On Friday, the back seat of my car was strewn with the remains of half-eaten food: part of an apple turnover, a bite of something called a Blarney Stone (a sweet cake lathered in frosting and rolled in crushed peanuts), half of a pizza, a plastic container full of barely sampled spaghetti (minus the meatball)—the remnants of a diet-busting accidental carb binge, capped in the evening with a few beers at the Blue Cat in Rock Island. I’d like to sound smart and insightful by saying that the mess in my car is some kind of metaphor for my life, that my life is full of projects started but never finished, or relationships begun but never nurtured, or that I have an insatiable appetite for novelty, but, that’s just not the case. The food in my back seat is trash and nothing more. Sometimes trash is just trash. (I do LOVE novelty, though!)
I’ve been sampling food from a variety of restaurants on this trip, but I can’t eat a full meal at each place and have room to eat at the next one, so I’m sampling here and there instead. It’s better for my waistline, although it is taking a bite out of my wallet. Even for me, though, this weekend was over-the-top. Counting the bites of smoked catfish and smoked salmon, I bought and sampled food from ten places in two days. And, I’m still searching for a piece of lettuce that has at least a hint of green to it.
On Saturday, I stopped at the one year anniversary bash for Espresso, Cigars, and More in Clinton. The place was crazy busy, a good sign for my adopted Cuban family, and I saw a few familiar faces, including the dead pig I was introduced to the day before, butterflied and marinating. Still no green lettuce, though.
It’s Sunday, and I’m running around to visit more churches: United Church of Christ, Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist; I’m very ecumenical. As I’m driving between visits, my CD player churns out a Freakwater song called Gone to Stay that includes the line “There’s nothing so pure as the kindness of an atheist, a simple act of unselfishness that never has to be repaid.” I’m not just ecumenical, I’m universal (and blasphemous).
The down side of driving around on a Sunday is that the roads are crammed with Sunday drivers.
Today’s Bad Decision: Not putting my doggie bag next to my journal. The food at Sneaky Pete’s comes in standard Midwestern size, meaning a single portion could feed a family of nine in China for a week. I got a box for my leftover pork chop—a big, thick, juicy, grilled Iowa pork chop—then left it sitting on my table. If I had put that box next to my journal and magazine, I would have had lunch covered the next day.
© Dean Klinkenberg, 2009
