Dinner at Cheapskate Bay Seafood House in Uncle George’s Suede Jacket…

Carla was pregnant with Hannah in 1986 and could never get enough to eat. She was highly selective though. Ice cream and seafood topped her list. Ruth was four and The Chesapeake Seafood House in Herndon, Va. was our favorite place to splurge. Alaskan Crab legs, AYCE for $8.99.

Hard to believe that price now.

We lived in the woods in those days. Carla looked a bit like Olive Oil if Olive had swallowed an oversize watermelon, but Carla was prettier, and she could eat. I was no slouch either, regularly running a path through the woods between Reston and Herndon 4 or 5 times a week. 6 miles round trip. That, combined with regularly smoking rolled appetite enhancers, so common back in the daze, gave me the ability to really pack in the chow then too.

I could roll those babies with one hand. While driving.

Since $8.99 was the most expensive AYCE item on the menu, you could substitute anything else on the menu that was a lesser price, which was everything. Fried shrimp, oysters, flounder, trout, frog legs, clams, hush puppies, fries.

Sodas with unlimited refills were .50 cents.

Carla was our designated driver, she doesn’t drink. I do, so I would order a large pitcher of beer for $2.95.

These prices make this sound like a Grandpa “I remember when…” story. I guess it is. We called the place “Cheapskate Bay” because for us, it was.

All of us were excited to go.

Ruth got unlimited quarters to feed the video game machine. Standing tall on a wooden crate, leaning over the long glass surface, the shadows of an animated little girl surrounded by a halo of multicolored flashing lights bounced off the ceiling. Bells and whistles celebrated nonstop, as if she won a Vegas Jackpot with every move.

One particular night, I wore the green suede jacket that my Grandparents gave me after my Uncle George managed to finally kill himself in the asylum. Thorazine and beer did the trick. It was a very nice jacket. Expensive. George had worn it in just the right amount so it was soft like flannel pajamas.

I went through a mountain of crab legs and shrimp, and pretty much everything else AYCE.

Being there with my beautiful, pregnant wife, keeping Ruth supplied with quarters, nestled in a private booth in the back of the room, wrapped up in my new suede jacket, being served plate after plate of decadent fried seafood…all that should be more than enough, right?

Well, almost. The kicker for me was the pitcher of beer and the fact that the place served liquor. Vodka shots @ $1.50 per. Count me in.

My designated driver was oblivious to almost everything other than the piles of crab legs that she kept inhaling. A purest, Carla never messed with the substitutions, just more crab legs, please. She went through six refills that night.

I couldn’t keep up.

Carla would shell the crab from her last batch and slip it into a plastic bag in her purse. I gave her lectures about us getting caught, the need to do the right thing even when no one was watching, setting a good example for Ruth since she was at an age where she saw everything, personal morality and challenging her justifications for ripping off corporate America.

She would nod in agreement while slipping more crab into her purse.

I got to the point of being fat like a tick, delightfully inebriated, and impatient to leave. Carla was on refill number 5 and promised that number 6 would be her last. But I knew that then she would need yet another plate for her purse.

Wanting to expedite the larceny and go home, I started shelling crab for her, amassing a large buttery ball the size of an Acorn squash. Squeezing it into my jacket pocket, we were ready to roll.

Leaning on my pregnant but sober wife, Ruth and I staggered out to the car. Ruth was falling asleep as she walked. She and I passed out on the car ride home to our cabin in the boonies.

The next morning, I was up early, strong coffee in hand as I stepped out into the sunny front yard to say Hello to Ohio the Wonder Dog. She stood guard all night at that old house in the woods. Within five years of our moving in to that 1729 era cabin, our five acres turned into a small piece of a huge development, Ashburn Farms, just outside of Washington, D. C.

Million dollar McMansions grew like mushrooms on wet ground.

When Hannah was born, we moved to a modern house. A log home, yes, but newly built. Everything worked. It even had a thermostat on the wall and real AC. Civilized as hell.

The whole area was changing rapidly, as were we. Some things got left behind in the shuffle. I have fond, somewhat hazy, memories of our AUCE dinners at Cheapskate Bay Seafood House, a little girl who was excited to play video games all by herself without any help, a wife who went through crab legs as if she was eating for two, and a waiter who kept bringing me seafood and vodka shots, whenever I gave him a “thumbs up”.

One of the things that I have a fond memory of, albeit very brief, was Uncle George’s suede jacket. I discovered the buttered crab in the left pocket late in the afternoon the day after our dinner. The jacket had spent the night in our car, sleeping soundly like a cat draped over a sun-drenched back seat, as the inside of the car heated up like a steam room.

In my hands, that jacket had an unreasonably short shelf life. The entire left side around the pocket was stained dark like the bottom of a well worn shoe. Wicking out another 6 inches from there, butter turned the green suede black. The whole jacket smelled like stale cat food. A total loss.

But we had an awesome night.

I’m sorry that I ruined your jacket though, Uncle George, but I guess you had bigger issues to worry about at the time, being recently dead and all.