All I Want

Yacht Dogs don't have to show up on time.

Granted, we were a tad early when one of the hostesses informed us the band would start playing at 10, which turned out to be not exactly correct because musicians have their own ideas.

Come on, people, we're talking Yacht Dogs at the Jolly Roger.

But eventually they began setting up in front of a crowd of regulars and locals, or at least it appeared so since everyone seemed to know everyone.

The kind of place where a blond in a hat walked through the door and sashayed right on to the "dance floor," never missing a beat as she shimmied in her cut-offs to demonstrate her affection for the sounds of Yacht Rock.

It's not like we didn't feel it, too, despite our strategic position near the front of the bar with a bird's eye view of the bar action unfolding around us. Their folk-tinged rock covered a wide swath of cover songs, including the Beatles, which probably pre-dates their parents' music collections so they got props for digging deep.

The squared off guy in front of us was hitting hard on a much younger-looking woman, all the while, removing his visor (why was he even wearing it at night?) every minute or so and then refitting it over his still hair-covered head. A show of vanity? Nervous tick? As regular as a mechanical monkey drumming?

D, all of the above. Put your pencils down, kids.

We'd welcomed summer with lunch celebrating early season bounty from our favorite veggie stand on the way down: fat red tomato slices on BLTs accompanied by succotash of limas, corn, onions, sage and garlic, eaten at the big table on the porch looking at the all but flat ocean.

"Summer has officially started!" Sir Succotash himself pronounced of his melange.

Dinner's perch was novel, new and panoramic, situated as we were on the very new (last week) deck of Steamers with a view of some of the houses on Southern Shores that we walk by daily.

"Look at that cloud break," our server (who'd been there since 11 and was soon mercifully cut) pointed out when we sat down and, indeed, there was a picture postcard-worthy spill of light cleaving the sky right in front of us, a worthy visual to pair with the lobster (no local sourcing guilt here), steamed shrimp and ribs with two kinds of slaw and hushpuppies that kept us busy until the sun was a non-issue.

A walk on the beach where I was jokingly accused of stealing ecological specimens when I picked up a shell took us by a new turtle nesting spot roped off and looking fairly innocuous. "Come back in 55 days to see the result," a nearby woman suggets.

Oh, look, I am free that third week of August. Only thing better than baby turtles would be if Yacht Dogs was playing.

Tardy, of course. True fans don't mind.