It is past 12:30 Saturday morning. Because I use a different time zone on Blogger, I have more than 3 hours before a blog post will show up as being published on Saturday. This one, though written Saturday my time, will have Friday's date on it.
Hmm? What's that?
Oh, you don't care?
Fine.
After work this evening, we drove to Bedford and decided to have dinner at the Esquire restaurant along the Bedford Highway. It is one of those places that have been around for decades, like The Ardmore, like The Chicken Burger, like so many other joints, that I had never been to until recently. Well, I have been to The Chicken Burger before, but each time seems like the first time, because the place is forgettable. If there is a more overrated food place in all of the HRM, I would like to know what it is.
But I digress.
Patricia had been to the Esquire many times, starting as a little girl when her parents would grab a meal there after a long day trip to the city. She began to associate the place with good times and nostalgia. I had no such feelings, though. It could only live or die by its merits.
I loved the place.
I ordered the turkey dinner. It was real turkey, folks. Not that pressed meat crap that is no more turkey than a cat in an oven baked at 350 degrees for half an hour, is a biscuit. This was real turkey. Real meat. Real good.
And the mashed potatoes. They didn't come from a box. They came from... potatoes that had been boiled and mashed and had milk and butter added to them. And garlic.
I ordered a vanilla milkshake for a beverage. It was perhaps the best shake I have had in my life. Right up there if not.
I was in such a good mood after we finished our meal that I didn't mind taking Patricia to Home Depot to look at paint sprayers. I just dropped her off there and went to Staples to buy some school supplies, not because I am going to school, but because I wanted a good deal on looseleaf and pencils and so on. They are practically giving the stuff away. Many of those things must be loss leaders. I swear, the cost of school supplies, at least what I got tonight, is less than what my parents had to pay for my own, all those decades ago.
I got some pencils to keep in my mother's garage. 33 cents for 10 of them. And a couple of manual pencil sharpeners. I will need those things for work I will be doing there this Fall. I probably should buy carpenter's pencils, those big fat ones that produce a thick line so that carpenters can readily see them when they need to cut something. But I am not sure how to sharpen them, and Dad seemed to have got along fine with regular pencils in his last years. I think Dad just used one of his pocket knives to do that, but I am not sure. I am having a hard time finding a carpenter's pencil anywhere on the property.
I have spent quite a bit of time in the garage over the last couple of months. There was a big work area in the back that I remember Dad using when I was a youngster. He would work all day, tend to his oxen at his brother's, and return home to putter in the garage until all hours before going to bed for a short time and getting up to do the same thing the next day.
Over the years, and especially the ones leading up to his death in 2010, that work area became overrun with detritus, things that obscured the work area to the point where there was barely a bare space to put something down on. I have been clearing that space off this summer, and have nearly finished. There are still two levels beneath it to look after. I do not look forward to dealing with the rest of that area, but I am happy to have pretty much cleared off some space at least.
I have found bag after bag after bag of nails and screw nails and those things you screw electric wires together with and fasteners and more nails. My frig, that man must have been preparing for the great flood. What will I find next? The blueprints for an ark and directions for how to march in animals two by two?
The garage, if I don't mind saying so myself, looks significantly better now than before Dad passed. I have tried to be a good steward to the property and to have respected what my dad built until he became too sick to take care of it himself.
I will be back there in 2 weeks. I am looking forward to resuming the job I started.
It's the least I can do for my dad.
You know, he would have loved The Esquire. Must take Mom there sometime.
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
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