And a milkshake is half ice cream."
"A milkshake is most definitely not ice cream."
"Yes it is. And it's a perfectly well balanced meal. Milk, ice cream, peanut butter!"
"You're going to write a blog about this."
We were stopped at a drive up ice cream stand in Starke, Florida, with curbside service. We had a similar conversation a few hours previously. "You're going to write a blog entry about this, aren't you."
For that, it was about a tavern. We ended up in Fernandina Beach yesterday for lunch, a town I've been to a number of times but most recently nearly a decade ago now. I took two days to drive down because I wanted Maggie to be able to sight see and stop off a bit. She has never traveled further south than Raleigh in the United States and she is fascinated by cultural differences and so forth, so I've had wide latitude to vary our route a bit. Fernandina is a nice town to stop and walk around, so I made plans to stop there. We wandered down the main strip a bit, then I saw a sign pointing to a couple of places on a side street. I noticed a bistro and the Green Turtle Tavern so we headed down that way.
We walked past a man in a wheel chair sitting in front of a house that appeared as if it might be a knick knack art studio of metal objects and he greeted us. The next house was the Green Turtle - wrap around porch on one side, open doorways to a bar, and a garden with tables, chairs, and corn hole set up. We decided to walk in and check it out.
"Do you serve food here?" I asked the bartender.
"No, not in the daytime." As we started to leave, he added, "But across the street is the Red Tomato, and they have the best barbecue in town. If you'd like to get some and bring it over here, I can make you a cocktail."
We did, although Maggie wasn't that hungry and has a preference for foods that aren't meat, so it was me with a plate of smoked turkey barbecue, baked beans (cooked with pork), and potato salad with chips for her. We came back inside the tavern and sat down and I asked for a beer ($2 for a Negra Modelo, today only until 6p.m.) and the bartender made Maggie a cocktail (vodka based, no dairy or coconut, and a bit sweet please).
Maggie had learned to ask if the person behind the bar was the owner. Yesterday we had been in somewhere that seemed as if there were a sole proprietor operating it and the man behind the counter turned out to be merely an employee. He wasn't the owner. He explained that the bar had been there since 2003.
"And how long have you worked here?"
"Well, on that side of the bar ten years, and on this side ten months!"
Sitting next to us there was another old character with long gray hair who followed with, "Maybe if I sit here for another nine years, I'll get a promotion!" And that was Fernandina.
We had stayed in Darien, Georgia, overnight Monday night, not far from Brunswick, the county seat of the county that issued me a marriage license once upon a time. Darien is along the coast of Georgia probably an hour's drive from Savannah. I like that area more than Savannah though. The people are more welcoming and there seem to be fewer divisions.
Maggie and I went out for a run yesterday morning and we encountered some interesting but friendly characters. There were two old guys cutting stone in front of an old bungalow, freshly restored with a painted tin roof, and then down the street from there was a man dressed like Van Gogh. He had round glasses, dark hair, a bit of a beard, and was young enough that I was sort of wondering why he wasn't working. He was pulling his garbage to the curb at 9:30 in the morning.
"Hello there! You guys are being healthy!" he called to us.
"Yes, well, we're trying!" I was huffing and puffing a bit from the humidity and mold along the coast as it always takes me a day or two to adjust. One other character called out to us that way when we were running. As we were nearing the end of our run, we stopped to walk. An African American man pulled up down the street from us and parked and called out, "No! Keep running!" We laughed a bit and obeyed. He kept calling after us, "No! I was only joking!" I don't remember what else he was saying, but it's interesting to see how the reactions differ a bit when I am out doing things with Maggie versus myself or other women I have dated, and often in surprising ways. Often conversations drift towards food an other things a bit more immediately, especially when we are dining out. Rarely do they drift towards "Where are you from?"
We've been talking about this ability to walk up people and start conversations. I used to be painfully shy and never would have known what to say, but now I know it's a different matter. You just ask what you want to ask, but understand where you might end up being presumptuous.
Anyway. It's nice to have time off from work. Later we will head to the beach for a bit with my sister. She's on her own this week because my brother-in-law is back in New York hunting.
