Take the High Road

I don't care how old parents get, it seems like they never lose their omnipotence.

Driving to the Northern Neck this morning, I'm listening to Cults' "Static" album, a 2013 gem that fuses their '60s-esque pop sound with '80s-era gloom and malaise, an exquisite combo when used to convey lyrics alluding to the couple's romantic breakup. The sky is gunmetal gray and the angular music mirrors it.

Just about the time I hit downtown historic Tappahannock, the sky begins pouring snow - big, fat flakes of snow that are soon obliterating and blurring sight lines. As I ease onto the bridge, I also ease into full-on whiteout conditions.

Instead of 45 mph, everyone is crawling over the bridge at 25. On the other side, a couple of 18-wheelers have pulled to the shoulder of the road, unwilling to attempt any more driving until the blizzard passes.

And hyperbolic as that sounds, this really feels like a snowstorm with intent.

Just as I'm cresting the hill near Warsaw in the blowing snow, I look to the left and to my complete surprise, there's blue sky and puffy cumulus clouds off in the distance. It's like being at the beach and spotting a black thunderstorm raining down on a deserted beach a half mile away while your part of the beach is bone dry and sunny.

By the time I turn on to Route 3, the blizzard suddenly becomes no more than snow flurries and as I continue toward my parents' house, back-lit snow flurries. It's magical and totally weird at the same time. With less than five miles to Mom and Dad's, the sky is completely clear and the roads are dry and they remain that way all the way to their house.

It's almost like I dreamed the whole blizzard, but at least it'll be a great story to share. My Dad, especially, loves a good weather yarn, so I'm all but busting at the seams when I arrive to share how my road trip became a weather adventure.

I go for full drama by walking in and announcing that I'd have been there far earlier, but the blizzard slowed traffic to a crawl.

My Dad, sitting in his big, black leather chair and consumed with the Washington Post crossword puzzle until I'd arrived, looks up, pushes his reading glasses up on his head and sweetly asks, "Oh, the blizzard in Tappahannock?"

If I were a kid, I'd have asked how he knew so much and he'd have responded, "Years of experience," but I'm an adult so I asked how he knew that and he said, "A warning just scrolled across the bottom of the TV."

What ho, I'd driven through a storm worthy of TV-level warnings? I may not have gotten the satisfaction of initially informing them about the blizzard, but at the very least I was able to provide anecdotal evidence.

Later while we were sitting in the breakfast room eating lunch, a mini-blizzard began a show in the three windows around us, much to their amazement and not at all to mine. In no time at all, the sun appeared from the south and the snowflakes grew lighter, then big again and then disappeared entirely.

After lunch and helping Mom sort through half-full, crusty paint cans dating back to the '90s, I do the only logical thing I could think of on a two-blizzard day.

I go out into the yard and cut every daffodil and jonquil I can find - probably close to 3 dozen - to bring inside, put in a ceramic vase and leave on the breakfast table for them as snow souvenirs.

Seems like a really bad time to start cutting EPA funding by 24%, but maybe that's just me.

Oh, the Places I've Been

Life is a story. Make yours a best seller.

So said the sign on the insurance agency when I got to Tappahannock, headed to a B & B to spend the afternoon with a couple of theater types eating lemon blueberry cheese bread and trying to sip a cup of coffee (two sips was all I could manage).

I'm not sure if a sign like that would resonate with everyone, but it definitely struck me as a worthwhile reminder. At least in my own mind, I'd like to think my tell-all would be a best seller. If nothing else, I know it would be a fun read.

Ditto the artsy couple I was talking to who were strangers when I got there and insisting I come back for a leisurely weekend by the time I left.

Arriving back barely in time to do a phone interview with a former bank president, I couldn't have been more surprised when he began our conversation with, "I finished golfing, I had a beer and now I'm having a drink." Needless to say, he was pretty garrulous.

Only then was it time to go out and play.

But not for long because I have an earlier than usual morning planned. As luck would have it, Balliceaux was hosting a last minute early show. Bingo, I had a plan.

Walking into the back room, I found myself the first arrival of the evening besides the musicians, which worked out well since I was hungry. Beef empanaditas spiced with cumin arrived with a white cheddar and roasted jalapeno dipping sauce that I could have made short work of with a bag of blue corn chips.

Instead, I dipped the six empanaditas in it, savoring the heat while people began to arrive, including a loud couple who took the booth right behind me.

The reason I'd come was for Accidental Seabirds, a long-haired and affable duo playing banjo, guitar and drums/percussion with their feet.

"We're from New Jersey," the banjo player announced after the first song, causing the couple behind me to yell, "Woo hoo, Joisie!"

When asked, they said they were from New Brunswick. "Did you go to Rutgers?" the banjo player asked and proceeded to do some sort of a chant. "I'd better stop or I'm gonna get beat up," he said. Later he shared that every stop they make on tour, there's a New Jersey-ite in the crowd. "Must be because people are trying to leave New Jersey." You think?

His singing was clear-voiced and earnest (the guitarist occasionally sang, too), they were both excellent musicians and their smart and occasionally sarcastic folk rock songs told stories well, making them a pleasure to listen to.

I spotted a theater friend mid-set and we had a hushed conversation (touching on why some women hate "The Taming of the Shrew") between songs because I was so surprised to see him out. When I see him at night, he's always working.

The singer pointed out the merch table, mentioning that their CDs were available on a donation basis. "So you can buy us a beer or buy me a haircut and get one," he explained, sounding very crunchy.

From the first few notes, I recognized their cover of  Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale," although the Jersey couple behind me couldn't quite place it. I finally turned around to identify the song for them so they'd stop talking about it and I could hear the song rather than them.

"That was my Mom's 'brown' song," the singer joked in a reference I doubt everyone got.

Let's just say I was sorry when their set ended.

During the endless set-up for the next band, Fool's Errand, I was joined by a favorite musician girlfriend who plopped into the booth with me and shared that she'd spent the afternoon playing pool and day drinking and now needed to sober up before she opened for a honky tonk band later.

Ah, first world problems.

More people arrived, no doubt due to Fool's Errand being local, but the band - guitarist, bassist, fiddle player, drummer, sax player - was taking so long to get started that I would have left if I hadn't been having such great conversation with my friend.

We'd seen each other just Saturday night at the same soul dance party but then we were too busy shaking our tail feathers to chat. Tonight, we had time to compare lives.

Both of us thought the other was hilarious as we over-shared man stories from our past and sized up the men in the room. We agreed that if our forthrightness was off-putting to a man, he probably wasn't the man for us.

When the band finally started, we gave it a song or two before looking at each other confused. Neither of us quite "got" the sound. The fiddle was lost under loud guitars, sax and drums, although sometimes it felt like bluegrass on steroids. Or Americana jazz. Or...

There were so many influences at play that we both felt lost at keeping up with what they were trying to do.

Or maybe it was just way more fun dazzling each other with some of the juicier chapters from our life stories. Both, mind you, sure to be runaway best sellers.

Suppertime at the Almost There

This is a story of good people and of living an unconnected life. It's not a fairy tale.

On my way back from the northern neck yesterday, my car died as I was cruising along at 60 mph. Despite losing power steering, I wrestled the car off the road and into the parking lot of the Almost There diner.

Except I wasn't almost there, I was barely fifteen miles west of Tappahannock.

I admit I'm a useless female when it comes to car trouble, so I climbed over the good-sized log separating the diner parking lot from that of the Watts and Sons Supermarket to seek manly advice.

A man was finishing up gassing his car and I asked him if he lived around there, apparently an atypical question in those parts because he wanted to know why I was asking.

After checking to make sure I had gas (I'm not that bird-brained, I assured him), he offered to drive up to a nearby garage and see if he could get someone to come down and look at the old girl.

He was back in a flash to report that they'd left for the day. But instead of washing his hands of me, he told me to pop the hood so he could take a look.

Within ten minutes, another man showed up, this one shorter than me, much older and quite soft-spoken. He looked under the hood and the two conferred, occasionally asking me to try the ignition again.

The car made noises like it was about to start, but never quite caught.At this point, I realize I have stumbled into best case scenario for a woman stranded on the side of the road so I introduce myself. They're hesitant to shake my proffered hand because theirs are dirty but I insist because their hands are dirty because of me.

Russell and Mr. Young, my two johnny-on-the-spots, begin ruling things out. Plenty of oil. Fuel pump tested and working. No loose hoses.

I learn from Russell that Mr. Young was a car mechanic his whole life. Now retired, his son Wayne runs the shop and he calls him about towing my car to his garage.

Wayne can't come get it tonight because he already has a car on his hitch to be delivered in the morning and taking it off tonight only to put it back on tomorrow is silly.

Mr. Young asks me if I want to write down my contact info and give him the key and he'll see that Wayne gets it. "You're dealing with good people here," he says, leaning in to me so I can hear him and provides Wayne's phone number.

I am about to hand my car key to a stranger and hope I see it again. Yes, I am.

Russell says he'll drive me back to Richmond after he calls headquarters to alert them where he is.

I hear him explaining about the stranded lady and the impending drive and his ETA, then his voice drops and I hear, "Keep my dinner warm, will you, sweetie?"

With his wife's blessing, he's good to go and willing to do it, so I write down my info and give Mr. Young my key, thanking him for his help.

One last duty - Russell goes in to the Almost There Diner to let the owner know that my car will sit there all night. He comes out beaming, saying she's fine with that.

Crawling up into Russell's big green Ford truck, I feel incredibly lucky that this man is putting off eating to drive a stranger to Richmond.

On the drive back, we talk about everything - how he worked in a textile plant until the owner got old and sold all the equipment to the Indonesians, how he now drives a cement truck, how his daughter lives off Laburnum Avenue and works in Richmond as an occupational therapist, how he's been asthmatic all his life.

Learning that he lives in the same area where he was born, I ask if he's from a big family. "Not really, no, there was six of us," he says. And here I was about to say I do come from a big family...and there are six of us.

Once in the city, he marvels at the age and  architecture of Jackson Ward and when I hop down and thank him profusely for his kindness, tells me that we all need to be kinder to one another.

After not hearing anything this morning, I tried calling the number for Wayne and get a recording saying that the mailbox is full.

Okay.

I try later and Wayne answers, assuring me that he's just started on my car and will call me when he finishes.

A few hours later, he calls as promised and says the car is good to go. I get detailed directions, but they're the kind given by someone who knows the area well. No street names or route numbers, just landmarks, like the Chevy dealer and the Sunshine market.

I enlist a friend to drive me out there and once we turn off Route 360, feel like we are deep in the country, a place of singlewides, the greenest of fields and garages bigger than the houses they're next to.

After the final right hand curve to the end of the road, we find Wayne's garage with my car sitting alongside some that clearly haven't been driven in decades.

Mr. Young is standing out front and waves to me with the same placid smile that reassured me yesterday.

Inside the dark, overly full and bathroom-less (I know because I asked) garage, I meet Wayne, a friendly and professional man who managed a Heilig Meyers furniture store on Broad Street for 17 years before coming back to take over his father's garage.

Telling him what an angel his father was for me yesterday, he laughed and said, "That's my Pop. That's just his way."

I sit down and he admits that while he misses the salary, you can't beat being your own boss like he is now. "Over 17 years, I only got three Saturdays off," he says, wincing. "You can't put a price on having your own schedule." When he asks what I do, he's tickled to find that we are kindred souls when it comes to work and life.

When I finally get around to asking about my car and if I somehow caused the problem, he's quick to reassure me.

"No, no, Karen. It's the damnedest thing, never saw the like before. I went to look at the distributor cap and the screws fell right out. Nissan puts those screws in tight and you have to put some muscle behind it to get them off. How they got loose, I can't imagine. That's probably why your car shut off, to protect itself."

Well, how about that? It wasn't just Russell and Mr. Young looking out for me, it was my car, too.

We went outside and I took Mr. Young's hands to thank him again for saving the day before climbing back into my car and returning to civilization.

Whenever I tell people that I don't have a cell phone, almost all of them point out that I should have one for emergencies. What if your car breaks down on the side of the road, I've heard far too many times to count.

What happens? I meet the nicest people and am reminded again that we didn't always have instant solutions to solving life's problems. I've noticed that things always seems to work out one way or another.

At least for me and I know how lucky that makes me.

Apologetic Prose

Sometimes the best reason to go away is to see what you find when you get back.

A writing assignment took me to the Northern Neck to visit a cattle farm, a far cry from my usual urban world.

It was my first time seeing a tiny kitten terrorize chickens five times its size.

I had a ball with the woman I was interviewing once we discovered we're both oldest daughters with no brothers.

We commiserated over how strict our parents were with us and how lenient with our youngest sisters.

Brats.

Just kidding, Nancy and Amanda. Well, sort of.

She leads me up upstairs and through a sliding screen door, a pocket door for a porch, something I've never seen before. I love it.

We sit on what she calls her "sweet potato porch," a place with a view of the creek, her horse and a hummingbird feeder with a non-stop series of tiny birds eating at it.

She tells me it's where she and her husband start their morning, having coffee and planning what they'll accomplish that day.

I don't even drink coffee but I am charmed by the idea of starting my day on a porch like this with someone I love.

After a walkabout on the farm and a highly amusing discussion with her Dad (who kept making analogies between alcohol and cattle feed), I have enough material for three articles and say my goodbyes.

It's mid-afternoon on a beautiful and surprisingly un-humid August day and I have nowhere to be and no one looking for me.

Sounds like a good excuse to visit a winery.

I've been to the Hague before, but it's a pleasant enough place and not overly ostentatious like the wineries who do events.

Going through the tasting, I chat up the young woman pouring, hearing how she has just last night decided to leave the Neck and move to Warrenton to live with her boyfriend

His appeal?

He's a good talker...and listener.

Those are the ones you don't want to let get away, my dear.

Drinking the 2010 Chardonel on the porch with a view of corn fields to the right and grape fields to the left seems like the thing to do after the tasting.

Then the wine is finished and it's time for the next adventure.

As long as I'm out this far on a Monday, I would be remiss not to stop at Lowery's in Tappahannock to eat.

It's not that Lowery's menu is particularly enticing, it's that it's Monday.

And that means all you can eat crabs, an irresistible siren call to this gluttonous crab eater raised in Maryland.

As a bonus, there's more of the Chardonel, brought from the Hague in case there was a wine necessity.

With Taylor Swift blaring from the speakers, this definitely qualifies.

The meal starts with oysters from Bevans, a local purveyor I know well since I'd also interviewed Mr. Bevans for a piece a year or two ago.

They are followed by crabs and more crabs, not large but meaty, and I eat long past the point where I've broken a couple of nails, always part of the collateral damage of crustacean-eating for me.

A small price to pay, but then I don't care much what my nails look like anyway.

Nearby, a little girl leaves her parents eating crabs at their table to play a giant version of Jenga made of sawed-off pieces of lumber, eventually sending the stack clattering to the concrete floor of the patio.

It's getting dark by the time I've had my fill of crabs and am ready to head home.

The hour-long drive home is a good excuse to think about everything that's been going on in my life lately, both negative and positive, and hope that things are finally returning to an even keel.

Walking into my apartment, I realize I've been gone for over twelve hours, a break I really needed after being home far too much over the past week.

My good friend Holmes has left a phone message saying, "Hey, glad to see you're back! I was worried about you 'cause you had dropped off the world, but I'm glad to see the prose is flowing again."

How lovely to come home and have a reason to smile even if no one's around to see it.

Every bit as satisfying, I open up my e-mail and find a message from my past.

It's a guy I shared a few dates with several years ago, whom I'd lost touch with because it wasn't the right time for either of us then.

I'm in a way different place now and he must be, too.

"Hi, Karen. Want to have dinner some time soon? I miss those nice legs."

The smile widens.

Yes, I would definitely like to have dinner with you soon.

And you can be sure I'll bring the legs.

A fine road trip ends on an even finer note.

As my friend Moira likes to say, I'm a lucky girl.

Folks Sure are Friendly in These Parts

Barely back two days from vacation and I headed out again.

I've been missing the ocean anyway, so I was more than happy to go to the river today.

I just didn't expect so much stranger love.

With my WRIR cooler packed with hydration, I gathered up some CDs (Richard Hawley's "Lady's Bridge," Grimes' "Visions," Richmanian Ramblers "World, Sister World" and Mat Kearney's "City of Black and White") for the drive and headed east.

My destination was Kinsale, a tiny Northern Neck town on the Yeocomico River, to talk to a man who's been in the oyster business since 1966.

Arriving at the complex, a man in a golf cart approached me presuming I was lost, but I told him who I was there to see.

A huge smile erupted on his face. "Come on, baby," he grinned, putting his golf cart in gear, "I'll show you."

Inside, the receptionist called the boss and said there was a "young lady" here to see him.

You talking about me?

After a satisfying interview with a man who loves what he does, I got back on the road and before long saw a sign for Vault Fields Winery.

Mid-afternoon grape? Why not?

So I made the turn, winding my way through sunny cornfields, curious about a wine I knew a few Richmond restaurants are now carrying.

But today being Tuesday and all meant no dice.The tasting room is only open Thursdays through Sundays.

Back on the road again.

Coming through Tappahannock, I decided to stop at Parr's Drive-in, two blocks off the riverfront, for ice cream.

Parr's is a throwback: concrete floors, 25-cent gumball machines and a gray-haired guy behind the counter making corny jokes.

Seeing me looking at my choices, he cracked, "One of each?"

I finally decided on a dip-top cone, anticipating it even more when I heard they had chocolate/vanilla swirl soft serve.

Let's just say it had been a while since I'd had a zebra cone.

The guy asked if I wanted small or medium and I told him I'd have a medium, even if it meant I was going to hell in a hand basket after a week of trashy beach eating.

"I won't tell anyone" he said conspiratorially and then winked at me.

My total came to $3.04 ("Just give me three dollars," he said, but I dug out four pennies anyway) and I took my towering treat out to my car to enjoy.

With all the windows down, I enjoyed the 80-degree breeze blowing in from the river while I watched a woman contently sitting on a porch swing on a nearby white house.

Seems like just a few days ago I was sitting on a porch swing overlooking the ocean. Ah, well.

A car pulled up next to me and a guy got out and went in, glancing over at me.

He soon came back out with stuff in his hands, which he put in his car before going back in.

This time he returned with a dip-top cone in hand and looked right at me.

I raised my cone in salute and he did the same.

"Nice idea!" he said, smiling and nodding at me, apparently giving me credit for his decision to dip along with me.

No problem, I told him as he got in his car to leave.

Aw, shucks. Just spreading the gospel of stopping to smell the roses.

Nice idea, if you ask me.

But what do I know? I had chocolate all over my chin.

My Invisible Escape

The best offense is a good defense.

Presuming that the city was going to let me down today (the sheer amount of parking in my neighborhood is testament to how few people are in town), I escaped it at 8:30 this morning.

Less than an hour's drive put me in Tappahannock for the departure of the Captain Thomas, a Rappahannock River-cruising boat that wends its way upriver to Ingleside Vineyards and back.

But the purpose of the six-hour excursion is not just to taste wine and turn around, but to take in the scenery, both historical, natural and merely colorful.

We passed steamboat docks where boats with shows would pull up and entertain the locals.

We saw long-time river resorts with shacks next to custom-looking houses and dozens of people in the water or lounging on the beach at 10:30 in the morning.

From a distance there was no missing an enormous white house erected by a local lawyer and painted with a distinctive Cavalier-orange roof as a nod to his alma mater.

Eventually we came upon cliffs, something I didn't even know existed on the sea level or lower Northern Neck. Made of clay and sand, their trees were homes to an amazing number of bald eagles.

Once the captain showed us a few, easily recognizable by their white heads, the entire boat was engrossed in being the first to spot another one.

Despite a sunny forecast, the weather was more like what Nick Hornby called "a grey, wet British summer" kind-of-a-day with leaden skies and uneven warmth all around.

We docked at Leedstown, unknown to me, but apparently the site of the signing of the Leedstown Resolves, a precursor to the Declaration of Independence declaring the citizenry of Westmoreland County independent from England.

It's now a campground, albeit one with the brick remains of Bray's Church where the document was signed at its center, and today was full of people enjoying the holiday on the waterfront.

We then piled into school buses for the short jaunt to Ingleside, passing Ingleside Plantation on the way (41 rooms, two occupants, oh my)  where we took a tour of the winery and did a tasting of five wines clearly chosen for their appeal to non-wine drinkers.

For lunch, I'd brought a pretty traditional picnic of fried chicken, watermelon slices and hummus and veggies, which I enjoyed in the courtyard under enormous trees.

Afterwards, I peeked at the museum of local Native American artifacts and stuffed wildlife before finding a shady bench and taking out my book.

Moments later, the winery tour guide walked by and shouted at me, "You're supposed to be drinking wine, not reading!" Pour me some Petit Verdot Reserve instead of Blue Crab Blush and we'll talk, I thought, politely saying, "Don't you worry about me."

On the ride back, the sun finally put in an appearance and a father and daughter argued whether the moon was visible  just behind the clouds; they asked the captain for confirmation.

Suddenly an older woman pointed and gasped, "The man in that boat must be a nudist. He just pulled his pants down  and back up. And he has a beer!" Boating and beer: shocking.

All in all, a very different day than my usual. Almost no conversation, but the history and nature parts satisfied my inner nerd and it's always a pleasure to be on/near the water and smelling the salt air.

But I hadn't realized how invisible I was amongst the couples and groups until on the cruise back when the captain's assistant went around passing out photographs of passengers disembarking before lunch.

There wasn't one for me. No doubt I'd been at the back of someone else's group and went uncaptured.

After all, who goes on an all-day boat cruise by herself? Who else?

Or it could be I don't photograph outside my natural habitat. But now there's no proof that I ever left the city.

It's Just a Freakin' Farm

Driving to the Northern Neck this morning was like driving through an English countryside, with scene after picaresque scene. Atmospheric, with verdant greens seen through veils of white and gray. Stay with me here.

First it was all kinds of foggy; in places it was dense and opaque and in others wispy and drifting. But it was layered over the rolling hills of Route 360 East and dotting those fields were goats and cows and bales of hay.

But mostly it was the splendor of the roiling sky that made the panorama feel like a Constable landscape. The clouds were enormous, stacked on top of each other and all shades of gray. It wasn't the typical sky you see in these parts.

Further along, the Rappahannock River looked to have been painted by Turner's chromatic palette. All an artist would have needed today to achieve that array of grey-greens was green paint to which he could add varying amounts of black or white and achieve every single shade i saw crossing the river. The small bit of morning sun showing through that massive cloud cover was both shimmering and subdued. Otherwise, there was not a thing moving.

My destination was my parents' house for a lunch of crabs and watermelon. The three of us destroyed a couple dozen crabs at our leisure on the porch. My plans to walk down to the dock afterwards were shot down when I was informed that the mosquitoes were huge and hungry after all the recent rain. On the plus side, sitting on the porch allowed me to enjoy all the wet smells: pine needles, herbs, bark, crab shells.

Heading home afterwards, I made a stop in downtown Tappahannock. Parr's Drive-in has been sitting there, squat and concrete, since I first started coming down to the area, but I'd never been in. It wasn't that the figure out front wasn't welcoming.

Who wouldn't want to try a place with a giant cone of french fries with his arms holding a bouquet of neon pink flowers and his skinny legs encased in combat boots? He stands right next to the red telephone booth, which someone was using when I pulled in.

Parr's is old school. The menu is on a plastic letter board and clearly they have run out of a few of the popular letters. Still, the most expensive thing is the steak sandwich at $3.69. A sign warns patrons, "No sitting on tabletops!" Apparently some people need reminding of that there.

I went for something I hadn't seen in ages, soft chocolate ice cream with a dipped top. I have no idea what kind of unnatural substance makes that topping harden like that, but nor did I care. As the owner handed me my cone, it immediately began to ooze ice cream through holes in the chocolate shell in the un-air conditioned drive-in.

"You want a cup for that?" he asked anxiously.
"Not really, but it is going to make a mess, isn't it?" I said giving in.
"Yea, it is, but it's so good it doesn't matter," the authority said.

I smiled and took the cup, but I didn't use it. I ate my cone right out front while a man sat in his blue truck and watched me make a mess. I think he'd decided that I wasn't a local.

Driving home, the fog had dissipated but the cloud cover was still decidedly European. But now the afternoon sun was making a valiant effort to filter through the clouds.

The result was a Dutch landscape, maybe 18th century, with lush green fields and dramatic differences in light and shady areas. The sky was still bigger than usual, but the sense of the farm and fields was very end-of-the-workday tranquil.

Warning/Stand Clear: When art history lovers take road trips.

Joining the Third Wave at Garnett's

A woman needs a goal, no?

Still on my quest to taste every sandwich at Garnett's, I lunched there today but purposely waited until after what I thought to be the lunch rush, arriving somewhere in the vicinity of 1:30. When I entered, there was exactly one seat available in the entire place.

Call me egocentric, but that seat would have been for me, I presumed.

I usually try to get to Garnett's by noon to avoid the rush, but that plan would have accomplished nothing since I was told that the place started filling up at 10:30 and every seat was taken by 11:15. That was round one. By the time I arrived, they were on round three.

Of course, Garnett's got a glowing review from Style last week, so that may have alerted some newbies to their affordable, unique and very tasty menu and homey vibe.

Today's sandwich try-out was the Scuffletown Chicken Salad on ciabatta with a side of French potato salad. This chicken salad was a lot like my mother's with big, irregular chunks of white meat chicken lightly dressed with mayo and a hint of sweetness from pickle.

It's probably the best chicken salad I've had in Richmond so far and I have no doubt that Mom would give it the thumbs up.

Sitting on my right at the bar was a man who lives on his mother's family's farm in Tappahannock, which immediately interested me because my folks live on the other side of the bridge in Tappahannock. So he not only knew of their small town and its oystering/crabbing history, but he could guess where they moved from (the D.C. area) and how thoroughly they enjoy the change of locale (greatly).

Let me tell you how unusual that is. I could meet 100 people and it would be unlikely that even one would know of the tiny town of Morattico, so it was a kick to discuss the area with him. Yet another example of just how small the world is.

Today's visit was notable because it was the very first time I've not had one of the fabulous and frugal desserts at Garnett's. I admit I was sorely tempted by the chocolate hazelnut cake, but I just didn't have room, a rarity for me. Next time I will for sure, assuming it's available.

Even if I have to linger for round four. Whatever wave it takes.