Another Saturday Night

Yesterday my neighbor wanted to go somewhere and do something. That was as specific as she got and she wanted me to “make a plan” to do this. English is her fourth or fifth language, and what she meant was that I should come up with an idea and do the driving to implement it. I knew it wouldn’t matter what I came up with because she would have something in mind and she’d politely listen to me and then tell me what we were actually doing as if I’d suggested it. And that was fine, because no matter where we end up it involves food and she insists on paying for that food. Give and take.

It turned out that she wanted to basically go for a Sunday drive on a Saturday. She wanted to enjoy the scenery and specifically talked about the farms and Black Road. She was clear about that. We’d driven home from the Guadalupe Dunes one day taking that route and she’d enjoyed it. Okay, so we headed out. She praised me for the millionth time because I don’t need a map or the GPS. I replied, for the millionth time, that I’ve lived here for three years and this is not a big deal. But then she wanted to know why we couldn’t see the ocean.

You should know that I’ve explained this to her before. More than once. But again I told her that Vandenberg Air Force Base owns a lot of the surrounding area and you either have to be south of it or north of it to get to the ocean. The one exception, which seems to cause my neighbor some confusion, is Surf Beach. Yes, we can drive down Ocean Avenue to that beach, but only because VAFB allows us to. And anytime they want they can close the beach and/or the road. It’s their property and they can do it. Just because. My friend’s response to this is along the lines of, “I looked at the map and there are roads that go right by the ocean. And you can get to them from here.”

Because of my background serving in the military and having to answer people who outranked me and therefore had to be shown respect, and also years of dealing with the elderly, I completely hid my impatience and nicely said, “Those roads are on the base. The Air Force owns the land and we can’t go on the base. I’m not even sure if we could’ve gone on the base back before 2001. But we definitely can’t now, and the only way to see that part of the ocean is by taking the train, as the train does run along the coast, through VAFB property.”

“You can see the ocean from the train?” she asked, with too much enthusiasm.

“Yes, only from the train.”

“So let’s go on the road next to the train. I saw it on the map.”

I tried another tack. I mentioned that the base covers over 99,000 acres of land. I pointed out that it’s the third largest base in the country. I swept my hand back and forth and said, “We’re driving through part of it right now. Everything you see is owned by them. See those signs that say ‘Warning! No Trespassing!’? That’s because this is all theirs.”

“We’re on the base property right now?”

Oh, yeah, I could hear the next words out of her mouth before she uttered them. “Yes, but only because they allow this stretch of road to be used by the public. They don’t allow us to go to the ocean. It’s not allowed.”

When this had continued for more minutes than you’d believe and I’d exhausted every way I could think of to make her believe that it wasn’t simply a case of me withholding the ocean on purpose, I said, “We’d be shot if we tried it. Shot.”

Yes, I just made that up. I was desperate.

I then asked how she was enjoying the farm scenery, which I could’ve sworn was what she originally wanted to see. She made a bit of a “meh” sound and said she was hungry.

We had arrived in Casmalia by then, and I saw a sign for a restaurant. The Hitching Post. I asked her if she wanted to go there, or check out Casmalia, and she hemmed and hawed as I drove past the turn. Then she said, “Oh, did you want to do that?” Getting something decisive out of her is like changing your flat tire right after the lug nuts have been tightened by a power tool.  I made a U-turn and we went to see what Casmalia looked like.

It does not look like a “charming Western town” as I saw it described after looking it up. It looks like a terribly poor town that time forgot. All poverty and trash and no charm. But the restaurant was packed. And they likely weren’t locals patronizing the place, unless the locals spend all their money on Beemers and Range Rovers rather than roofs.

As we approached the restaurant after having driven as far down the main street as we could go (there was a gate at the end and a no trespassing sign and a comment about the base may have been made) and coming back, I asked if she wanted to eat there. She asked if I wanted to eat there. I said I asked her first. Since I couldn’t flip a coin while driving, I said that if there was a parking spot open, we’d stop, and if not, we wouldn’t. Agreed.

There was a parking spot. As we walked toward the door I said, “I can’t believe we’re going into a place we didn’t check out online first.” A man overheard me and said, “You don’t know about this place?” I said no, that we’d just been driving by, and he said, “I came all the way from Sacramento for this BBQ.” And that should’ve been enough to turn us around. But we went in. And the hostess asked if we had reservations. Seriously, the town is SAD and the exterior of the restaurant is forced old-fashioned quaint, and she asked if we had reservations. I said no. She seated us anyway.

The place was decorated with “Whoa, partner, aren’t we western-like” doo-dads, and it was ridiculously loud. So loud that I could read the menu and laugh at what I saw and no one, including my friend sitting just across from me, could hear me do so.

While not in my budget, the steak portion of the menu wasn’t that bad. $29 for the least expensive item, but it included a shrimp cocktail in addition to salad, bread, coffee and dessert. Prices went up from there with a Filet Mignon costing $52. But that’s not what I found humor in. My funny bone was first tickled by a pork chop costing $29. A single pork chop. Please. But then I saw the lobster tail. Not just any lobster tail, of course. One flown in from Australia (because, I guess, the local ones aren’t good enough). $66. Yes, sixty-six dollars for a lobster tail. For that price I want the Aussie guy who caught it to serve it to me, and dab the melted butter from my lips with his own.

My friend, who as I said always insists on paying, was having a mild heart attack. So I attempted to ask her if she’d rather not eat there. But I quickly realized how futile that was. First, she couldn’t hear me, and second, she’d only ask what I wanted to do. So when the waiter, Jordan, came over I told him we were sorry, but we’d have to go, as it was simply too loud to carry on a conversation. The way I was raised, it’s unseemly to shout over your meal, but that’s what all the other diners were doing.

Back on the road, we were still way off the beaten track. And since my friend refused to say where she wanted to go next, I just kept us on the back road, even though I knew there’d be no other places to eat for a while. Ornery is as ornery does.

Finally, when she whipped out her phone and used the GPS to see where we were and how far away food was, I headed back to civilization. We ended up at the Olive Garden (“Where do you want to eat?” “I don’t know, where do you want to eat?” “Wherever you like.” “No, wherever you like.” “The Olive Garden is right there.” “If you recommend it, then it’s fine.” “I’m not recommending it, just pointing out that it’s there.” “If you say it’s good, we’ll go there.” “Uncle.”), where our waitress, Jordan, smiled politely as I laughed at her name.