Front Royal,
Virginia
From New York City, I drove to Front Royal, Virginia, a town that I randomly selected because it was near Shenandoah Park where I could hike and where I didn’t know anyone at all. It's a town of 15,000 people and in 2003 there were 0 murders and 12 robberies. Nothing exciting happened to me there. Nothing exciting probably happens to anyone there. But there were a lot of details I enjoyed, as I do. I stayed at the Scottish Inn, the cheapest place I could find. When I registered in the lobby, I was handed a bic pen with a giant orange fabric daisy whose stem had been taped to the body of the pen. The vase held a whole bouquet of these writing homemade flower pens. My trip was off to an excellent start. There would be no NYC stools-designed-specifically-for-purse-holding here. My room was clean and standard… except for the lamp next to the bed whose base was a giant carved wooden eagle and when I pulled back the generic bedspread, the blanket underneath was a snow scene covered with giant wolves. Excellent.
I ate lunch at
Wynn's Restaurant in Front Royal, a local dinner with an ancient olive colored
dentist's chair displayed in the window, I guess because it's an antique or
maybe they wanted to warn me away from their pie, I don't know. The restaurant
itself was retro…well, perhaps just old…with 70's style orange booths and
harvest gold stools. And the décor along the counter next to where I sat
consisted of four bowling trophies, a soccer trophy, and a soccer ball in glass
all carefully arranged around a three foot statue of a Venus Di Milo. I opened
the menu, which contained advertisements for local businesses such as the
"Escapees RV Club", and decided immediately to have the Special
because it sounded disgusting – Ham and Cabbage for $5.25. What I received was
far from disgusting, well, not disgusting tasting. It was fried ham and steamed
cabbage – the salty ham perfectly offset the mushiness of the cabbage. Who
knew?
I listened in
on a loud, hard-not-to-hear conversation between two old men.
You seen John?
He disappeared about two weeks ago Saturday.
Yeah?
Yeah I called
his brother and he said he hadn't seen him.
Who's his
brother?
Pat. He doesn't
come out much. Weighs about 400 pounds.
I'd paid John.
Who knows maybe someone hit him on the head.
Whenever I see John
coming I say can I borrow ten bucks? That way he can't ask me. If I ask him
first, he can't ask me.
You know all
his family – he's about the best of the lot right now. If you look at those
that are surviving, he's about the best of the lot and that's hard to say. I
won't tell you the rest of the story.
Oh come on now.
You've started.
You know waffle
house, they're closed for good.
Nothing
happened to me in Front Royal. Nothing happens to anyone, except maybe John or
his 400 pound brother. It was a nice plain time.
