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Sad news about this restaurant – the only local place I know of that sells Gaeng Hung Lay.

The owners are nice people. This really is too bad.

A GoFundMe page is here.

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I’m re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring. The last time, I was in the fourth grade. I remember being bored while the hobbits made their way through the Shire. Get to Rivendell! I thought. How many hundreds of pages can it take? How many meals must they stop for? And who cares about the sale of Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses? Now I relish all of this. Each of the four principal hobbits is lovely. The chapter about Farmer Maggot is a delight. The good farmer displays an abundance of “country” virtue: industry, forthrightness, loyalty, hospitality, courage. Also, alas, undue suspicion of outsiders, even of fellow hobbits.

Hobbits who live in different Shire quadrants consider each other “queer.” Eastern Shire-dwellers like to mess around in boats, and some even befriend elves; Westerners … do not. These differences are the basis of their mutual mistrust.

This silly thinking, all too pervasive in the real world, is best corrected indirectly, by way of literature. Consider some real-life rivalry (e.g., Democrats vs. Republicans). Each tribe is prepared to defend every point, almost to the death. Absurd … but it’s hard to see the absurdity once you side with, or against, one of the tribes. The habit of scrutinizing each point reinforces the enmity.

It’s better to approach one’s adversary having first learned to smile at the hobbits’ silly disputes.

I remember my boss at IU saying that most first-year English papers end up arguing, Everybody just needs to get along. Not a bad position to take, until it becomes untenable. It turns out that orcs have real-life counterparts who must be kept at bay.

The problem is, it’s all too easy to mistake Farmer Maggot, a “stout fellow” if ever there was one, for an orc.

I wish I had known you better, Frodo – to his great credit – tells the farmer.

A restaurant review

Samuel went to his grandparents’ house, so Karin & I tried a new restaurant I’d read about. We had to chase Daniel up and down the dining room. But we’re willing to do that now and again; it’s chasing two children through a restaurant that’s intolerable.

Besides, most of the time, we were the only diners, and the waiter was hiding in the kitchen. A rough-looking DoorDash driver skulked around, cursing. The food took about forty-five minutes to reach our table. A little before we received it, another couple came in. They surveyed the near-empty dining room with palpable dismay. They asked if we were open. We don’t work here, we told them. But yes, the restaurant is open. They sat down and made various criticisms. Then another couple came in. They, too, seemed disappointed. But they put on brave faces, girded their loins, and seated themselves.

The food arrived. It was unpleasant to eat, which is saying something, because I’m not picky. (And it was expensive. But we’d already accepted that.)

How was everything? the waiter asked, afterward.

I’m sorry to say that we politely told him an untruth.

Karin went to the toilet but didn’t use it because there was fresh urine everywhere. Maybe the angry DoorDash driver left it.

I won’t name the restaurant. It’s downtown. The interior is bright, clean, neat, and comfortable. The exterior is bizarre. The main entrance appears to be a former service entrance. To get to it you have to walk across an especially muddy, pot-holed stretch of parking lot. Getting into the parking lot is an ordeal. There’s one sign, and it isn’t easy to see at night. The restaurant is open just a few nights a week. I don’t see how it could survive without income from, how shall I put it, an avocational source.

Nickel and dimed

At church, a nice old lady took me aside and gave me an envelope. “Don’t let your wife know about this,” she said.

The envelope contained a Valentine’s Day card and $25.

“Take your wife out for a nice meal,” the card said.

So I did, at the local Vietnamese restaurant, on Monday. (We figured we’d beat the rush.) Our nice meal consisted of a bowl of rice noodles, herbs, meats on a stick, and assorted flavors. It was exceedingly pleasant, except that the server kept telling us how good our food was while we were trying to eat it.

And she said I couldn’t order a sandwich because the nail parlor had been ordering ten sandwiches at a time, and the restaurant had run out.

She also hung around and talked about how beautiful Vanna White still is after all these years. I’m not sure why she said this. Wheel of Fortune wasn’t on TV in the restaurant.

It was a little kooky, not unlike the last time when we were in that restaurant and she attended to us very professionally until the last minute, when she told us that she was desperate to quit her job. But, as of Monday night, she hadn’t.

Karin thought the server was kooky, too, but she may have harbored some sympathy for her; afterward, when we went to the used-DVD store, she bought the movie Waitress.

I bought Pale Rider.