Forever Paisley

This Memorial Day the Green Machine and I packed up the car, grabbed the dogs and headed to Eastern Washington for a three-day backpacking trip around Ancient Lake. From star-gazing to swimming to contemplating the fate of mankind … we pretty much covered it all. I could write a novel documenting those scenarios, but for now I want to focus on the events that followed our desertous adventure.

On our way back to Seattle we decided to stop in Quincy, WA for lunch. Naturally, we looked for the shittiest dive bar we could find. Find it we did. “The Club”. When we walked in people stared at us like we had just walked in from another planet. There was a table full of veteran’s to our right arguing about whether or not they had gone to the appropriate cemetary for the Quincy Memorial Day ceremony. They asked us if we knew where the ceremony was held that morning. Of course, we had no idea. As we approached the bar, the bartender looked up at us and raised her eyebrows, “Sorry but this is a 21 and older bar”. Stephanie and I started laughing and I replied, “Well, perfect because we are 21 and older”. We slid our ID’s across the bar, ordered two bloody mary’s and made our way to the nearest table.

When the waitress arrived at our table, we ordered two salads and one side of fries (with ranch). We were still bewildered by our surroundings. Posters of half-naked women, wood paneling on the walls, carpet that could be classified as turf and, not to mention, the table full of vets. When our food arrived we finished it quickly, partially because we wanted to beat holiday traffic and partially because 75% of the lettuce in our salads was yellow or wilted.  As we took the last couple of sips from our bloody mary’s we asked our waitress for the tab.  It was at that point that she informed us that we had no tab. “One of the gentleman over there has taken care of your lunch”, she said.  Confused, Stephanie and I slowly turned our heads to gaze around the room. Sure enough, when we looked to the right, one of the veteran’s was looking at us with a crooked smile and waving. “Shit, what do we do?”, Stephanie asked. “Well, we should probably go and say thank you … right?”.

We slowly removed ourselves from our chairs and crept over to the table of seven 70+ year old men, five empty pitchers of domestic brew-ha-ha and three baskets of pull tabs. We approached the man who purchased our dive bar grub.  He still had a grin plastered on his face. We held out our hands to shake his. A handshake turned into a high-five. A high-five turned into a hug. We had done our duty. We had thanked the man for his kind gesture and now it was time to leave “The Club”. As we walked away we heard, “What about us?”. We turned back around to see the remaining 6 men staring at us, wondering where their hugs were. Two midwestern girls, surrounded by a table of weathered men who had risked their lives for our country. We couldn’t possibly turn our backs on them. We went around the table, hugging each veteran individually while trying to ignore their attempts at flirtation. As we finished our journey around the table, the entire bar was staring at us. To these seven men we were hometown heros, to everyone else in the bar we were strange, foreign creatures who were interrupting their mid-day, small town routine. Enough was enough. We quickly said goodbye and made our way towards the door. When we got outside, Stephanie hollered, “Run … run now”. Run we did. We jumped in the car like superwomen, turned the ignition and threw the car in reverse.

Quincy, thank you for your quixotic gestures, the laughs and the awkward moments. Here we thought chivalry was dead. Apparently not. It just happens to be 50 years older and a bit more wrinkly than we had desired. Damn.

As for the rest of our trip, it was three days of bliss. We were able to gather a few video clips before the camera went swimming in our wine. It should give you a good idea.

Day 9,374. Off to Micheeegan to celebrate the matrimony of Matt & Amanda.