Thursday, June 09, 2005
Lunch in Crestview and on to De Funiak Springs
On Monday, June 6th, my bad mood persisted. I had not had a good library day in a while. I was tired. I was tired of moving from place to place. I was tired of lugging luggage. I was tired of the heat and of people not being able to read my mind. Basically, I was disconsolate.
So I drove to Crestview and tried to find the public library there. No dice. I could not find it and Eric could not find it on his bike. So we had lunch at the Tom Thumb convenience store at the gas station. We had tuna, avocado, hummus, and tomato sandwiches (actually, in sprouted grain tortillas) and I didn’t even like mine so I gave the rest to Eric. The people who kept driving up to the Tom Thumb were a varied bunch –- white, black, Hispanic, in trucks with junk in the bed, in new SUVs, in late-model sedans, without shirts on, lacking teeth, and all suspiciously looking at the weird duo -- the surly looking girl and the guy in the spandex garb with a bike. We didn’t linger in Crestview.
Eric and I at the Tom Thumb convenience store in Crestview
I arrived in DeFuniak Springs at maybe noon or so and stopped into the B&B there and then went on to the library, which is the oldest library in Florida. It may also be the loudest small library in America and features a three-year-old girl who will scream her head off or you. So, I worked there for an hour or so, on a conference paper, and spent a little time looking through the 1965 DeFuniak Springs phonebook. I also looked at some DAR book that was published for their centennial and listed families and lineages by last name. See, the place where I found to sit was apparently the genealogy and phone book section. An older woman kept walking past me –- I think she wanted to get at those DAR books and I was blocking them.
The screaming toddler finally drove me away. I wanted to give her mother a piece of my mind.
Site of screaming toddler: The DeFuniak Springs public library
DeFuniak Springs is very cute. Eric arrived, we checked into our room (which was lovely), and we talked to the proprietors about wireless internet and our need for a WEP password from them to use it (which they didn’t quite understand). So Eric took his post-ride nap and I took my Willa Cather book and hit the streets of DeFuniak Springs. I walked out of the hotel and was soon stopped by another comment precipitated by my Yankees shirt. A man about fifteen feet in front of me on the sidewalk said “NEW YORK?!” I was like, uh, yes, the Yankees. I was in a bad mood and didn’t really want to talk to the guy. But it actually helped my mood to do so. He was like “You’re a long way from home.” I explained that I'm not from New York, but from Albuquerque and sort of Detroit, and that I cheer for the Yankees because of my dad. He then went on to explain that he is the bartender of the bar attached to the Hotel DeFuniak, where we were staying, and that I had a pretty face and that someone “must be taking care of” me. Ha ha. He was like “You’re so purdy you must have a boyfriend.” I said that I did, that he’s a cycling across the USA and is currently upstairs sleeping off 85 miles of riding, and that we’d be out on the town later and might stop in to the bar. This man was very tall and looked like a member of ZZ Top with no beard. He said my boyfriend must be a strong man or something, based on all of his cycling, and I don’t know how we got on this next topic, but I said that Eric is a pool shark and then the ZZ Top guy was like “Look over there at my bike” –- meaning his Harley parked across the street -- “What do you see on the handlebars?” And what did I see? A pool-cue case strapped to the handlebars. So we got to talking about pool for a few minutes and how it’s a game that women can be very good at because it doesn’t require physical strength. Then I said I had to be going, to the park, somewhere, away, and he was like, “well, I’ll be seeing you, you got nice pins! I’d like to write a story about them. Whoooboy, it’ll be a long one.” You know, I did not feel threatened by Mr. Drunk ZZ Top Bartender, who was two hours early for work, and I thanked him for the compliment and walked away. That sure was a real-world challenge to the set of feminist values inculcated by graduate school, undergraduate school, and the Albuquerque Academy. But really, his objectification of me rolled right off my back.
After that, I went into a flower shop, a health food store, a drug store, and then a book store. I found several neat books, including a Dover Thrift Edition of Russian short stories (most of which I’ve read already but a few I hadn’t and those were worth the $1.50), some books for my niece, a coloring book of famous ballets for my friend’s daughter, three postcards of DeFuniak Springs, and a couple of cookbooks (one from the famous Greens restaurant in San Francisco). I walked back to the Hotel DeFuniank after that, feeling much better, and then Eric and I went out on the town. We walked over to the pond, went out on the dock, and then went to eat Mexican food at a restaurant with a transsexual host/ess and with a staff of waitpeople ordering pizza from another restaurant while seated at the booth next to ours. The food there was very good though, but I do understand getting tired of the food in the restaurant where you work. I became immune to the seductive influence of buttery pastries after working for a long time at Le Chantilly in Albuquerque with Ingrid, Ari, and Amy. Except for Chinese Chews. LOVE them.
That night, Eric and I watched the Pistons triumph. Go Pistons!!!!!!
So I drove to Crestview and tried to find the public library there. No dice. I could not find it and Eric could not find it on his bike. So we had lunch at the Tom Thumb convenience store at the gas station. We had tuna, avocado, hummus, and tomato sandwiches (actually, in sprouted grain tortillas) and I didn’t even like mine so I gave the rest to Eric. The people who kept driving up to the Tom Thumb were a varied bunch –- white, black, Hispanic, in trucks with junk in the bed, in new SUVs, in late-model sedans, without shirts on, lacking teeth, and all suspiciously looking at the weird duo -- the surly looking girl and the guy in the spandex garb with a bike. We didn’t linger in Crestview.
Eric and I at the Tom Thumb convenience store in Crestview
I arrived in DeFuniak Springs at maybe noon or so and stopped into the B&B there and then went on to the library, which is the oldest library in Florida. It may also be the loudest small library in America and features a three-year-old girl who will scream her head off or you. So, I worked there for an hour or so, on a conference paper, and spent a little time looking through the 1965 DeFuniak Springs phonebook. I also looked at some DAR book that was published for their centennial and listed families and lineages by last name. See, the place where I found to sit was apparently the genealogy and phone book section. An older woman kept walking past me –- I think she wanted to get at those DAR books and I was blocking them.
The screaming toddler finally drove me away. I wanted to give her mother a piece of my mind.
Site of screaming toddler: The DeFuniak Springs public library
DeFuniak Springs is very cute. Eric arrived, we checked into our room (which was lovely), and we talked to the proprietors about wireless internet and our need for a WEP password from them to use it (which they didn’t quite understand). So Eric took his post-ride nap and I took my Willa Cather book and hit the streets of DeFuniak Springs. I walked out of the hotel and was soon stopped by another comment precipitated by my Yankees shirt. A man about fifteen feet in front of me on the sidewalk said “NEW YORK?!” I was like, uh, yes, the Yankees. I was in a bad mood and didn’t really want to talk to the guy. But it actually helped my mood to do so. He was like “You’re a long way from home.” I explained that I'm not from New York, but from Albuquerque and sort of Detroit, and that I cheer for the Yankees because of my dad. He then went on to explain that he is the bartender of the bar attached to the Hotel DeFuniak, where we were staying, and that I had a pretty face and that someone “must be taking care of” me. Ha ha. He was like “You’re so purdy you must have a boyfriend.” I said that I did, that he’s a cycling across the USA and is currently upstairs sleeping off 85 miles of riding, and that we’d be out on the town later and might stop in to the bar. This man was very tall and looked like a member of ZZ Top with no beard. He said my boyfriend must be a strong man or something, based on all of his cycling, and I don’t know how we got on this next topic, but I said that Eric is a pool shark and then the ZZ Top guy was like “Look over there at my bike” –- meaning his Harley parked across the street -- “What do you see on the handlebars?” And what did I see? A pool-cue case strapped to the handlebars. So we got to talking about pool for a few minutes and how it’s a game that women can be very good at because it doesn’t require physical strength. Then I said I had to be going, to the park, somewhere, away, and he was like, “well, I’ll be seeing you, you got nice pins! I’d like to write a story about them. Whoooboy, it’ll be a long one.” You know, I did not feel threatened by Mr. Drunk ZZ Top Bartender, who was two hours early for work, and I thanked him for the compliment and walked away. That sure was a real-world challenge to the set of feminist values inculcated by graduate school, undergraduate school, and the Albuquerque Academy. But really, his objectification of me rolled right off my back.
After that, I went into a flower shop, a health food store, a drug store, and then a book store. I found several neat books, including a Dover Thrift Edition of Russian short stories (most of which I’ve read already but a few I hadn’t and those were worth the $1.50), some books for my niece, a coloring book of famous ballets for my friend’s daughter, three postcards of DeFuniak Springs, and a couple of cookbooks (one from the famous Greens restaurant in San Francisco). I walked back to the Hotel DeFuniank after that, feeling much better, and then Eric and I went out on the town. We walked over to the pond, went out on the dock, and then went to eat Mexican food at a restaurant with a transsexual host/ess and with a staff of waitpeople ordering pizza from another restaurant while seated at the booth next to ours. The food there was very good though, but I do understand getting tired of the food in the restaurant where you work. I became immune to the seductive influence of buttery pastries after working for a long time at Le Chantilly in Albuquerque with Ingrid, Ari, and Amy. Except for Chinese Chews. LOVE them.
That night, Eric and I watched the Pistons triumph. Go Pistons!!!!!!
# posted by jnewwave @ 2:29 PM 
