Double date

[Enzo]

So I have been hanging around the old shop, piddling with inventory and pretending to accomplish chores related to liquidating a lifetime activity. And I like to take the country road "back way" home from this corner of Lansing.

Earlier in the day I had arrived at the place and noted the car had a wisp of steam from somewhere, but thought little of it, maybe a puddle splashed on hot brakes. A short time later I drove a couple miles across town to sell a couple amplifiers at a music store. Got back to the shop noting the car temp gauge pegged. Hmmm. I filled the empty coolant reservoir. Otherwise things seemed OK. Then almost sundown, I took off for home. Got about five miles - thoroughly out into the countryside. When it pegged again. I pulled over, noted the system had not drawn any of the extra coolant. Now we won;t start. let it sit a little bit and it starts, but quickly gets hot. I drove to the next intersection and pulled onto the lesser road.

Crap. And I don;t carry a cell phone, even though the one I have was intended for just this purpose. So I went to the house on the corner and knocked. A middle aged lady came to the door and eyed the old bearded who-zit on her porch. Me. I don;t know what she saw, maybe a biker, maybe a homeless guy. I wasn't wearing my "I'm not homeless" button, so how would she know?

Through her closed glass door I told her I had broken down and needed help, and could she call AAA or the police? She said "I can do that." and closed the door. That was about all I could expect, I wasn't going to invite myself into her home, and I am sure she wasn't going to ask me in. SO I went back to the car and sat inside. And eventually a sheriff deputy pulled up and came out. Told him my situation and he summoned a wrecker.

Mosquito city out there, expect when i was talking to him it started to rain hard, and I got soaked before I could retreat. But he was a nice young man, we chatted about the car, he said he had one and liked it and regretted replacing it with a BMW. (We have a Lexus) BY dark, the tow truck arrived, pulled me up onto his flat bed carrier, and off we bounced to the garage I use near home. A ten mile tow, not cheap. Dropped off the car and got a lift up to my apartment nearby. Wrecker guy was another nice young man. A lot of NYM going on around here these days, I guess.

That was thursday night, and without having made an appointment, the garage had just the time to look at it and determine we needed a radiator, but that won;t happen today (friday) Closed weekends, we were stuck without a car until at least monday. Foo. Well we can survive, I have plenty of food. But not the cats. I had intended to get them more food friday, their big 16 pound bag was empty. (I swear this story is going somewhere) SO we hung a note on the board downstairs at the home to the effect we are out of cat food, cats are hungry, and would anyone going to the store please take us with them?

At that point the community aspect of this place came alive. Our neighbor brought us a bag of food that her cat doesn;t like (our guys were OK with it), and neighbor Jim who is around the corner in the hallway put a note on our door that he'd take us down there. As I walked outdoors several people in the community room and the lobby asked if we had yet gotten cat food or asked if we were aware Jim had offered a ride. They all seemed genuinely concerned for our kitties' food supply.

I didn;t take Jim up on his ride, because we had cat food now, and my shopping trip was going to be for large heavy stuff and could wait, but after thanking him for the offer, I said I would be glad to buy him breakfast if he would come to Big Boy sunday morning - -our regular weekend activity - and thus providing us with a ride there. He said SURE.

Come sunday morning, I called to let him know we were on the way, and he asked if he could bring another lady with us. Oh and he'd pay her ticket. Why not. I didn;t connect on the name, but turns out it was the lady from Ohio I chat with a lot. So we all piled into Big Boy for breakfast. The waitress as usual tries to beat us to the table with our drinks once she pots us coming in. Bless her, she even had the two extra place mats and menus set out. So we all had our meals and lots of lively conversation. Jim is pretty sharp and has a good sense of humor, and the lady had a lot more going on that I had so far detected in the lobby of the home.

SO waitress comes out and asks how we want the bill, so I said "we are buying his and he is buying hers." I felt like a high school kid saying that. Jim said, why don;t I just give you a few bucks for her, and it can be one ticket. Why not indeed.

So that is the saga of my first double date in so many decades.


And the neighbor's cat? he may be food picky, but he has been excited to see our cats, and finally we let them out to mingle. But that is a story for another time.

[Lance]

Looking forward to hearing how the third date goes...

ETA: But probably won't want pictures.

[Enzo]

A group of old people with plates of scrambled eggs in front of each.

[Lance]

But the third date is when sex happens. Old, wrinkly arms and legs flailing about...

[Arneb]

Just as an aside, the hard-and-fast rules of dating that apply in America don't necessarily exist elsewhere. It is, on the contrary, rather amusing to see the Owners of the Land of the Free making a fuss of the 1st, 2nd, and third date choreography.

But that shouldn't distract us from Enzo's nice story. It brings to mind a Bill Bryson book I am currently browsing through: Notes from a Big Country, a collection of magazine essays from the 90s where he tells his British readers about his adventures as a natural-born American coming back to the States (New Hampshire) after some 25 years of living in Britain. In one of the stories he recounts how when they arrived at their new house with four children and almost nothing else (their container being stuck in customs) how a neighbouring family invited them to dinner (six people!), and everybody started lending them household items, briging them stocks and goodies, etc.. One doesn't always notice it in the grand scheme of things (especially when facing the business end of a Raptor drone), but Americans are very often awfully friendly when met face to face. At leaast that was my experience when travelling there ( only twice, and in "all the good places", as someone once told me). The sneering, contemptuous tone of the Trump campaign (or US politics in general those last 25 years) is something that I perceive as rather un-American.

[Enzo]

Well there is TV dating and there is real dating. Some of those base rules are mainly TV things. Sometimes you get a home run on your first swing, and sometimes you never get there. I think we as a nation are pretty highly uptight when it comes to sex.

Individually, Americans can indeed be very warm and generous, even the spiteful Trumpers who go sneering about, if you catch them one on one. Oh and are not Mexican or whoever else he hates. I told the story a couple years ago where there was a huge power outage after a giant storm, leaving thousands without power during severe winter weather, and over Christmas at that. And there we were in a dark cold house with no water alone on Xmas. A friend of the wife called to make sure we were OK. We were. OK, but cold. She and her daughter were on the way to someone's home for Xmas because the friend was also without power. A couple minutes later, the friend called again to say the people she found refuge with had invited us to join them, sight unseen. So we did. Very nice people, they fed us hot food, included us in their celebration, we got to watch their kids open presents. Then the next day, the friend brought us along to a completely different family gathering, and those people also invites us into their house full of people, and we were joking along with them within minutes. None of them knew us from Adam.

When I was being hospitalized a couple years ago, and the house was crumbling, we found this apartment, and friends got us kitchen and household stuff, even a microwave and toaster. Whenever a story runs in the paper about some poor mother losing her 20 year old car she needs to take her kid to a doctor once a week, all manner of people appear to donate time money, even vehicles. A wheel chair appointed van was stolen a while back, and some local specialty vehicle dealer donated a chair-ready van to this family. So it happens.

On the other hand, I find many Americans have a one strike and you are out approach. You are my friend until you do anything at all I don;t like. I find the American south is warm, friendly, cordial, nice giving, etc etc. And it is genuine. Until you cross them. And then, well, they won't be shy letting you know you crossed them.

My mother. I went to Washington for the November 15, 1969 peace march. I don;t know who James Piggot was other than a fallen soldier, but I wore his name as I marched the length of the mall up to the Capitol. I went as did about a dozen of my friends. We descended on my mom's house. Now mom was old school, I was her son of course, but otherwise those damned long haired hippies... We can;t tell if we are boys or girls, why don;t we get jobs, why don;t they get a haircut. She HATED my peer group. But the dozen or so of us arrived, and she took us all in, we camped in the rec room downstairs, she fed us all hot meals. And my friends were normal polite folks, not slavering drug addicts, they individually thanked her for her hospitality and assisted in cleaning after ourselves, etc. As we all left, she took me aside and confided, "You know, those friends of yours were actually nice polite kids." Well gee, mom, you were thinking I hung with axe murderers?

Ethics were always situational for mom, and many Americans.

[Heid the Ba]

That sums up my experiences as well. We were once given the use of a ski lodge in Vermont by someone who insisted we use it simply on the basis that I vaguely knew his daughter at university. Someone else let us use their holiday home on Fire Island for the same reason.

Unfortunately many of the US citizens who have passports spend their time in Europe complaining about how expensive the food is. You're in central Venice/Edinburgh/Paris, why would that be cheaper than a tourist trap restaurant in NYC/Washinton/SF? If you want cheap good food ask me where to go, don't simply ask me how to get to The Hard Rcok Cafe.

It is as if they have a sense of hospitality in the US but expect to be treated as honoured guests elsewhere.

[Lance]

It is as if they have a sense of hospitality in the US but expect to be treated as honoured guests elsewhere.

Well, since we are the greatest people to have ever lived, from the greatest country that has ever existed, we expect to be treated as such. When we are there, you should be hono(u)red that we're even willing engage with you. Why should we have to pay? Just serving us is its own reward? But when you're here, we are trying to demonstrate why we believe all those things about ourselves. As long as your skin is the right color and your accent and language are the right ones, and you don't wear anything funny on your head, we probably don't want to kill you.

[Arneb]

Well, that nails it. You ARE a Buttercup sock after all!

[wring]

One aside about the lady from Ohio - she's a good sport and lets us tease her about her state (I always refer to Ohio as "that great big span of space you have to travel through to get to anywhere interesting" - since pretty much anywhere you're driving to from lower Peninsula of Michigan requires travel through Ohio).

[Heid the Ba]

To paraphrase a British comedienne: At school I was so into US teen comedies that when the PE teacher who was teaching us softball and told me to go to third base I wanked him off . . .