Slamming and Hanging

My "real job" days are a distant memory.

It'll be six years in December since I last worked 9 to 5. Granted, I make a third of what I used to make, but the trade off is immeasurable.

A position for which I'd be well-suited recently recently came up and I didn't for a minute consider applying. As a trusted friend put it, why on earth - besides money - would I give up the freedom I have?

Short answer: I wouldn't.

Not when I can have adventures any day, any time I want to. Not when I can pick up and go out of town on a whim. Not when I can stay out as late - or early the next morning - as the fun's still happening.

Thursday's escapades, all focused eastward, began with a drive to Kilmarnock to meet my parents for lunch at Northern Neck Burger Company.

Written on the walls were aphorisms such as, "Every so often, go where you can hear a wooden door slam," which had no attribution.

I pointed out one from Winston Churchill on the wall behind us and Mom read it to Dad as he smiled and nodded in agreement, "The most beautiful voice in the world is that of an educated southern woman."

Mom and I are southern women only by virtue of where we live, both of us having been born in Washington, D.C., a city of, as JFK famously put it, northern charm and southern efficiency.

But we understood the point.

Over decidedly tasty burgers laden with grilled onions, bacon and cheese, they told me the continuing saga of getting their house put back together after a storm in late May sent a massive tree through two stories of it.

Things move slow in these parts.

Kilmarnock is the kind of small town where a man reading the local paper as he eats doesn't throw it away afterwards, he takes it to a couple at a nearby table and offers it to them, saying it's only been read once.

The beautiful weather and low humidity made for glorious road trip weather, never more so than on my maiden voyage crossing the wide bridge near the mouth of the river and so close to the bay that takes me to and from Kilmarnock.

Once back in Richmond, I had just enough time to get cleaned up for a date, which also moved progressively eastward.

There was a Rose and corn fritter pit stop at Lucy's where the always-charming bartender posed philosophical questions about the nature of people in the restaurant industry, pulling in Meyers Briggs and positing that the only difference in front of the house and back of the house is extroversion versus introversion.

As a full on ENFP, I guess that means I'm front of the house material.

From there, we set our sites on Osbourne boat landing and the Lilly Pad for dinner, expecting a crowd given what a beautiful evening it was.

No crowd, but we did find both table gliders occupied so contented ourselves with tumblers of Chardonnay, dumplings and cheeseburgers enjoyed at a table while perusing a map of the Northern Neck to plan an upcoming road trip.

Once sated, we moved over to the swing for a view of the river, the bikers who came in for a bucket of beer and the three very drunk young guys on the nearest glider.

We had the same amiable server we'd had last time and she's a hoot, keeping a cigarette burning just outside the cafe door and taking a drag on it every time she walks out to serve something or pick up dishes.

At one point, she brought the remains of the bottle of wine out, filled our glasses to the brim and left a plastic cup with the last little bit of wine with us.

That's east end service for you.

The little boom box that provides the music outside there was set to K95, meaning all kinds of deplorable modern country music auto-tuned and sounding so generically pop and bland that finally one woman got fed up, walked over and changed the station to classic rock.

Hello Bad Company, Supertramp and Tom Petty, each song already heard hundreds of times in my lifetime.

Still, it beats Florida Georgia Line, or whatever other new country band we'd been subjected to earlier.

But the Lilly Pad only stays open so late (and that's not very late at all: 9ish) so we knew we had to find another fine east end establishment to entertain us.

Enter Bubba's, a place I hadn't been in years, much less for karaoke night which tonight just happened to be.

Could we have been any luckier?

There wasn't much of a crowd, but there were several guys clearly there for the purpose of singing country songs.

One must have had a fear of performing because he'd get up there and turn away from the room and toward the wall to belt it out.

Once everyone got enough liquor in them, some girls got up and began dancing, squatting over a bucket inexplicably placed in the center of the dance floor.

Because it doesn't seem to be possible for me to go to a redneck bar without making friends - although at least no one motorboated me this time - a woman I met in the restroom later approached my date to inform him, "You're a lucky man, you know that?"

Doesn't every girl want her date to think that?

I wasn't surprised when the DJ started playing "Sweet Home Alabama," only the song stopped playing after the first few seconds.

I laughed out loud when the big guy sitting in the bar stool next to me intoned with no irony, "That's a hanging offense in Florida," but fortunately no noose was necessary because the song came back on.

At Bubba's, you don't mess with Skynyrd.

But you do dance. And when the DJ plays a few slow songs late in the evening and I'm dancing with my date, I'm hardly surprised when I see a stranger at the bar giving me a thumbs up and a big grin, for what I'm not sure, but I smile back.

Because, let's face it, when a person can be in a smoky east end dive bar in the wee hours of a weekday night dancing, her life is pretty sweet.

And that's got everything to do with not having a real job and having the time to go hear wooden doors slam any time I care to.

Just call me lucky.