Saturday ramble

Saturday, it becomes a diary entry, doesn't it, not a blogpost and surely not a journal entry, which should (?) be something serious, deeply personal and private, even spiritual.

A diary entry, then. Kristen's birthday is today, we celebrated with her yesterday after school. When eating out we usually go across the street to Alice's or Captain's Table, but she got to choose the venue for birthday dinner, noontime after school or later, and she had been wanting to try Saltwater Grill on Middle Beach Road at PCB. They open at 4:00 PM and, as we no longer drive "across the bridge", she picked us up at HV and drove us there and back, getting back home after dark.

The dinner was fine, at a new restaurant I like to try various things, and, whereas normally I would always choose prime rib rare, which was on the menu, I had a small bowl of their lobster bisque, some of the appetizers, one of which, the seafood medley, was sufficient for a meal unto itself, a fried soft-shell crab, and their seafood tagliatelle, which was good although a pasta dish like that is an opportunity missed for a showy presentation. 

Would I go back? Well, those hurrication months in 2018 and 2019 while 7H was being restored from Hurricane Michael damage, we were living in South Walton at The Point where 30A branches off from US98; and we enjoyed their partner restaurant Shades, which was just across 30A, and we find the company reliably good. Fried oysters at Shades were excellent and plentiful. HQ in Memphis, TN, the company that owns Saltwater Grill is a small chain of interestingly different types of local restaurants at PCB and spread classily along 30A in South Walton. Generally, I'm a locally owned single restaurant person, especially when it comes to Florida Gulf Coast seafood. For sources, I like to see a fishing boat coming in The Pass, or anchored outside the restaurant window, or a shrimper sweeping the Bay in front of me all night, or a man walking into the back door of a restaurant carrying a bucket of mullet with their tails flapping, nomesane? Or at least a Water Street Seafood truck parked at their back door mornings. 

At dinner, I thoroughly enjoyed the Seafood Tagliatelle: the noodles were properly whole so I could twirl them onto my fork (I'm not VIOLENTLY opposed to your cutting your noodles up and trying to get them to your mouth before they slip off your fork, and if you eat your noodles that way, fine by me); these noodles were al dente and whole, twirled on my fork, which is half the enjoyment of a pasta dish, the lobster sauce was buttery tasty, and the seafood was plentiful - - tiny shrimp, way more sea scallops than I expected, bits of lobster meat. Presented as a bowl of pasta on top of the seafood, missing the chance for an arty display, an enjoyable birthday dinner with Linda and Kris.

And we enjoyed sharing their dessert sampler, which was a small serving of their sweets offering.

So, it was a delightful birthday dinner with Kris. When we left it was dark and the traffic scary, which is why we no longer go out at night and never drive at night if we can avoid it: I can see to drive fine in the daytime, but driving after dark is scary as Hell anymore, lights too bright, dark too dark, traffic amongst drunk race-car drivers. Plus, Hurricane Michael destroyed all the landmarks that my mind expects, so I can't tell where I am.

Wishing you long years anyway, but Be Prepared.

Lemme tell you what I like best if it means someone driving us across the bridge for seafood: Stinky's way out west on 30A for The Log and oysters fried juicy; Captain Anderson's for whole red snapper, or Something Marlin I can't remember the name of it for raw oysters and prime rib. For seafood, to leave St Andrews, it needs to be something really special, like a birthday. 

In our family, birthdays go on for a week, or at least a weekend, and about noon today we're meeting at Pruitt to celebrate Kristen's 31st birthday with her mom.

Thinking back, I turned 31 in 1966, a Navy lieutenant commander stationed in WashingtonDC. We lived outside the Beltway, just off Route 236 Little River Turnpike, on Wakefield Chapel Road, mail address Annandale, Virginia, in a house across the road from a huge former farm. Linda, Malinda, Jody and I used to walk there with Brucie our dog and Tiger the huge yellow cat that we flew home from Japan. Fall we'd first hear, honking noisily, and then look up and see, wide flights of geese heading south, and, Springtime, heading north. For some reason, in that field, Tiger would always go crazy, run at me and climb up my pants leg. While we lived there, the farm property changed hands and construction began on Northern Virginia Community College. In our front yard, down by the road, was a tall evergreen tree with the largest paper-wasp nest I've ever seen. Some weekends we pulled our small travel trailer with a Dodge station wagon, up to Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Weekdays I drove one of my all Time favorite cars, a completely rebuilt VW Beetle, to work at the Navy Annex down across from the Pentagon. Some weekends we went to our church in Annandale, which has since become an ACNA parish. Along with my sea duty aboard a WW2 destroyer, that, my first tour of duty in WashingtonDC, was one of my happiest and best ever. Our tour was cut short when, summer 1968, we PCS'd to our second tour in Newport, Rhode Island, where I was a student at the Naval War College, then back to my second ship, a sea duty when I decided that military life was not for me, and to cut my Navy career off at twenty years!

Dear Diary, sez I, and to all a happy Saturday.

RSF&PTL

T88&C

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