I was on a mission from God. Or somebody after The Blonde telephoned me from the Lake. I had called Jon-Without and Heather to see if they wanted to join me for a cross-country adventure to find the Original Willow Bar, but Heather explained that she was trapped at a wedding in Cape May with only two single guys on the whole invitation list, and both of them dorks. Jon-Without had an important function that evening of the DC Mechanical Engineering Society, of which he is an officer, and had to express his regrets.
Naturally I was disappointed, but I did have my book-on-tape to avoid having to listen to either of the presumptive candidates, so I resigned myself to a solitary drive. Then I did my swim under the gray skies, and listened to a great trash novel on the water-proof headset. It is the first in the St. Mary’s Chronicles, a daft novel called “Just One Damned Thing After Another,” by a witty Brit named Jodi Taylor.
The tale is an improbable one involving time travel, a secretive academic and direct action institution a bit like a believable Hogwort’s, and even some improbably hot sexual interludes in interesting historical epochs. I could tell you the one that is set on the bonnet of the Bentley with the appealing heroine Maddie Maxwell, but that is probably why, have gotten out of the water, dried off and transferred the iPod to the docking port on the Panzer, I missed the turn to get to The Cove at Lake Anna, which is where The Blonde had informed me that the Willow Bar had been installed.
So, between flashing between the Cambrian Age, being chased around by T-Rexes and having my metaphorical bodice ripped off, I wound up all the way down in Mineral, the little city that had been the epicenter of our earthquake a couple years ago, when the wars were still going great guns and I still had a decent job.
It was so powerful that it might have moved a picture on my wall at the farm.
You might have asked why I didn’t just plug the GPS in with the address when I looked it up in the morning when I got the call to meet some of the veteran Willow alumni that morning, but I got distracted with the book, and when I pulled over to concede defeat to what should have been a perfectly straightforward jaunt down Rt 522 from the farm turned into a complete bollocks. The computer was in the trunk, the restaurant was too new to be in the Garmen GPS database, I didn’t have the street address, blah blah blah, and I wound up almost completely unpacked and disorganized in the parking lot of the Dollar Store near the big artificial lake and the nuclear power plant which is why my pals were the opposite of being gruntled when I finally walked across the parking lot and into the restaurant.
Dominique was particularly stern with me for keeping them waiting and drinking. I apologized, but protested that I had sent a message, except you know that Verizon doesn’t work that well down by the farm, which is why the Blonde has to pay for one of those antique land-lines, and is connected to the Internet through a mom-and-pop service provider who works a point to point network around the lake from his garage. But that is the country, and that is the way we like it, not having any choice whatsoever.
“It’s OK,” said Jack. “We have been watching the sheriff write tickets for the boaters who violate the no-wake zone in front of the restaurant. He seems to love to do that, and it is quite entertaining.”
The Blonde had saved my usual seat, and consciously left a respectful gap at the other side of the Amen Corner where Old Jim sat for a decade, and woe betide the casual drinker who usurped it.
I was so impossibly late that I had to drink fast to try to catch up. “Dominique, how many rum-and-cokes have these nice people had?”
She pursed her comely lips and thought for a moment. “I should know that. Four?”
“Then I will have four vodka tonics. And keep them coming.”
She laughed- she was quite delightful.
Things started to get busy as the dinner hour approached and the retirees around the lake began to venture out for hot food. The guy I had last seen putting a wrecking bar to my regular place at Willow was there, and he gave me the rest of the story. The bar had come down by truck in large pieces. The space was not quite long enough for the whole thing, so they had cut an angle into the part that used to go straight into the wall at Willow and made it a elongated horse-shoe. He opined that there might still be a chunk of it left over, and is possibly in storage some place. I gave him one of my cards and told him it would make a hell of a coffee table for one of the old regulars. Then I asked about the little coins that had been inset into the thick cherry of the bar.
“Had to bolt it to the new stainless underneath,” he said. “So I topped the bolts I used with old coins before we put the urethane coating on to go with the motif of the place. They are reproduction Spanish coins from the buccaneer days- Pieces of Eight.”
He also mentioned that he had found archeological evidence under the bar when they ripped it out- a Washington Post newspaper dated in 1978. I told him this was the second major refurbishment, the first being when the buccaneers at the old Gaffney’s cleared out and Tracy and Brian had to sand the thing down to get rid of the long narrow burn marks where the no-counts and scalawags who inhabited Gaffney’s would let their Marlboros burn out on the rich dark surface.
I was famished from all the time traveling, and everyone seemed to think the cheese-steak sandwich was just the ticket, which it actually turned out to be.
The blacktop on Rt-522 seems to get narrower the more vodka that gets poured, so at length, we made our adieus and head-calls before my pals went back to the lake house and I headed north to the Farm. The bathroom was kind of interesting. There is still a Women’s Room, but the other one has an icon of a guy, a gal and a wheelchair on it. I didn’t know what to think about the crowd that would be in there, but I guess, like the Willow Bar’s new home, that is just the way it is living in the future.
Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Want to have a drink at the Willow’s bar? It is at Lake Anna- at the The Cove Restaurant at 6320 Belmont Road, Mineral, VA 23117
