Ned's Southside

A two-person table in the front by the windows or a booth up against the back wall, Neds is a happy place for me, for us.

Carla and I have been eating Ned’s food since grad school in the late 1970’s. Always comforting and delicious.

So when we moved to St Auggie in 1991, we were delighted to find Ned here. For many years we lived on the Island, three blocks from Gypsy Cab. It was awesome to see Ned on the regular. Gypsy Chicken, great pasta…and then there is the dressing. Nutritional yeast, olive oil, and tons of garlic. (It’s Ned’s, right? Tons of garlic.)

Our daughter worked there. Lots of local kids have. Ned is a great boss and helped out so many along the way.

Then when the market tanked, Ned sold Gypsy Cab and after a few years, opened Ned’s Southside. Cut the prices and portions back by a third. Smart. Nobody had any money then and it was still more food than most can eat in one sitting.

Little has changed. Ned retired to do his own thing It was good to see him at a concert in the AMP recently. Who doesn’t know and love Ned?

We all feared the worst though, when he left the Southside Kitchen. We thought it was like “Cheers”
 closing.

Not true! These days, Kenny is the man and he has done an amazing job keeping everything in place. You know, if it ain‘t broke… Little has changed. Kenny often meets and greets, watching his operation like a benevolent hawk. There are more specials on the board than ever. An enhanced Facebook presence keeps me lusting for another visit even if we just went the other day.

Chris, the best waiter in town, is still doing his thing there, the cook staff relatively unchanged. But the bottom line? The food. The food is always the best

Oh, and that dressing? Fagetaboutit!

Carla had the mushroom soup, creamy, thick and packed with chunky bits of fresh mushrooms.

The conch fritters will cause you serious injury if you’re foolish enough to bite into them too quickly. They’re lava hot. But split one open, let it breathe, smell that clammy batter? It has a little sweetness to it and a whole lot of crunch. Dip a piece in the pink sauce, cool, hot, soft, crunchy, doughy, clammy deliciousness.

I had a Galleon's golden ale from Ancient city brewing. Or three.

 The chicken livers were a first. A new item I think, since I had never had them before. Subbed out the fries for Onion straws. The livers were crunchy, warm and moist inside. We aren’t crazy about onion rings that are stiff with a heavy coat of batter. These are the opposite. Fresh, steaming & oniony, with a batter that is light and delicate, more like Tempura.

Carla got the lasagna special. She loves her pasta, but especially at Ned’s where the meat in their sauce seems to be double ground, not at all chunky. She loves that consistency and always asks for extra cheese too. See how far you can stretch that molten mozzarella.

We’re used to the waitress saying: “This is very hot, so be careful.” as she sits each plate down. We know it’s true, so we relax, unhurried, at peace with the world.

Once we’re seated and the food is served? It’s like when you’ve been out of town and get home late, hungry for sleep, and then you fall back into the familiar sheets and pillows of your own bed. So warm and comforting.

 Just exactly as it should be.

A Less Than Religious Experience at St Pauls Episcopal, 1959

We had choir practice three nights a week when I was a kid. It was fun to see the other boys so regularly. A club atmosphere. Mainly, I believe we all enjoyed the singing itself. We learned a lot about discipline, self-control and responsibility.

I’ve carried many of those lessons with me to this day.

Plus, we got paid. Every two weeks there would be an envelope with cash inside, stuffed into our individually numbered cubby’s where we kept our sheet music. I was number 22.

It was serious business though. No fooling around after things got started. Mr Connolly could shrink you into nothingness, right in your chair, with his laser stare, if you weren’t paying strict attention.

Being a boys choir, we would cut up before and after, but never during. Sometimes we had things to show the other guys. A live round from a 30 06 rifle, a cool geode. One guy brought the first 17-year Locust any of us had ever seen. It was alive, inside a waxed cardboard milk container from school. That was two days before you couldn’t walk down the sidewalk without crushing dozens of them underfoot.

The most memorable share was an atomically correct drawing of a vagina a kid had ripped out of a medical book. Like the 17-year locust, none of us had ever seen one before. The boy kept that one close though as it was dangerous stuff, like having a human thumb in his pocket. Only his main buddies were allowed a quick look.

One night a kid brought a fake vomit to choir practice. We were all seated, tiered, semi-circled, waiting obediently for the choir master, as was the routine before rehearsals. Everything very formal and staid. All of us had seen that rubber prank in the back of comic books, right next to handshake buzzers and whoopee cushions. Toothpaste that turned teeth black. We passed the rubber vomit  around with much admiration, in awe of the realism of the milky rubber with bits of nasty stuff encased inside.

We dared the boy who brought it, mocked the manhood he didn’t even have yet. until he stood back up defiantly and placed that thing on the linoleum floor, front and center, right next to the grand piano. He then bent over the rubbery mess, making very convincing vomit sounds. It was important that he time his act to coordinate with the choir master’s grand entrance. We watched intently, concentrating with him, lost in a group effort to fake vomit on cue.

Mr. Connolly finally rushed in looking harried and stern the way he always did when it was time to get down to business. We were on the edge of our seats as we had been trained to be but this time we were mentally on edge as well, not knowing how Mr Connolly would react to such a prank.

Everything immediately exploded into chaos. That boy had psyched himself up so much that he actually started vomiting right onto the fake rubber vomit the second Mr. Connolly entered the rehearsal room. Splashing soupy chunks onto his own shoes and pants. Seeing and smelling that, five trebles and one alto that had concentrated along with him, joined in, all vomiting in unison. Seven boys throwing up on themselves, their sheet music, chairs, socks, shoes... as soon as Mr Connolly made his appearance.

.

We were well trained to hit our mark, sitting up straight, vomiting out sounds, emptying full stomachs of family dinners we had wolfed down one-hour prior, in perfect pitch. A well-trained choir, many gagging voices in unison, sounding like one.

I hope Dr Connolly was proud.

A Force of Nature…

On that particular Sunday, I had attached the telephoto lens to my new camera and was snapping away from up on the deck, aiming at our chickens pecking the ground over by the barn. That house was a modern log home, on the side of a hill overlooking a stream below. 4,000 sq. ft of tinker toy logs on steroids, stacked three floors tall.

Leaving the side deck and going up another level, I spotted something moving in the field below. Something pink and fleshy, pushing weeds out of the way, oblivious to the swarm of insects around her.

Hannah on the move. She was always on the move.

Apparently, she had paid a visit to the big “rock that moves” in the deep area of the stream. Later, Ruth told me that she and her friend stood on it, rode on it like a skateboard in molasses. A huge snapper.

I managed to get it into a box to relocate several miles downstream.

No toes were lost.

On one visit down there, we saw cute baby copperheads, swimming in a ball in the deep part where the kids wallowed.

Our own Adventureland.

Hannah made her way down and back, nude as always.

I listened quietly as she made it up to the long wooden stairs that led from the driveway to the side door into the living area. Left foot, left foot, left foot. Happy as a clam, wagging her head back and forth to the music in her head.
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She moved out when she was 15, just didn’t come home one night. We’ve always been close, it wasn’t that. Hannah simply needed to be under her own roof, in charge of her own life. 100% self-reliant.

She called that evening: “Everything is great Dad. No worries. I’ve moved into a one-story rental over at the beach. It’s so cool! Maybe you and Mom could come see it tomorrow and we can go to lunch at the Taco place?”

She told me that she had gotten a second job and didn’t need any money.

From that day forward, she never asked for a dime, she insisted on doing it all herself.
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Four years later, Hannah bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. Venice Beach. She stalked and bagged a job at the iconic “Venice Beach Whaler”, a two-story bar/restaurant with a long history and nothing more than a deep stretch of sand between the spacious back deck and the blue Pacific.

She ran a work triathlon, several years of waitressing/bar-tending & entertaining the crowd, leading the charge, working back to back 16 hour doubles. 

Insane hours.
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She flew to Spain with enough money to start her travels and kept an additional $30K in the bank here.

Eight years, multiple yoga teacher certifications and 50 countries later, she came back to the USA after living and working all over the globe.

She never touched her savings in the bank.

Teaching yoga domestically and internationally, she became an “influencer”, with an Instagram account that has grown to over 600,000 followers.
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Hannah broadcasts her excitement for life from the top floor of a big house in Maui. Multiple decks offer views of jungle and ocean.

She fell in love with essential oils, using them for all forms of lifestyle enhancement and immediately jumped into the pool with a respected MLM that markets high-end organic oils.

Now, one year later, she leads the fastest growing team in that company’s history, over 4,200 people, with her personally banking annual commissions in the high six figures.

At age 33, not a bad resume for a kid who never graduated High School.

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What’s next? I have no idea, and I seriously doubt she does either.

Dog Walk Reboot...

Begrudgingly, I say: “OK, OK girls. We’ll go.”

For the last half hour, they’ve been tapping my legs and climbing up onto my right knee while I sit at my computer. Dog jowls come as close to my own as their straining bodies will allow. Warm familiar breath mixes with mine like a welcome kiss, an estuary. Eyes lock on for the slightest sign of acquiescence.

I act like I’m doing them a favor but almost immediately, as we step outside, when the cool air off the marsh envelops me, and the early morning stillness carries its own special quiet, I know it’s the other way around.

Walking close to the brackish water, small fish hit the surface. We hear them more than see. An army of tiny land crabs scurry to clear a path for us like Moses at the Red Sea.

One crow flies silently overhead, surprising me from behind, almost too close, then a dozen more. Rare for them to be so mute.

Filling my lungs with salt air and rebirth, I’m eternally grateful for it all.

As the sun starts to breach, I break the stillness, saying out loud to the 8-legged team that leads the way: “Thank you, girls. This is exactly what I needed.”

Life blur on Pause...

4:20am. Carla ran off to work, oblivious to her own blur. 

I love it, look forward to it, when she forces herself to come into the moment, to be present. She looks at me, eye to eye,  holds my arms, demanding  attention... she says "I love you”... 

punctuated with a kiss.

A moment, a universe of meaning. 

Much more than just a peck on the muzzle. 

41 years 

I still think she’s hot

There's the Rub...

A new, nonpartisan, FB group popped up recently whose purpose is to encourage civil discussion from from both sides of the political fence. No name calling, just respectful back and forth to increase understanding.

A worthy goal.

“If only that were possible” I thought. Sadly, I’m not optimistic for the longevity of the group.

Regardless of how much I want to have a cool, rational discussion with a Trump supporter, I find that it always devolves into name calling from their side when they are unable to support his behavior. Even if there is some value in “he’s not a politician” which is questionable, or “he threw out the rule book” which is equally questionable, I’ve yet to meet a single Trump supporter who is able to logically and morally defend his behavior.

And there’s the rub.

Supporting Trump is more of an emotional issue. People are attracted to “manly” “bold” “decisive” and “in-charge” more than they are dismayed by the lack of logic, understanding or law in what he says and does.

We’re talking about a guy who is proud that he doesn’t read books.

Maybe it was the fault of the teleprompter or the rain, a person with a decent education doesn’t make the “mistake” of referencing airports in a discussion of the Revolutionary War.

Like a chain saw stored in the refrigerator, it is glaringly out of context.

He could blow up the Statue of Liberty in front of his supporters and burn the constitution, without repercussions. He does that figuratively every day.

And yes, Hitler and Mussolini started out the same way. The German people loved Hitler and would follow him into the Gates of Hell, which, of course, they did.

The new FB group may survive, but it won’t flourish. It assumes that the Trump people will be interested in engaging and logically answering “why?”. They won’t. When you can’t support the unsupportable you resorting to name calling or justifying Trump’s behavior by pointing to someone else. 

A Red Herring.

It’s like being caught stealing candy and saying all the other kids do the same thing.

Trump got elected because too many Democrats found Hillary to be seriously flawed, and I understand. The problem is that they failed to exercise their responsibility to vote.  They assumed her to be a shoe in, no way Trump could win.

Trump became president because those assumptive people stayed home in their Lay-Z-Boy recliners and couldn’t be bothered. According to the United States Election Project, nearly half of all eligible voters (46.9 percent of approximately 231,556,622 people) did not vote in the 2016 election.

If the Trump presidency has done anything of value, hopefully it has energized the opposition.

This stopped being about politics long ago, that pendulum swings, as it should. This is about decency, morality, upholding the Constitution and the American values that have made us great.

Our country is a melting pot.

We must remember that other than Native Americans, we are all immigrants.

The America I was raised in believed that a nation’s greatness is measured, not by how it serves the rich and powerful, but by how it treats its weakest members.

Left or right, I vote for content of character above all other qualities. Regardless of party affiliation, give me a president who leads by example, someone I can point to with my Grandchild and say: If you work hard and do the right thing, you can grow up to be like him or her.

Harry Truman once famously ssid: “The buck stops here.” He was more than ready to take the blame along with the praise.

Jimmy Carter leads by example every day, always has and still does.

Obama showed the world how a real man behaves with his wife and family. Mutual respect.  No scandals there.

I miss that kind of leadership by example.

I guess in some ways I’m as bad as the Trump supporters in that I won’t change my mind about that stuff. It’s who I am.

As Billy Shakespeare once said: “there’s the rub.”

I believe our current president would assume Mr Shakespeare was making reference to a massage parlor.

And there’s the rub.

4th of July Fun

By way of starting a conversation, my buddy at the gym came up alongside my stationary bike and said: “Wow, 4th of July! So many memories!”

He grew quiet, pensive, as I waited for any specific memories of his to surface.

Growing impatient while he was stuck on hold, I searched my own database and was quickly overcome with emotion. Wiping a nostalgic tear away, I offered: “Cherry bombs dipped in multiple layers of glue and BB bullets!”

With him showing no sign of connection there, I continued: “You know, like when the glue is dry, you stick the fuse up the end of a lit cigarette so you have at least 7 minutes to get away?”

Still nothing.

“So you can put the Cherry Bomb in a mailbox or tape it to the window of the storage building in the courtyard in the back of Franklin Elementary?”

A blank.

I’m thinking that something was off. He’s about my age and has always appeared to be a biological male, so why wouldn’t he light up about kid memories of blowing stuff to smithereens? Don’t even try to tell me that not all boys love explosives in all forms. That’s unnatural.

You should have seen the turnout at a grand opening we had for a new neighborhood where my company offered houses with poured concrete walls. They were built like German pillboxes. In an effort to show what happens when wind driven debris hit the walls of a concrete house, we rented a cannon from South Florida and towed it up here for the much-advertised show. We let it be known that a 12’ cannon would be there to shoot ten-foot-long 2x4s into the side of a house.

We already knew they would basically explode into a cloud of splinters.

What guy couldn’t come see us for that alone?

Oh, and beer. Explosives and beer. Multiple kegs.

Groups of men poured in like ladies at a once a year Midnight Madness sale. They outnumbered the girls 7 to one.

Loud explosions, splintered wood pulverized into dust on concrete walls, drunken group participation…what could go wrong?

Fortunately, nothing did.

They say that the key to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I disagree. I think if a guy was offered three doors, one with explosives, one with beer, and one with girls, explosives would come first. Then beer. Ok, maybe it’s a draw between beer and girls but still, no normal guy would pass on the opportunity to witness a great explosion. They’d figure that the beer would stay cold a little longer, and you could always do a flowers and dinner thing with the lady later on anyway.

There’s a demand for immediate and full attention when explosives are involved.

Anyway, all of that reminiscing brought me back into the moment with my gym friend and I wondered if there was a chance, perhaps, maybe, could be…that boys in other countries are…different. That’s when I decided I had my answer. My friend was related to the Cone-heads. He must be from France.

Maybe they never had Cherry Bombs there?

I guess boys could be deprived or depraved.

I vote for the latter.

Police, Drugs & Guns, Abduction, Roadblocks, Bloodhounds, Helicopter... and Hot Chocolate

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I took this picture earlier in the day, before all of that transpired…before Ruth went missing.

She knew that I had been snapping pictures all over the place with my new Cannon. “Daddy! Take my picture in the sunshine!” she begged. Ruth was excited that she had gotten her own room, 9 steps up a wooden ladder and into the loft of our old house. Skylights overhead allowed the sun to wake her in the morning and let her drift off under the moon and stars at night.

There were no outside lights to cloud the view. That house was surrounded by deep woods.

More than 180 years old when we bought it, our house had survived 29 owners who, like me, valued their privacy. It sat in a clearing the size of a baseball diamond encircled on all sides by dense scrub nailed down by many acres of forests, owned by the Ashburn Timber Company.

The Ashburn Timber Company no longer had any interest in the trees though. Not anymore. The value was in the land itself, and they knew it. We owned five acres, surrounded by their many hundreds. None of it had been cut or used for any purpose as far back as any locals could remember. It was all money in the bank drawing interest as the suburbs continued to spread out from Washington, D.C. like ripples in a pool.

Every ripple brought more developments and made the land more valuable.

So when we bought the place in the 1980’s, nothing was going on. We had no neighbors other than oak, poplar, and pine with that thick layer of undergrowth.

We had a sunny Saturday morning when Carla and I pulled our two cars up near the house to wash and vacuum both at the same time. I ran a long extension cord from the front hallway out to the big shop vac sitting between our cars.

Ruth was playing with Ohio the Wonder Dog and swinging in the hammock between two huge Cedars next to our parallel cars. 

Carla and I were working on hers, she leaned in one side and I did the same on the other, passing the noisy vac hose back and forth to suck the floors clean.

With that finished and ready to start in on my car, we took a break.

“Where’s Ruth” we asked each other at the same time. She and Ohio weren’t in the yard.

I went around back as Carla went inside to look. Two minutes later we were both in the front yard again yelling her name as I ran down our winding gravel driveway to the dirt road we lived on.

No Ruth.

That’s when we both went into panic mode. Carla and I had been leaning down in her car, low by the floor for only a few minutes, but the vacuum drowned out all outside noise. If Ruth had walked down to our mailbox on the road, we wouldn’t hear her go. If a car had driven up, we wouldn’t have been able to hear it either.

We knew there was nowhere else she could have gone. Our house was surrounded by thick brier, impenetrable. The only way out was down the winding gravel driveway.

Ruth was missing. Ruth was missing.

Ruth had been snatched.

I immediately called the police, telling them to hurry. Thankfully, they did.

I remember standing in the front yard, telling the cops everything I told you. Carla was hyperventilating. For me, it was all unfolding in slow motion.

The police did their own search of the house. We walked it together. The cops saw my automatic and semi-automatic rifles mounted on hooks over the stairs. They opened the big cedar chest that Grandma Maverick had painted and pushed aside several pounds of pot I kept in there.

No Ruth.

I knew that the vast majority of child “abductions” pointed back at the family itself and was eager for them to clear us and see that they needed to concentrate their efforts on finding Ruth “out there” not here.

We had to move, fast, I pushed and pleaded. They agreed.

Radios crackled as roadblocks were set up all over the county. A bloodhound showed up with his handler. He took Ruth’s scent from the bunny suit that she often slept in.

Carla was shaking, inconsolable. I was still watching a movie, incredulous, everything in slow motion, disbelieving.My ears perked up each time the radios barked in unison from the multiple squad cars pulled hurriedly onto our front lawn. 

When would we hear that hey caught the kidnapper?

Several hours passed. A helicopter was brought in. It hovered low and loud directly over house. We stood there in a dust storm of chaos and desperation.

The chopper started flying in ever-expanding concentric circles, widening the air search, until it was out of sight and could no longer be heard.

Five hours had passed. I was unable to console Carla and didn’t know how we would be able to move forward. The worst-case scenario kept trying to paint horrific pictures in my head. I didn’t want to know.

Then a radio cracked. 

They spotted Ruth! She was lying in a small clearing about 1/4th mile north of the house. Minutes took hours as we waited for the copter to land.

That's when we heard the news: Ruth was OK! Wet pants, dirty & tired, but OK!

They were flying her to Loudoun Hospital. Carla and I jumped into my car and started racing there with a police escort.

Running with a nurse and a cop to room 223. There she was. Sitting happily on a hospital bed, cleaned up and dressed in a new teddy Bear gown they had given her and drinking chocolate milk.

Mild hypothermia, mostly from dehydration, a few scratches from crawling through the brush behind our house in places where only a rabbit could go, but she was fine. She had been entertaining two nurses who had young children themselves. They understood that they were temporary Moms to the subject of one of the biggest manhunts in Loudoun County history.

That was it. Missing for six hours, a happy ending. We found out later that the helicopter had recently been fitted with a new piece of high-tech equipment, a heat-seeking device that could spot a squirrel even through dense underbrush. They picked up Ruth’s body heat, a little girl as a red glow on a green screen. That’s what saved the day

The manpower, the roadblocks, an overpaid bloodhound who mostly chased his own tail, the helicopter with that expensive lifesaving device…it all must have cost the county tens of thousands. For us? No bill, and no mention of the illegal weapons or my even more illegal pounds of pot.

Every one of those cops was calm, efficient, sympathetic, and super-professional. I had come along at a time when cops were called pigs. That forever changed it for me. They were more than heroes that day and my gratitude has never diminished.

Ohio the Wonder Dog and Ruth’s constant companion had been no help at all though. Apparently, she crawled over, under around and through the dense underbrush with Ruth, until she got bored and came back home wondering what all the commotion in the front yard was about.

At least Ruth had a great day. An adventure much like Alice down the rabbit hole, a welcome nap in the mottled sunshine of a distant clearing, an exciting helicopter ride and two nice ladies who made a huge fuss over her, that gave her a cool new nightshirt and, of course, lots of chocolate milk.

The Commanders Shellfish Camp

James Taylor is a famous singer.

We have a James Taylor in this town too. He’s famous for running the local foodie website. His songs are all about great food that you listen to with your taste buds.

Taste buds may also be the group of your friends you’re out with.

Anyway, he’ll probably be mad at me for not getting pictures of our food at The Commanders Shellfish Camp, but hey, the Stella was cold and the food came out quickly. What’s a guy supposed to do? I just hope he doesn’t get me down in a headlock like last time and make me say: “Iggy Wiggy I’m a Piggy!”

I hate it when he does that.

But really, there was no time for pictures. You’ll just have to use your imagination.

In order for me to post some kind of picture, here is one of Carla and me right after we got home with our leftovers.

Inside those carry-out bags?

Extra clammy clam chowder made in house with clams raised in the hatchery by the water behind the restaurant.

Jambalaya with all the unusual suspects swimming in a superlative tomato/clam base that sets a high bar for any competitors anywhere.

Royal Red shrimp, panko dredged and fried to perfection. A dip of remoulade sauce on the side. Their meat like a love child of a lobster and a brown shrimp. Especially tender and delicious.

Sweet potato fries.

Steamed Maryland oysters.

I had another Stella or three and we hit the road. Carla doesn’t drink so I always have a designated driver.

Now everything is sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for us to get hungry again.

PS: Commanders is in Crescent Beach, a block East of the inter-coastal. Sit outside on the deck and be in the moment. Let the salt air rejuvenate you.

Their menu is limited to the things they do best, which is everything on the menu.