HEY, BABY, IT'S THE FOURTH OF JULY

The Fourth of July is an important holiday for rugged patriots like Stavros and me. In fact, any four-day weekend is an important holiday for us. This Independence Day was looked forward to more than ones in years previous because of the very generous invitation of our friend Angelina Langoustine. Remember her?

We got a bit of a late start due to the numerous errands we had to run before we could leave town. It was already a scorcher at noon when we finally got on the road and I pressed the odometer.

“Only a hundred and fifteen miles to go,” said I as we got on the freeway headed east.

Angelina’s parents own a house on a big piece of land in Harbor Beach, which is about 40 minutes from Lexington, in the thumb. Her father’s family owned 80 acres of land there at one time and were prominent members in town. Of course this was not surprising to learn when one casts one’s mind back to the Langoustine home we visited last fall.

This house was not as grand, but the property upon which it sat was a jaw dropper. Angelina told us to look out for a huge old red barn on our left and a homemade sign reading “Moonshadow” on our right.

“This is it,” I informed a slumped-over Stavros, who had finally tired of air drumming to The Kinks and fallen asleep.

We turned down the most perfect wooded, curving driveway anyone has ever carved into the land. It twisted and turned and we drove though light and dark patches for about 200 feet before we came to the house. A Ferrari sat in the driveway and three or four other cars were parked on the gravel beside it.

“Look at that car!” whispered Stavros as we approached the house.

Angelina flung open the door and we met her parents and an aunt and uncle. The house was cool and filled with the sorts of objets d’art we saw at the Romeo house. A column from an Afghan mosque stood next to an Eames lounge chair and ottoman. Fabulous ceramic masks and Fiestaware sat casually on shelves. Folk art of every nationality hung on the walls alongside Angelina’s mother’s paintings and her father’s drawings of cars. A former art school professor, Angelina’s mother is a 65-year-old version of Angelina. Her father, a retired designer for GM, is a tall and elegantly athletic man. They went back to chatting and Angelina showed us to our quarters in the walk-out basement.

Our friends Alice Gabor and Chauncy Drysdale had come up for the weekend too and were stationed out in the boathouse a few feet from the beach. Stavros and I put on our bathing suits and slid open the doorwall and stepped out onto the lawn.

Imagine, if you will, an acre of beautifully soft, green grass, bordered on both sides by tall pines, oaks, bushes, and grasses. Landscaped areas with fancy-looking ceramic planters or a wooden swing and pergola tucked here and there—basically the sort of place you would expect to see in Martha Stewart’s Living. And here we were, my darling Stavros and I, looking at each other in disbelief.

“Come on!” yelled Angelina, as I walked gingerly down the rocky beach to the water.

“I’m trying—it hurts!”

“Where are your WATER SHOES?” she said, sounding very aggrieved.

“What the fuck are ‘water shoes’? You didn’t tell me to bring water shoes!”

“Use those!” she said, pointing to one of a few pair of hideous rubbery perforated slippers.

I slipped them on and walked down the beach. If you are imagining sand, stop. Lake Huron is rock city. Not like how Detroit is Rock City. I mean there are a zillion rocks of all shapes and sizes covering the floor of the lake. It would have been impossible to traverse without the water shoes. Plus the rocks are all covered with a rusty-colored slime that Stavros already managed to smear all over the back of his shorts. I resisted making any feces-related jokes out of respect for Angelina’s hospitality, and tiptoed into the water and we all horsed around for a while.

After about an hour of flopping around on inner tubes and giant, inflatable floaty things, we were ready for dinner. Back at the house, Angelina’s family was preparing to head to the house on the other side of the woods where an aunt and uncle lived. They were holding a small memorial service for Angelina’s father’s cousin, who had died unexpectedly the previous week. We waited for them to leave then the four of us had dinner on the screened-in porch deck (which was twice the size of my living room, only with 20-foot coved wooden ceiling and much nicer furniture). Pine trees and bamboo were on two sides and the view of the yard leading to the beach was on the other. It was so spectacular I forgot about every ounce of stress...

...I’d been holding onto for the last few months and totally relaxed.

An hour or so later, people began returning from the memorial service. Angelina came out to the porch and told us about it, occasionally wiping tears from her eyes. She said they’d spilled his ashes into the lake he’d loved so much and that the sun shone on them as they dispersed, warm waves rolling in to embrace them. I almost cried myself at this description so thank God we decided to go build a bonfire and get drunk.

Stavros, Alice, and Chauncy are all wonderful singers and so they played guitar and sang for our entertainment for hours. Soon it devolved into a request situation.

“Play 'Cathy’s Clown'!” I demanded, gargling more wine.

The bonfire and the wind were keeping the mosquitos away and soon it was after midnight. Angelina’s sister Augusta and her husband Shawn had gone up to the house so the five of us sat staring at the dark lake and the dazzling constellations above. We could see the Milky Way, satellites drifting here and there, a shooting star—I’m not kidding, it was nuts. Angelina told us that the night before, they’d seen a UFO.

Suddenly a very hoarse Stavros interrupted our murmuring.

“What the fuck is that?!” There was fear in his voice and he pointed to the horizon.

We all stood and squinted at the fiery blob at the line that divided earth and sky.

“What is that? What the…is it a bomb? What can that be? Is something on fire? Something’s on fire! What is it!” Stavros went on like this in borderline terror for a few seconds and we all staggered down closer to the water’s edge for a better look. As we watched, the glowing shape took on a circular form and rose higher above the water line. It gained texture and size and finally someone said, “It’s the moon. Oh my God, that’s the moon.”

We stared for what felt like ages. The moon…how had we never seen the moon look like this before? How could we not have known the moon could look like this? Stavros could not get over it. I won’t suggest that he was as…um…moved…as this guy, but only because Stavros was not on acid.

It was around this time that I forgot I was standing amid 5000 large boulders and attempted to turn and cross the beachfront to return to my chaise. I instantly fell down, tripping over a plastic kayak and landing directly on my left shin atop a huge rock. Since it felt like I had broken my leg, we decided that perhaps it was time to pack it in, so Stavros and Angelina and I retired to the basement and Alice and Chauncey left for the boathouse.

The next day was filled with ATV rides, swimming, eating, and cooking. Angelina took me through the trails in the woods on the ATV pointing out geographical highlights (“…and this is where we used to have a bee farm until they all died of a virus…here is the bench I was sitting on when I decided to break up with Ramon….that is my uncle’s cigar-smoking lean-to…etc) and then her father taught me how to drive it, so I took Stavros out and pointed out the same spots.

Angelina became very ill-tempered around this time and cast aspersions on my ability to operate the ATV. A few quick, expertly maneuvered spins around the boathouse and some awesome stunts made her eat her words. 

As this day was the actual Fourth of July, there was a barbecue and fireworks show planned. Alice and Chauncy had to leave so Stavros and I took our things to the boathouse and we all had one last dinner together.

More of Angelina’s relatives had shown up so we were up to 11 adults and 3 children at this time. The two youngest kids were 5 and 8, Susannah and Max. Earlier that day, the two of them had been out on the water with us and for a while, Max and I were the sole occupants of the giant floaty thing. We lay on our backs and bobbed around and I said, “Hey Max. You know what pigs do on the Fourth of July?”

“What?”

“They do the in-de-pen-dance.”

He looked at me blankly. “HEY CHICKENS!” he yelled in the direction of Angelina and Alice, then jumped off the giant floaty thing and swam away from me.

After a fabulous dinner of pasta salad, beet salad, cole slaw, hamburgers, chicken, and wine, we all dragged our lawn chairs into position for Angelina’s legendary fireworks display. Next to me sat all the children and beyond them, at the picnic table in front of the firepit, sat their parents. Angelina and her father Crispin were down on the beach setting up. Angelina’s mother Jenna sat alone on a wooden swing behind us.

Shawn, Angelina’s brother in law, was very fussily arranging s’mores for the kids. There was a lot of announcing of rules as to quantity (“Only three s’mores each!”) that I overheard. It turned out Max and Susannah’s cousin was thought to have a weight problem that could be controlled by the withholding of chocolate but with virtual unlimited access to marshmallows and graham crackers. I don’t have kids but this seemed odd. Although this kid was a little busty for 11 so what do I know?

Finally Angelina began lighting the fireworks. These were not your party-store sparklers. These were real, commercial-grade fireworks. Some of them were more impressive than others. The “Peace on Earth” model, for example, was a small cardboard globe on a stand that spun around emitting sparks and “reports,” finally exploding completely. I don’t know what says “Peace on Earth” any more convincingly than total destruction of the planet, do you?

We lay back in our chairs and oohed and aahed appropriately while the kids squirmed and ate marshmallows and Shawn tended to the bonfire, which amounted to a lot of poking and adding of pine branches and tumbleweeds. The additions always resulted in an instant conflagration that temporarily revitalized the fire.

What happened next can be seen here. Skip ahead to about :43 if you’re in a hurry.

Apparently, Shawn had thrown one of the “empty” fireworks boxes into the bonfire. The kids were all rattled after this and Jenna actually returned to the house. Shawn left the picnic table and came and sat next to Stavros, cracking open a beer and muttering, “So much for my father of the year award.” I felt kinda sorry for him.

Angelina and Stavros and I decided that we had to see that moon again so after everyone else went inside, we set up a repeat camp at the picnic table and listened to Angelina’s iPod. Unfortunately, the wind was not very strong that night and the mosquitos went gangbusters on all of us. They could not stop the moon, however, and Angelina told us the story of her recently deceased uncle’s honeymoon canoe trip down the moonbeam with his new bride. This was so romantic and surreal that we all just stared at the beam of light on the waves for a long time.  

In the morning, Angelina’s parents left and so she and Stavros and I went out for a farewell brunch at a place they call “Eats” across the street. It’s really called “Let’s Eat Here,” or something equally as strange. Possibly a former farmhouse, it offered two AUCE buffets—soup and salad and breakfast. Angelina and I both got the salad bar and Stavros got breakfast. I attempted to drape my body entirely over the a/c vent next to my chair as it was approaching 125 degrees in the shade that day.

Harbor Beach’s strangest family sat next to us. A man of about 30, a little girl who was about 5, maybe, and a teenaged girl who looked about 16. 

The little girl was incessantly slapping at or pinching or grabbing or otherwise hassling the man, all while keeping up a nonstop nonsensical sing-song. Sometimes she inserted the word “blah” in place of all others in a real song, such as “E I E I O.” Example, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah!” The man kept wrestling her back into her chair and saying, “Stop it! Stop it!” and she’d squirm away and grab his face or something from his plate and start up a new song. During all this, the teenaged girl sat picking at a platter of chicken strips and fries and reading a hardcover edition of Twilight and totally ignoring them. 

Every now and then she would look up with a vacant expression and say nothing. Neither the man nor the child spoke to her, either, although at one point when she was in the restroom, the little girl asked, “Where’s Mommy?”  This really freaked me out because I thought the man was the father of the two of them.

It was a lonely affair back at the Langoustine compound. With the parents gone, the house seemed empty and silent. We packed up the car and hugged Angelina. I pressed the odometer again and my darling Stavros and I drove home.

He is still talking about the moon.

STAVROS'S BIRTHDAY -OR- WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE FARM?

Last week marked the second annual hitting-of-the-thumb by Stavros and Eunice. We decided to beat the weekend crowd and set out at the peak of rush hour on Thursday afternoon, without so much as a bottle of water between us. That afternoon we’d had front-row seats at the Tigers game so we were good and fried as we set out on 696 headed east with every other sweaty, crabby slob in town.

By 6:30 we rumbled down the driveway of the White Feather Motel. This is a favorite spot of mine. It sits in the middle of a really sort of cute trailer park on a bluff overlooking Lake Huron. 

The beach there is private and there are a ton of rocks of all sizes to examine, throw, step on awkwardly, stand atop, break in half, or put in your pocket to bring home. Stavros showed off his rock-skipping skills after dinner and they were quite mad. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We checked in after being told by the proprietress that she’d only charge us for a one-bed room if we promised not to mess up the second one.

“Which one you want to sleep in?” asked my dearest, after setting down our bags on the bed farthest from the door.

“This one,” I answered, pointing to the other one, and Stavros immediately whisked the bodily-fluid encrusted cover from atop it and flung it into the corner.

I spread the cover we’d brought from home over the sheets and went into the small bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. The proprietress and her friend were just outside the window grilling and smoking and talking in the grassy yard between the motel and the trailer park.

“Ready?” I asked the now fully supine Stavros, who lay atop the pink bedspread, checking email.

We crossed the yard, nodding hello to the proprietress and her associate as a car pulled up next to ours. As we got in ours, a man got out of the other, leaving a woman inside, smoking and waiting. They looked like the up north biker version of Jack Sprat and his wife. He nodded to the proprietress and continued around the corner to his room. I tried not to think about them but failed.

“Probably forgot his piece,” I said as we backed out, looking away.

Dinner took place at Cadillac House, famous for its…for its being one of three places to eat in Lexington. I ordered the broasted chicken and Stavros had the “Rodeo Burger,” which was a burger with some sort of barbecue sauce and an onion ring or something not at all related to rodeos. I’ve been to a lot of rodeos in Idaho and they don’t have anything like that so I don’t really know what they were talking about.

My broasted chicken was served with what the waitress described as a “real light pilaf” and broccoli. We watched Jeopardy and along with the six or seven other patrons, shouted out the answers. Well, when I say “we,” I mean Stavros. I knew exactly one answer, the title of a Kingsley Amis book. I pretended to think it was a boring show after that but it didn’t stop Stavros from participating.

“KRUSCHEV!” he yelled.

“OREL HERSHISER!” etc.

After dinner we went back to the beach by our motel and threw the aforementioned rocks around, stood on them, stepped on them, put them in our pockets, broke them in half and so on until I became afraid that the sun would go down and we’d be unable to grope our way up the right sandy staircase and get lost in the trailer park. Back in our room, we had a final toast to Stavros’s birthday and settled into the very uncomfortable double bed and turned on the 10” tv. As luck would have it, a marvelously terrible movie was on, Stephen King’s The Langoliers.

I almost felt like it was my birthday!

The next morning was perfect. Stavros even said as much as he stepped outside with our bags. We only had the room for one night so we had to amscray by 10:30.  

“It’s perfect!” Stavros declared, as he stepped into the sunshine and I folded the pink blanket and packed up toiletries. “Where is there to have breakfast?” he asked.

“Wimpy’s,” I said.

“Wimpy’s? I don’t want Wimpy’s for breakfast!” he whined.

“Well, I don’t know where else there is. I mean…that’s really all there is.”

“Are you telling me there is only one breakfast place here? What about down that one road?”

“There isn’t anything down there. There might be breakfast at the golf course.”

To humor him I drove to the golf course. There was a big sign advertising lunch starting at 11 AM.

“Lunch,” he grumbled, “I’d rather have lunch anyplace but a golf course.”

“Golf courses have good diners,” I said, although I have been to this particular one and it is gross.

“What is ‘auce’?” I asked, as we drove back toward Wimpy’s and passed an Elk’s Club-type place advertising an “auce breakfast.” It was the second sign I’d seen in Lexington for this mysterious “auce.”

“I don’t know,” said Stavros. “Is there someplace down the other way?”

“Not unless you go way, way down there and then it’s just some shitty little place. Auce must be a kind of fish,” I decided, turning onto the road back toward town.

                                                           AUCE

Stavros pulled out his iPhone and after a few seconds announced: “Auce: All U Can Eat.”

“Oh, my God, ‘a kind of fish!’” I said.

“Forget it,” Stavros said in defeat as we passed the corny-looking “A Night To Remember” B & B, “There’s nothing down here.”

One U-turn and two Wimpy’s breakfasts later, we were out on the sidewalk again, the day gaping open before us like an Auce swimming toward a nightcrawler on a hook.

“Let’s go see if we can find the farm,” suggested Stavros.

“Okay!” said I, always up for an adventure, especially it involves farms and country drives.

As a child, Stavros and his family had spent summer vacations at his maternal grandmother’s house north of Lexington. Upon her husband’s death, she’d sold it to a lottery winner and that was the end of the Papanasticiou summers in the thumb. Stavros hadn’t been there for 22 years and was dying to see it. So was I. My childhood in Idaho was spent surrounded by farms and so this felt personal to me, too.

After heading straight up for about 30 minutes, we came to the not-so-prettily-named Snay Road.

“Everything’s German up here,” Stavros told me, consulting his phone for a map. “All these roads have names like that. Look at that house,” he pointed to the right at a strange-looking brick house in a style I’d never seen. “That’s from the mid-1800s, “ he said.

 “Weird,” I commented, noticing that we were the only car in any direction.

We bounced along for a few minutes and made a right turn, then peeled our eyes for Abend road. Bear in mind there were no actual road signs. There were small pieces of wood or metal nailed to poles and no particular effort was made to trim trees around them or place them where a passer-by might notice them without much effort. Finally, after turning around and doubling back few times, we found it. I turned and we drove slowly toward what looked like a farm house with a few outbuildings on the other side of the road. I could almost feel Stavros holding his breath.

“This isn’t it. I don’t get it,” he said as we passed a couple dozen cows who all turned to look as we did. I was surprised that they took notice of us. When I was little, my dad (in Idaho, where there are a lot of cows) told me that cows were so dumb that if they were in pain, they knew it hurt, they just didn’t know where. I’m sure he was just being funny, because there was something about the cows all looking up at us, one by one, that made me doubt him. They didn't seem dumb.

We pulled over at the end of the road. Since there was no other vehicle within miles I figured we could hang out there as long as it took for Stavros to get his bearings. He looked around then looked at the map. Then he did it again.

“Let’s turn around.”

We headed past the cows, who all looked up at us again, and bounced in the dust back the way we came. We decided that Abend Road must not go all the way through, and we had to hit it from another street.

Finally, about a mile due east of the Abend Road cows, we spied a lonely looking farmhouse surrounded by barns and tall grasses. There was no actual farm here, that is, no crops, no animals; the land wasn’t even tended to. This had to be it.

The house itself was not the house Stavros remembered. It looked like they had added onto it then covered the whole thing with aluminum siding. In addition, it looked totally abandoned. We got out of the car.

I walked down what used to be the driveway but what was now just part of the overgrowth. Stavros stayed near the car. It was very windy and I could hear a metal clanging somewhere nearby. It was like being in Children of the Corn. I went into the backyard where I saw a well pump. The metal clanging was coming from some corrugated siding on the most derelict looking barn I have ever seen. I was absolutely dying to go inside but was pretty sure Stavros wouldn’t let me and also that there would be corpses inside. So instead I tried to capture the horror of it on film. It’s too windy to hear the clanging.

 

These are the other barns.

Stavros was pretty shell-shocked when we left. I think he had accepted the fact that his family no longer had the farm, but he wasn’t prepared to find it forgotten and left behind, the old brick house transformed into a modern-day mess of aluminum siding with blankets for curtains and grass up to your hoo-ha all around it.

The ride home seemed much shorter. We stopped at a junky gas station past Port Sanilac for water and listened to the worst country music ever recorded all the way back to Lexington.

On the way up to the farm, I made a reservation at a very nice B & B I’d stayed at before with my family.  After humping our stuff up the stairs to our room, we laid down for a while and looked at the pictures of the farm then took a nap.

When we woke up, we were starved. We decided to have dinner at the “fancy” place down by the water called the Smackwater Grille. This place is part of a block of establishments owned by some guy who is clearly the Donald Trump of Lexington. He owns the fancy pizza place at the end, the gourmet food shops in between, and the theater attached, which features such acts as the singer from Santana, tribute bands, and the singer for Santana. They waiter handed us a schedule as he showed us to our wrinkled black tablecloth-covered table. I noticed that there was a Michael Jackson tribute show that evening entitled “What is Bad?” or something.

“We should go to this,” I said excitedly to Stavros, tapping the flyer.

When the waiter arrived with our drinks and we asked how much the show was.

“$35-$50,” he said without batting an eyelash.

“Well,” I laughed, “Okay. Maybe.”

People in Lexington but really be desperate for entertainment. There was one show we really would have liked to have seen, but it had been the previous weekend.

The good news is that the food turned out to be very good. I was surprised, on account of the tablecloth and all. Stavros got a steak:

...and I ordered pasta puttanesca.

Because this is turning out to be the longest post in Modern Coastline history, I will abbreviate the remaining highlights of the trip:

• After-dinner drinks at Cadillac House. There was a strong odor of urine in the air.

• Breakfast at B & B included large sausages and Swedish Pancake, a custardy pie thing.

• When we returned home, we that we missed the most awesomest storm in history and that power had been out at my house for at least 12 hours.

It was a good trip.

A PICKLE VICTORY

MAE'S: MAEBE NOT

While never fans of the original Anna’s, Stavros and I were nonetheless anxious to try the new breakfast/lunch place it became following “Anna’s” death.

Mae’s opened weekend before last to mixed reviews from our friends. So this past Sunday, we decided to forego our usual New York Bagel brunch and try it.

We could tell as we approached that not much had been done to the décor. Which is fine; the place was a time capsule of 1955 as it was. It was packed and about eight people stood just inside the door waiting for a table. Normally this is good but since there are a few tables just inside the door, I expect the people sitting there felt a little uncomfortable being surrounded that way. I noticed a fellow we know from a local band and his wife and daughter at the nearest table. I hadn’t seen them at first because they were completely obscured by the crowd of women waiting for a party to leave so they could descend upon their table. I wondered how annoying it would be to try to have breakfast with a bunch of strangers’ crotches a few feet from your face.

Their extremely cute character of a daughter didn’t mind and shoved a fork around a plate of hash brown while bobbing her little head around to Elton John, which was playing very loudly from someplace. Stavros immediately began humming a song by our friend’s band.

“This part is the best part of that whole record," he said to me, “Dungity-dungity-dungity-dungity DUNG DUNG!”

We stood there for about 15 minutes, the soundtrack alternating between Stavros’s personal rendition of our friend’s song and the iPod’s annoying mix. The owners are clearly going for an old-timey Detroit diner feel while still being modern and hip, so the result is CKLW station IDs followed by Motown hit followed by the aforementioned Elton John followed by She’s a Little Runaway followed by Beck.

Finally a two-top opened and we seized it. It was at the back of the restaurant, the very last table, in fact. I should mention that while we stood waiting for a table, at no time did any employee acknowledge us at all. A line for a table is a good problem to have, but they’re going to have to address the interior crowding issue by asking people to wait outside. Allright, so we take the two-top. Right away I’m too cold. The a/c was blasting from someplace directly on us and had I not been wearing a long trench coat, I would have put it back on.

Our waitress delivered the menus and then didn’t come back for a while which gave me time to examine my surroundings.

The place is small, like maybe eight tables, with a counter that has about 12 stools. It’s on a corner and the front and north side are all windows, the front looking out onto Woodward and the north looking out onto a bland office building and some residential Pleasant Ridge homes. The windowsill is lined with little vintage vases into which real flowers are tucked. We had miniature roses and some other thing I couldn’t identify and that had no fragrance at all next to our table. The salt and pepper shakers follow in the Flytrap tradition of being different cute little vintage shakers on each table. We had a cow bisected neatly crosswise.

 I discovered the source of the loud music on a shelf over a food prep area behind the counter. There rested an iPod in a Bose dock, which very effectively reproduced the decibel level of at least four speakers ten times its size, all operating at top volume. I like loud music as much as the next hipster but it was too way loud and also the mix was too contrived.

Behind the counter were chalkboards announcing the types of drinks available and also quite a lot of bragging comments about carrying local products. Faygo cans and Better Made bags featured prominently. Which is great, I love both of those things. It just felt, like the music, contrived.

Other intriguing sights included the backs of the grimy couple across from us. They slouched on the stools, her tramp stamp an unrecognizable blotch of India ink bleeding out into crinkles of flab atop her low-slung “Da Nang” brand gray camouflage pants; his tattered and greasy sweatpants hanging in dismal shreds over his flip-flopped feet.

After scrutinizing every inch of these two, I looked to the menu. Regulation breakfast stuff with a surprise or two, like potato pancakes and deep-fried pancake balls of some foreign extraction. I went for the eggs, sausage, hash browns and toast combo and Stavros ordered some type of “platter,” the primary feature of which was French toast. I will say that I was glad to note that Mae’s has chosen to use shredded hash browns versus the “fancy” chopped potato type every single other place in town serves.

 So. I know it’s their first week and there are some glitches but I gotta say it took one hell of a long time to get the food. And when it finally came, they had forgotten my hash browns, the very centerpiece of my order.

“Excuse me,” I called to our waitress, who had the unpleasant waitress habit of bestowing upon customers various cheesy terms of endearment.

I told her I was pretty sure hash browns came with my order and she went off to check, then came back and said, “Angel, the ones we have on now are for people who already ordered them, and honestly, it’s going to take way too long to make more.”

“Really?” I said. “What about the potato pancakes?” She ran off to check and I must say that I was really affronted by the lack of hash browns. They do all the cooking right there out in the open so I could see that there was only one or two women making everything to order but hash browns seem like a pretty good thing to just go ahead and make a shitload of.

She came back a minute later after I’d already given up and was glumly eating my burnt eggs and not-very-toasted toast and tossed down a plate of hash browns.

“Turns out yours came with them after all so I stole some, sweetie,” she said.

All my food was totally mediocre. Stavros reported the same thing. They do use bread from Avalon (of course) and I am almost positive the orange juice was fresh squeezed and it was very good, but in general it was like the sort of breakfast you make at home that costs the same and takes just as long. The upside was that we didn’t have to do the dishes, I guess. All in all, I’d have to say that if I overlook the new-business hiccups, which I shall, because it’s to be expected, Mae’s is still not a place I’d choose over my beloved Café Muse or even New York Bagel unless I was really, really dying for shredded hash browns.

To top things off, we had to wait about 20 minutes just to pay. The waitress took forever to bring the check (“Here ya go, hon,”) and then Stavros and I stood at the counter for another—I kid you not—15 minutes trying to get the attention of someone back there who’d accept our credit card.

The problem is that if you’re not paying with cash, you have to go to the front of the counter and wedge yourself between stools to pay. I can’t imagine how long it might have taken had there not been a vacant seat there. It’s the original cash register and I applaud them for trying to keep all the vintagey stuff intact, but it just doesn’t work. Either the waitress has to take the check and ring it up (I vote for this) or they gotta move the register. It was really ridiculous. I know the guys back there were bustin’ ass but my desire to get out of there escalated to such a degree that by the time they rang us up, I felt like I never wanted to go back.

Conclusion: Mae’s—work on it.

INYO ON NOTICE

The following review, INYO ASS, SERVERS, is by my mother, Bonita Sigmundfreud. I would like to preface her commentary by describing the last and final experience Stavros and I had at this place.

It was the Friday of my first week at my new job and I worked a little late so I drove straight from work to pick up Stavros. We agreed to go Inyo over our preferred nearby Japanese joint, Sakana, for a change of pace. Also, we discovered that our favorite place Sakana is not so favoritey if we get anyone but our friend Delgado Activito as our waiter. We hadn’t been to Inyo for a long time and I can’t remember why other than having a vague memory of being annoyed by their loud and horrible music and also that they had a Victoria’s Secret fashion show on tv the last time we were there. My Japanese urge happens about twice a month and the previous week or so—Valentine’s Day dinner, in fact—we had gone to the fancier and spookier Shiro in Novi. 

(Review-within-a-review-within-a-review—Shiro was really fun. It is a giant antebellum mansion that is purportedly haunted. It was once a grand private home and it still feels like you’re at a huge dinner party at someone’s house. After dinner we went upstairs to check out the second floor diners and came upon an unlocked, unmarked door that turned out to lead to the attic. We snuck up in the cold and dark and crept around for a while before scurrying back down and slipping out the door under the disapproving eye of a passing busboy. This is a good place to go if you want to make a big impression. Pulling into the driveway at night and being greeted by a million windows ablaze on the face of a gorgeous old mansion like that is stunning. It’s also really good and not any more expensive than your average suburban sushi joint. There’s a very cozy little bar that was probably a small maid’s bedroom or something tucked behind the staircase—it looks like a train car. It is really perfect for a date.)

Anyway, we entered Inyo the way people normally enter public places—through the front door. In keeping with these people being wrong about everything they do in relation to the concept of service, they installed the hostess station at the back door, and the bartender who greeted us as we walked in acted like we had pulled the Milton Berle of boners by hoping to get seated from the front of the restaurant. 

 

 Stavros did not like this at all. We strode to the rear, past the way-too-deep-and-tall booths and were led BACK TO THE FRONT to be seated. I had to turn sideways to squeeze past the chairs of the table next to ours, which was occupied by what looked like a rapper and his posse. They actually had a bottle of Veuve Clicquot in a bucket on the table and appeared not to be eating but rather holding a symposium on public leisure.

Once in my ultra-cramped chair, I realized it had a very pronounced wobbling problem. I did a couple of test-wobbles to make sure it wasn’t going to right itself and finally dragged myself out of it and flagged a passing busboy.

“The chair wobbles,” I said. I began rearranging my chair with the one next to it and told him that it needed to be fixed. He smiled and nodded in the way people do when they don’t exactly speak English but are in the service industry in an English-speaking country.

“My good man,” I began, prepared to deliver a lecture on the importance of even chair legs. Sensing this, he whisked himself off to another part of the restaurant and I took my new chair.

As any first week on a new job is, mine had been trying, and I was very thirsty. 

 I looked over the wine menu for a millisecond and settled on the second-cheapest Pinot Noir then began scanning the room for our server, who had yet to make him or herself known to us.

Finally the hostess slid into view, clutching the elbow of a 15-year-old boy wearing lipstick. She gave him a shove toward our table and he glided over. What followed was one of the strangest performances by a waiter I have ever experienced.

Firstly, he did not have lipstick on, it turned out, his lips were just very plump and rosy, and he pursed them together a lot and twisted them around so that they appeared on different sides of his face and curled into sneers and basically just slid all over his face like a pair of worms while he spoke. This unsettling phenomena was enhanced by his borderline leering and theatrically seductive looks; lots of eyebrow waggling and peering-through-the-lashes and knowing glances. His voice also traveled on its own meandering road, going from deep-voiced authority to girlish trilling swoon.

“And have we had a chance to look at the menu?”

“Um, actually, I’d like to get a glass of wine first, thanks.” I told him what I wanted and he almost fainted from pleasure.

“Oh, excellent choice!” he hissed in ecstasy, hugging the wine menu to his breast. “I just had that one yesterday and it is—so—delicious. Excellent, excellent!”

“Can I have the menu back…I…might want…”

“Of course, of course!” he cried, handing it back. After remembering to ask Stavros for his order, he fled, leaving us finally able to make eye contact.

“Good grief, what a screwball,” my Stavros said, looking even more like the manliest creature alive.

Within seconds the screwball with the screwy lips was back with drinks. He presented mine as if it was a diamond tiara and I was Elizabeth Taylor.

“Thank you,” said I, pouring the entire glass down my throat at once. “Very good.”

“Have we decided?” he fluttered.

I’ll save some time here and tell you that the food was mediocre and I had to send something back. Old Fluttery Eyes did not offer to bring me a replacement. Instead he looked pityingly at me when I told him I was rejecting it, as if it bespoke an irredeemable flaw within my palate that I could not enjoy waterlogged spinach.

  

Other annoyances include conversation between the lead rapper and a waitress who was opening yet another bottle of champers for him and his crew. He was temporarily alone at the table, his boyz all scattered about the bar or outside smoking, and he was obviously taking the opportunity to practice his smooth operations.

“And then you just pull out the cork like this…”

“You Japanese?”

“No, I’m actually half Korean and half American…anyway, you pull the cork…”

“You look aright for Korean. You like champagne?”

“Oh, um...hee hee…I don’t really drink..”

“Oh yeah? I bet you like champagne. S’all bubbly…taste real sweet.”

At this juncture I vomited into my handbag and we left. A few weeks later I told my parents the story and what did they do? They raced right out to Inyo.

INYO ASS, SERVERS

By Bonita Sigmundfreud

My husband and I went out to Inyo last Wednesday, March 10^th, for a drink and perhaps dinner. We got there around 5 pm. As usual at that hour, no one was behind the bar and a lone waiter sat and folded napkins at the front window. I sat at one of the window tables while my husband drove around back to find a parking place. A server came and offered me a drink and menus almost immediately, but after my husband came in, found me and sat down, we were ignored—until I looked over at the waiter folding napkins. He at once came to our table, took my husband’s order, and brought a drink.

This is typical Inyo at that hour of the day. The televisions over the bar are on, the music plays, but hardly any staff members are around. Why is there no bartender? 

Why do servers habitually gather into a small group to chat at the service area of the bar, while people are sitting and waiting at tables in the front of the place? 

It is all the more noticeable because servers are overly attentive to diners, who sit in booths at the back of the restaurant. The problem there is to get through more than three or four bites without someone asking whether everything is all right. The first time, it’s fine, even the second, but the pleasure of being looked after pales quickly afterward.

My impression is that management is not spending enough time at Inyo to know how people are performing their jobs. There is no excuse for leaving the bar unattended for longer than a restroom break during operating hours. Servers clearly realize that customers are waiting for service at the front and ignore them. Hasn’t anyone told them that drinkers frequently turn into diners? 

And that tips are calculated with service in mind?

The food is very good and well-priced. But Inyo needs to correct what is becoming a worsening lack of service. The few true professionals there need the support of their colleagues, and customers need reasons to continuing patronizing the place.