Cheboygan (Yes, it's a real place)

 

I was going to tell you about an encounter we had with a seating hostess in Cheboygan but I’ve thought better of it.   It would just be three or four paragraphs telling you what a total moron she was and that wouldn’t be nice, so I’ll not do that.

 

            Instead I will share with you the story of our dinner last Friday night.  We were in Harbor Springs; a fancy-schmancy waterfront community that makes La Jolla look like the slums.  Oy vey.  

 

            We wandered around trying to decide what we wanted for dinner, looking in various shops as we made our way through town.  We finally ended up at the Pier Restaurant, where we had been the night before for the big birthday dinner.  This time, however, we sat outside, right next to the bazillion dollar boats.  The waitress brought two glasses of ice water and our menus.  As we scanned through the choices we both came to the same conclusion.   This isn’t what we wanted.  We got up and said our good-byes to the staff and we headed off to get a simple sandwich, take it to the beach and just have a little picnic.

 

            Two days before we had gotten a sandwich from this great Deli, and it was soooooo good.  Yum.  Anyway, we get to the deli and gaze up at all the choices on the big sandwich board when we hear someone say,  “We’re not making anymore sandwiches today. Everything has already been cleaned and sterilized”.

 

            I looked over and saw that it was the owner, counting out her register for the day.  They were getting ready to close.   Hoping it might help, I explained how we had just gotten up and walked away from a prime seat at the Pier in favor of one of her sandwiches.   She didn’t seem impressed.  Then her husband explained that even though they couldn’t make us a sandwich, we could still buy all of the ingredients, and build our own.

 

            We can do this, we said, and started selecting our sandwich building materials.  A fresh baguette was brought out of the freezer, barely cool, since they had closed only 5 minutes before. Well, apparently the vision of us trying to assemble this thing at the beach was too much for the woman at the register to handle.  “I’ll make the sandwich”, she said, and after washing her hands she quickly built a beautiful masterpiece.  She said she could now sleep that night, knowing we weren’t out struggling in the sand to make some sad, ragged-looking sandwich.

 

            We had a great picnic at the beach.  We had a super meatloaf sandwich, chips, a cold root beer, and for desert we had Tom’s Mom’s Cookies and fresh milk, with the same view of the bazillion dollar boats.  

            But that isn’t what I wanted to tell you about.   Four of us walk into this restaurant in Cheboygan and we tell the pretty young seating hostess, “Four for non-smoking.”  She glances around the room and then looks down at her seating chart and says, “I don’t have anything.  All the tables are full.”

 

            We all waited for her to add,  “Can I take your name and would you like to wait at the bar?”  but there was nothing.  So finally we said,  “Is it okay if we wait?”

 

“Oh,” she says, (somewhat surprised) “sure.”

 

We give her our name.  “We’ll wait over there at the bar.”   “Ok, she said, and once again assumed her “ready to greet the next one” pose.

 

            We all ordered a refreshing beverage and enjoyed that for awhile and then watched as four more people came in and she sat them at an empty table in the middle of the room.  (I should mention here that this isn’t a reservation kind of place.)  So now we are all looking at each other and wondering what’s going on.

 

            I get up and walk over to the hostess stand and point at the rest of us saying, “We are sitting right there, waiting for a table.”  (Less than 20 feet away). 

 

            “Oh, I thought you all left.”  She replies.

 

 “Nope.  Here we all are.”

 

            She picks up four menus and asks, would any of you mind sitting at a tall table?

 

            “I don’t think we care about the height of the table.”

 

            “You don’t care?” she is now looking at me with serious concern.

 

            “Nope.  We don’t care.”

 

            “OK then, you all can sit here,” and walks us to an empty tall table for four.

 

The friends we were with explained to us later that there is something about people from Cheboygan.  It’s like,  “How many Cheboyganites does it take to build a complete set of teeth?”

 

Anyway, last week’s adventure was fun.  I hope all of you did something worthy of summer.

 

Have a great week, and write back when you can.