Last night, we had dinner at the restaurant uniquely named Buck’s Fishing and Camping, located just about three blocks from our house on the same Connecticut Avenue block as Politics and Prose bookstore. On that block, if you look at both sides of the street, there are seven restaurants. Buck’s, open for dinner only, seems to be a gold mine, because it is always full. In fact, reservations at Buck’s often need to be made more than a week in advance. The picture above was taken yesterday, a Monday night, at about 6:30. Buck’s was just as full when we left the restaurant about two hours later.
Buck’s has been around for over 20 years and has not lost its elan (maybe another new word for the blog; maybe not). It was named Fishing and Camping because it was meant to resemble a Northern Michigan hunting and fishing camp (says, of course, Gemini), but I think it resembles a Northern Michigan hunting and fishing camp about as much as I resemble Rock Hudson. And, no, you are correct, I have never been to a hunting or fishing camp in Northern Michigan (or anywhere else).
A digression: when you think of Northern Michigan, the “Upper Peninsula”, you think of cold weather, right? Well, perhaps, and you heard it here first, that is a myth. As I write this post, Marquette, Michigan, is 5 degrees warmer than Washington, DC. On the other hand, Yakutsk, in Siberia, is colder than Washington. It is 7 degrees in Yakutsk, now that the sun is down (that is a joke; in November in Yakutsk, the sun is almost always down). And, by the way, next Tuesday, Yakutsk is scheduled to hit 35 below zero (that is not a joke). End of digression.
Let me tell you two more things about Buck’s. It is right next door to the infamous Comet Pizza and Ping Pong. Okay, Call Your Mother bagelry separates them, but I take a little poetic license. Comet, as you may recall from your enrollment in Conspiracy Theory 101, is the place where Hillary Clinton and her friends capture little children, and chop them up in the basement and turn them into pepperoni or some such thing. They do that, say a diminishing group of right wing lunatics, even though Comet has no basement, showing you how clever Hillary really is.
I tell you this because Comet and Buck’s are owned by the same folks. Yet, Buck’s was never a target of the conspiracists. This shows you how tunnel visioned right wing lunatics are.
Okay, back to Buck’s. We went with our old and good friends, Bob and Nona. Because, I don’t have their permission to talk about them, and because Bob is highly litigious (well, in real life, he is about as litigious as I resemble Rock Hudson), I will only use their first names.
Bob and I have been good friends since the fall of 1960, which, to save you from getting out your calculators, is 66 years.
Bob and Nona surprised us by treating us to dinner for our 50th anniversary, which was much appreciated. And it shows how much someone changes over six decades. During his college years, Bob usually visited his parents (who lived probably less than 5 miles from campus) on weekends. And he would often bring back a treat his mother gave him and immediately hide it on a shelf in his closet, so he could have it all to himself. (And, no, I am not judging.)
When we were law school classmates, we were no longer within commuting distance of his parents’ house, and one day Bob’s mother, with whom I was quite close, called me up, reminded me that Bob’s birthday was coming up, and asked if I could go to a bakery and buy Bob a birthday cake.
I did, and bought a chocolate sheet cake with white icing, and had it decorated with the following words: “Share this with your friends, Bobbie”.
How times have changed. And, yes, our next dinner (already scheduled) will be on us.
