The foliage and freaks of autumn in New England
Eleven years ago, around this time of year, I was in New England. It was my first trip as an adult to a far-off place where no one lived that I could stay with, so, my first experience of checking into hotels, getting a rental car, etc.--very exciting and for me, nerve-wracking.
Mattie and I arrived at night, met our friend, sight-unseen, there, picked up a rental car, and headed to our first hotel: a burned-out old shoe factory in an industrial town in New Hampshire. (Our friend had been clever enough to reserve our hotel rooms ahead of time, which we became all the more glad of as we saw "no vacancy" signs every place we went.)
The next day was travel to Vermont and a concert (the first time I met Byron), after which we drove three and a half hours on tiny roads to our next hotel in Maine, arriving, exhausted but happy, at 3:30 a.m., then staying up longer chatting and having fun.
So it was that we didn't get up until around noon. We were very hungry, so we had a leisurely lunch at a diner, then stopped by a video store for an errand, so that we didn't end up leaving for our planned trip to Acadia National Park until after 3. It was then or never, because we had to leave the next day, so we went anyway. I excel at reading maps, yet somehow I got us on the wrong road, bringing us, after we found the right way, to the gates of Acadia just at dusk. We wandered around, looked at lighthouses, and in general tried to find something to make our long trip there, plus the entrance fee, worthwhile, but it was really cold and I had for some reason only brought a thin jacket, and there wasn't anything to see or do, so finally we gave up and headed back to the hotel.
Around nine at night, as we drove, we found ourselves hungry again and still keen for some sort of new experiences. We'd wanted to partake of some seafood while we were up there. Yet to our dismay, we found that most of the little towns in that part of the land had already closed up by that time on that Sunday night, and we were having a terrible time finding a restaurant.
We were quite relieved, therefore, to stumble upon an interesting-looking place with I think some sort of sea-faring type of name in a charming little town, with seafood on the menu, so we gratefully gave them our patronage, for otherwise, we would probably have been stuck with the vending machines at the hotel.
Unfortunately, things didn't start off so well. Our strange waiter was somehow simultaneously overly friendly and rude. He teased us flirtatiously, insulting us as if he had known us for years and as if he thought we would enjoy it. We did not. We were hungry and had only come for the food, not to take in a surreal spectacle with the waiter as the star.
Yet, that's exactly what happened.
He seated us in the middle of the room, rambling at top speed as he usually did about why, something about wanting everybody to look at us, if I recall correctly. When our friend ordered coffee, instead of just bringing her the freakin' coffee, first he irritably asked, "Hot or iced?" As she took barely two seconds to contemplate it, he harangued her for her answer, claiming he didn't have all night. We sat on the upper level and he had to deliver the order to the kitchen downstairs by walkie-talkie. He thought it would be quite amusing to force her to give them her coffee order herself, shoving the walkie-talkie up to her face, so, baffled, she did.
As we endeavored to get on with our evening, trying to enjoy our short time together, we discussed what was wrong with him, which drugs he might be on, at the times when it became impossible to ignore him. Crack, we decided.
We all ordered clam chowder. I also ordered a baked potato. I had the audacity to request sour cream with it, which resulted in a light-speed retort like this one: "Sour cream?! Why do you want sour cream, it's bad for you. You don't want sour cream. Sour cream? You sure? Are you really sure? All right, sour cream. I don't know, I'll see what I can do."
Some twenty minutes later, long finished with my chowder, after having reminded him another time about the sour cream, I realized that surely in his hysteria or rudeness he had either forgotten all about it or had simply decided he wasn't going to bring it, so I gave up waiting and started in on my potato.
In the most psychedelic moment of the evening, he suddenly emerged from the upstairs kitchen, stood in its doorway, and screamed, "I got the motherlode here!" (He had a distinct East Coast accent.) He held a giant tub with the remains of what looked like sour cream. I had hope this might be my sour cream, but he didn't look at me or bring it to my table, rather, to the table behind me.
Now, I had seen him harassing other patrons and wondered if people on the East Coast (for I had never been) were really so much more tolerant than people farther west that they took him for normal or at least inoffensive, as I hadn't seen nor heard anyone making any overt indication of irritation. Neither did they at this display; in fact, they hardly seemed to notice after glancing over at the sudden commotion.
"It seems like he's moved on to acid," my friends remarked in wonder.
We, too, did our best to ignore our waiter, for to look at him was to invite his very unwelcome attention, and he disappeared into the kitchen again immediately. I glanced over my shoulder at the people behind me, wondering whether I dared ask for some of that "motherlode." I had just decided against it when the guy behind me, who had a very strong Boston accent, asked if it was actually mine, saying that they hadn't asked for sour cream. Gratefully, I said it was, and took it; whereupon this man launched into the single most hilarious diatribe I have ever heard in my entire life, on the subject of this waiter and his outrageous craziness. I was practically rolling on the floor, every single word out of his mouth was so funny and accurate. He went on and on, too, for I'd say two or three minutes, seeming unable to stop, he felt it so keenly. I wished I could have access to this guy every day, so I could experience such grand amusement regularly.
So, apparently we weren't the only ones who'd noticed.
This seafood we'd been so eager to have upset all our stomachs dreadfully, and as we took turns at the outhouse-style bathroom--which sat up on a pedestal, let out directly into the seating area (!), and also was located at the top of the stairs, so that if you stumbled off said pedestal, you would take a header all the way down to the first floor--our friend was courageous, or bored, enough to strike up a conversation with our waiter, who wasn't busy, since it was late and the restaurant was now nearly empty.
Now he was calm, bleary, sweet, even melancholy. He described how he still had to drive three or four hours home that night. Needless to say, we were quite surprised. He said he lived in New York City. We asked, as gently as we could, why in God's name then he would have a job as a waiter in Maine. His response? There were no jobs in NYC. Yeeesss .... He was involved in the theatre in NYC. Then, too, he went to graduate school someplace else--studying law, I think; Boston, maybe.
So it was a three-drug evening, we decided as we at last departed, feeling strangely grateful to him for making our night and a great story.