Hello. Welcome to the multiple Nobel-prizewinning Weekend Gene Pool, in which we ask you to send us thoughts / anecdotes / observations that we will address later in the week. In exchange, we solemnly promise you that we will entertain you. Sometimes, we actually do.
Revisiting and greatly elaborating on an anecdote I briefly mentioned here a few days ago:
Last week, Rachel and I left our house to drive to Annapolis, where she was acting in an odd play staged in a vinyl record store. We left with plenty of time to spare: We’d planned to get dinner first at a restaurant called Chick and Ruth’s Delly (which locals pronounce “Chicken Ruth’s”). It is one of the weirder dining establishments we’ve been to, and not just because for some reason they spell Deli as Delly. It is a deli. (Evidence: They have matzoh ball soup.)
Chick and Ruth’s features sandwiches named after local politicians, and these are not big-time politicians. One is “The Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger,” which is a corned beef and pastrami sandwich on rye. (Why it is not a hamburger I can neither explain nor defend.) Another is the “State Senator Jeff Waldstreicher” pizza bagel. This place goes really deep into political nebbishry: There is the “Comptroller Peter Franchot” kosher dog, mustard, onion and bologna sandwich, and the “Register of Wills Lauren M. Parker” shrimp salad wrap. These are all displayed hugely on a wall.
But we never got to Chick and Ruth’s because we had to pee.
One of us did, anyway, so we got off the highway onto a little-used byway, at which point, Something Happened. Enormous billows of smoke began enormously billowing from the general area of the engine. Rachel, who is a lifelong optimist, suggested it was probably not coming from the car, but from some fissure in the Earth that had opened up directly below the car at the moment. I noted, in reasonable disagreement, that her car was probably about to explode in flames. I was right.
(The car is a 2001 Honda Accord; Rachel inherited it when her grandma died in 2013, when the car had only 7,000 miles on it due to the fact that it had been literally driven only to church on Sundays by a nice little old lady.)
We pulled over onto the median strip and turned off the wildly smoke-belching car, at which point one of us reminded the other of certain physiological imperatives, which were satisfied right there, on the median strip, with cars whizzing by and drivers slowing and staring. Without giving too much away here, I believe ladies in particular will understand that things were made immeasurably better than they might have been because one of us happened to be wearing a calf-length dress.
A tough guy in a pickup truck pulled over to advise us not to open the hood, presumably because the addition of more oxygen to an overheated engine might result in a thermonuclear-type event.
Now, things got pretty intense. We were keeping our distance from Fat Man or Little Boy. For another, we were no longer on a main highway, which meant the chances of rescue were more limited. Our cell phone was not reaching the tow truck service. Shockingly — Rachel’s optimism is usually rewarded — a state trooper pulled up, and radioed for a tow truck.
The tow truck driver, whose name was Donnie, correctly diagnosed the problem: A busted radiator, which he pronounced as though it rhymed with gladiator, as did everyone else we were to deal with in the area in the immediate future. This was semi-rural Maryland, and out of gratitude I promise to forever pronounce it that way, too. The car now has a new gladiator.
Donnie, it turns out, was a fan of the performing arts. He has a close friend who had a bit part in the 1998 Will Smith - Gene Hackman movie, “Enemy of the State.” She played a junkie and had one line, but still gets a thousand bucks or so mailed to her every time the film is on TV. Donnie was impressed by this, and was equally moved by Rachel’s plight. She had to get to Annapolis in …. holy crap. She had to get to Annapolis NOW.
Donnie got her there with minutes to spare. It’s weird how fast a tow truck can go, its engines groaning.
So, that’s the story. Plays must go on, and this one did.
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Shook my head ruefully when I saw that Chick and Ruth had a sandwich named for my delegate at the time. A one-term Republican whose answer to every question boiled down to “Second Amendment,” and who later spent the first year of the pandemic demanding the end of safety restrictions. Haven’t seen what sandwich is named for Andy Harris, who is essentially Trump seasoned with Old Bay.
Got me hooked. I will renew as long as I can.