Thierry Sagnier's Blog, page 18
September 25, 2016
Footnotes
Footnotes
Footnote: An event of lesser importance than some larger event to which it is related.
Or perhaps: An annoying detail that must be referred to for honesty's sake.
Or even: A matter of debatable interest that should not detract from the primary focus of the text.
I started thinking of footnotes a few years back. I was researching the life of the French painter Maurice Utrillo, whose existence seem to have been an endless series of footnotes. Shortly after that a friend asked me to read and edit her master's thesis which was, as it should be, festooned with the things. In fact, if I’d counted the lines, I’m reasonably certain there might have been more space devoted to the footnotes than to the subject at hand.
It struck me then that the majority of our existence is spent being footnotes in other people's lives.
We are brief romances vaguely remembered, one or two pleasant rainy afternoons in a month of doldrums. We are the bringers of gifts that adorn a coffee table but will end their lives in someone else’s yard sale. We are a meal with a particularly good dessert or bottle of wine, a conversation that left something behind but didn’t change a belief.
We expand a lot of energy being footnotes, because really, each and every footnote would like the opportunity to become a full book, a meaningful discussion that alters a consciousness, a something that really matters. But, by their very definition and every letter in their spelling, footnotes are lesser creations, afterthoughts there to amplify a greater truth. And a footnote, even if it has every right to ask, why am I here? will not necessarily get an answer. It simply is there.
A footnote cannot exist without a more important text, but the reverse is not true and sometimes preferable. Footnotes may be annoying ankle-biters, but were they alive and truly breathing, they would tell you the veracity of entire manuscripts hinge on their very existence. Footnotes, no matter how brief, are very important in their own minds, and they echo the old saw: I may not be much, but I'm all I think about. They occasionally add a bit of excitement, a tint of the forbidden, something secret with which we may have gotten away. They can be clandestine, joyfully mysterious, even if there's an uneasy relationship between the footnotes and the writing they complement. And of course, they can be sad: there is something tragically complete and finite about them. Footnotes do not have footnotes of their own. They stand alone in much smaller print and thus much harder to see than the texts they adorn.
As footnotes, we may have had a time of greater importance, a moment when we thought we lit up the sky, but most of us are as ephemeral as fireworks. We are remembered faintly, adjuncts to other events, other feelings and moments in time that become vaguer as memories either fade or are replaced.
But here, perhaps, is a radiant side: while they are happening, in the moment, footnotes can appear to be life-changing epiphanies. They may have an intensity that dims only after the page is turned, when reality becomes, well, reality. For many, life without footnotes would be spiceless and boring.
Next week I'll write about semi-colons.
No. I won't.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on September 25, 2016 10:18
September 24, 2016
One Day
An odd twenty-four hours, where I went for my fifteenth cystoscopy and was told there was no trace of cancer this time around. That’s two clean exams in a row. My record is three, after five or so years of dealing with this unpleasantness.
I was also told there is Still Something Going On, though the doctor is not sure what IT is. IT will call for more tests. I was informed of the same thing three months ago and will start doing the lab work next week, or the week after that.
Arielle and I went for a celebratory lunch, and we haggled over who would pay.
On another front, I had my first meeting with the real estate agent who will handle the marketing of my house, so it is official—I am selling my home, and I’m wrestling with a strange mélange of sadness and relief.
After the agent left, I spent an hour or so pacing through my yard. Over the two-and-half decades of living here, I did a lot to alter the topography of this small patch of Virginia soil. I created and stocked a tiny fishpond, made a couple of small hills, and a couple of little hollows. I planted innumerable trees, bushes, vegetables, and flowering and non-flowering things. I pulled up weeds until, about a decade ago, I realized that weeds are green and great ground-cover. I put up fences and took them down again. I saw a tall and slender willow fall after a heavy snow, and I cut down three dead pines that smelled of pitch and needles. I hung a hammock I never used between two elm trees.
I remembered buying a two-foot leafless branch shortly after my father’s death. I wanted to commemorate his life. I stuck the branch into the ground and in time it became a twenty-foot corkscrew willow that now towers over the fishpond. I remembered being attacked by wasps no less than four times, and using an almost strawless broom to challenge a hissing raccoon on my kitchen stoop. I chased away a fox that was threatening my cat.
Inside the house I’ve taken down walls, destroyed and rebuilt bathrooms, and put in closets, Sheetrocked, sanded and painted. I retiled the kitchen, refinished floors and put in new windows. Some work was necessity; other was a labor of love. I built a room out back over a concrete apron and the band I played with for a decade practiced and recorded there.
There have been brownouts and blackouts, days without heat and days with air conditioning. I’ve dug out the snow from my driveway more times than I can count. Five years ago, the house two doors down burned almost to the ground but thankfully no one was hurt. The street fronting my home was widened, re-laned, and went from a seldom traveled road to a thoroughfare.
There have been good neighbors, and bad neighbors, and neighbors struck by tragedy. The Iranian family that lived across the street lost a kid to a heroin overdose. There was a murder just a quarter of a mile away, and housebreakings and robberies. On the other hand, for several years a delightful family from Beirut lived next door, an aging mother and three daughters, who bribed me with endless cups of bitter coffee and honeyed pastries. I mowed their lawn, repaired their roof, and moved their furniture. I fixed flat tires and drove them around when their ancient cars broke down. I listened to tales of woes and wars, and to stories of joy. I watched two daughters get married and have children. When the mother died, I was a pallbearer at her funeral…
Endless memories.
It’s nearing time to go, but it’s going to be hard to leave.I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on September 24, 2016 06:08
September 22, 2016
Books
I’ve been culling books for the past few days in anticipation of an eventual move. It’s a bittersweet activity, since I know, as a writer, the effort each volume required of its author. Books to me are sacred things. They imply a dual commitment, one by the writer, the other by the reader, to engage in a strange and temporary symbiotic relationship that begins and ends with the turn of a page.
Many years ago I owned a dilapidated house in Adams Morgan, a grand old and brooding four-story edifice with a speckled history. When my then-wife and I bought it, we innocently believed that in a matter of months we would completely rebuild its kitchen, paneled dining room, six bathrooms, seven bedrooms, and mother-in-law basement apartment. This was not to be.
The first thing I insisted on when taking ownership of the house was creating a library. I gutted the top floor, in the process inhaling a few pounds of asbestos fiber, and with an architectural student friend, built gorgeous serpentine bookshelves to line the entire now-open room. I cut and shaped and assembled. I sanded and stained and varnished. I quickly stocked the shelves by buying all the books I’d always wanted, many from a bric-a-brac store down the street. I got the entire Harvard Classics, an illustrated Medical Encyclopedia from 1897, and Will and Ariel Durant’s eleven-volume (now largely ignored) Story of Civilization. I got all the works of Emile Zola in French and in English. I bought Bulwer-Lytton and the writings of Kant and Heidegger and Marx. I resurrected Descartes and Sartre and Camus. I invited Voltaire and Corneille and Moliere and Shakespeare home. In time, I managed to read almost everything save some of the Harvard Classics which were, frankly, unreadable. I got both full sets of the Encyclopedia Britannicaand the World Book Encyclopedia, because the latter is largely how I learned to read English many decades ago. I also unpacked one of my prized possessions, a set of Les Aventures de Tintin by the Belgian artist/writer Hergé.
For a time, I was coming home daily with a book or three. I continued doing this until the shelves were almost filled. In hindsight, it was one of the better times of my life.
Today I am doing the opposite. I sold the Harvard Classics a while back and gave the Britannica to a downtown rehab/shelter, a donation that was welcomed by the counselors, if not the clients in early sobriety. I was told later that the tomes were read avidly enough that a waitlist had to be established.
I found I had two editions of Updike’s complete works, so one went to the local library. I approached another library and asked if its staff might be interested in my collection of books about Paris, which I used to research a book of my own set in the French capital shortly after World War One. I was given a tentative yes, and so I’m packing up those as well. I am going to sell my collection of Historia magazines, a monthly glossy French review that deals in painful detail with the vagaries of royalty and tsars, and seems particularly fascinated by the life of William Howard Taft, the fattest of all US Presidents and the very first celebrity weight-loss patient.
Save for a few works I found horribly written (my favorite and on Amazon’s Worst List is How Fatima Started Islam: Mohammad’s Daughter Tells All) or truly boring (Madame Bovary, Finnegan’s Wake, Tess of d’Urbervillesand anything by Proust) every book I am giving away evokes a small pang of regret.
I love books. I love reading them, writing them, looking at their spines, admiring their covers, and scanning their first and last sentences. I will miss them all, but it is time for them to find new homes.
I will not give up the Tintin collection, though.I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on September 22, 2016 10:01
September 10, 2016
Near-death in America
My mother never got used to America.
Years after she and my dad had returned to Paris where they rented a tiny apartment in Paris near the Opera that was smaller than the living room of the suburban house they’d lived in, she would say, “I almost died there. In America.”
This was technically true.
While they lived on the outskirts of Washington, DC, the tail-end of a hurricane roared through the capital. My parents were on Rock Creek Parkway after an evening with friends when the roaring wind uprooted a tree that crashed on their car as they were driving back to Maryland. The tree hit the roof of the car and collapsed it, shattering both front and back windshields. Had it fallen a nanosecond earlier, it would have landed squarely on top of them and killed them. Both were bloodied by flying glass but neither was seriously injured.
Another time, was mother was deep-frying beignets in the kitchen when the boiling oil caught fire and singed her eyebrows with a frightening whoosh. My father, who liked to hang around the kitchen and bother my mom when she was cooking, grabbed the sink sprayer, a new gadget much in vogue, and squirted the fire with a thin stream of water. The flames leapt to the ceiling with an angry roar, and my mother would later tell her friends in France that these were Americanflames, and not the standard European flames she knew how to deal with.
My mom was an accomplished artist whose works were displayed in both Washington and Paris. Once, as she was creating an oil painting of a scene from the Belle Époque, a small bat flew into the room through an open window. My mother had probably never seen a bat in its natural state. She screamed, covered her head with the palette full of paint, knocked over the easel, painting, and a glass jar full of turpentine and used brushes. The bat eventually found the window and vanished. The turpentine ate through the varnish on the floor, and it took my mother weeks to get her hair free of the blue, red and sun yellow paints she’d been working with.
In the recounting, the bat became a red-eyed monster with a two-foot wing span. She would tell people it had hissed venomously as it attempted to sink its fangs into her tender French neck.
Perhaps the American near-death experience that most affected her was when she and my father were vacationing in Florida and staying in an inexpensive beach-front motel. My mother realized she had left the pack of Pall Mall cigarettes she was never without in the glove compartment of their car. She went to retrieve it and was halfway there when she realized the parking lot was covered with scuttling crabs. She froze. She screamed. My farther rushed out and rescued her, picking her up bodily like a movie hero. The story might have ended there but it turned out the motel owner had told my father of the crab issue when they’d checked in, and my father, afraid to alarm my mother, had not passed on this disconcerting information.
Like the bat, the crabs took on science-fiction proportion. They were monsters from the deep with serrated claws and bubbling maws. From that day on, my mother’s occasional feasting on the crustaceans became almost vengeful. She would pound at their carapaces with a small wooden mallet and a bitter smile, recalling how she had, once again, foiled an American death. I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on September 10, 2016 09:28
September 8, 2016
Jean Octave Sagnier
My father, Jean Octave Sagnier, died 18 years ago. He was a good wise man who without being secretive hated talking about himself. He was an architectural student working as the traveling secretary of a wealthy Brit when World War II broke out and he walked from the south of France to St. Malo in Brittany, then hopped a boat to England so he could join the upstart general Charles de Gaulle and become a Free French. De Gaulle assigned him a mobile radio station which roamed occupied France and relayed Allied news to the maquisand other underground forces. He never fired a shot during the war. He was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor, for deeds that I do not know.
He met my mother in the summer of 1945 in Marseilles. She was Free French too and they conceived me that very night in January in the back of a US Army truck.
He was estranged from his family. I would be an adult before I was told I had uncles and an alcoholic aunt who died of the disease in the UK. He lost a younger brother during the V2 bombings of London. He never, as I recall, mentioned his own mother. I have an aged family photo taken in the 20s, three boys and a girl posing with a man and a woman standing at attention. A much later shot shows a painfully thin young man wearing boxing gloves and looking not at all ready to fight.
It was snowing when I was born in the American Hospital in Paris, and the barely liberated capital was devoid of food. Regardless, my mother craved a ham omelet. My father, using the military issue Colt he had never fired, forced the hospital cook at gunpoint to go into his own larder for eggs, butter and meat. He fixed the omelet himself, ate it, made another and served it to her. She complained it wasn’t hot enough, and that would be the tenet of their relationship. They were married 46 years, nursing each other through poverty, joblessness, an eventual move to the US, and cancer.
He died five years after my mother. I carried his ashes in an oak box from the US to France, and when I went through customs the douanierswere very curious as to what I was cradling in my arms. One soldier took the box, shook it. It rattled as if there were pebbles inside. When I told him he was manhandling my father’s remains, he turned sheet-white, handed the box to his superior officer who in turn gave it back to me. I said these were the ashes of a Free French and the man saluted.
He was not a natural father. The growing up and education of a son baffled him. He was unlikely to give advice, did so only at my mother’s prompting. He taught by doing, showing, and patience. We never played catch, never went fishing together, we did not bond in the accepted way. There were few family vacations, a limited number of father/son experiences shared. He was a good and quiet man who witnessed and took part in moments of history that are now almost forgotten.
He told two jokes, neither particularly, but each telling brought tears to his eyes. He died a bad death and I hope he didn’t suffer. I think of him every day.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on September 08, 2016 06:28
August 30, 2016
A Week after the Theft
It’s been a week since thieves stole a bunch of things from my house. I haven’t seen or heard from anyone though I think a detective was supposed to contact me. When I called the police after realizing I’d been burgled, a very nice officer came by, dusted for prints, asked for the iPad’s serial number (“Sorry, I don’t have that. It was a gift.”), the Bose radio’s serial number (“Sorry, I don’t have that. I bought it used on eBay.”), and my late father’s watch’s serial number (“You’re kidding, right?) So I guess I wasn’t that helpful.
Somewhere in the deepest sitcom part of my brain, I had visions of an angry parent bringing a chastened teen-ager to my house and returning all my stuff. There would have been a speech about a life of crime narrowly averted, and the kid would have come back to atone for his sins by mowing my lawn and shoveling my walk after snow falls. This did not occur. What did occur were a couple of sleepless nights full of revenge scenarios involving samurai swords and other sharp objects.
The day after, Arielle gave me a gorgeous watch engraved (in French) to commemorate our successful work together on a book. The engraver misspelled one of the words which makes the gift even more special. It won’t replace my father’s timepiece, we both know this, but at a very crappy time it reminded me there were things to be grateful for. She also set up a GoFundMe account (https://www.gofundme.com/247vr9tg) and friends (and a few strangers) have kicked in money so I can eventually replace the stolen stuff. To those of you helping, thank you!
Oh. And my cat vanished.
I have to be clear here. I don’t write about pets or four-legged companions or service animals. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I just don’t do it. I do, however, have a cat, Junkie, an aging medium-hair Burmese who’s been with me 15 years. He’s indoors/outdoors and mostly likes to sleep in the sun, and we sort of depend on each other. When I was sick and following surgeries, he spent a lot of time on my bed looking at me thoughtfully and occasionally yawning in boredom. Following the thefts, I didn’t see him for three or four days. Arielle and I worried. I walked and drove around the neighborhood terrified that I’d find his run-over carcass somewhere. He was not, thank heavens, squashed or eaten by a coyote. He reappeared looking none the worse for wear, made give-me-food noises and left again, so that worked out well.
Yesterday a bunch of teens walked by my house as I was doing yard work. I stopped and starred at them malevolently. None were carrying my stuff. They gave me the disinterested looks young people give dreary old people.
The world, I suppose, is returning to normal.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on August 30, 2016 08:28
August 7, 2016
Sunday Morning
It is 5:15 a.m. and the hamsters are rattling around in their cage. The moon is a crescent and in my driveway I see something shuffling along. A raccoon. I am sitting on the steps of my kitchen stoop eating a lukewarm bowl of Maruchan Ramen Noodles with Vegetables (Hot & Spicy Chicken Flavor). The raccoon stops about ten feet away.
I know this guy, he’s a regular visitor. On two occasions he craftily pried open my large outdoor plastic garbage can, dropped inside it, and feasted on the remains of past meals. When he couldn’t get out, he made a huge racket and I had to tip over the can so he could escape. He hissed at me and I was stuck with picking up the littered garbage off my lawn.
I dig a few Ramen noodles out of the paper bowl and throw them to him. There’s no hesitation. He picks them up and scarfs them down, then looks insolently my way. More. What the hell. I’m not really hungry. I place the half-empty bowl in the middle of the driveway, a short distance from my feet. The raccoon approaches, not wary in the least, picks up the bowl and sticks his head in it.
I can’t help but remember when I was dating my soon-to-be-second wife, a lovely Vietnamese woman who took me to a pho place. It was my first time in one of these traditional restaurants. We sat at a communal table with her kids. I watched as an elderly Asian lady across from me lowered most of her head in the soup bowl and noisily sucked in noodles. When she came up, she smacked her lips and gave me a gap-toothed grin that I returned. It was a good moment.
The raccoon is destroying the paper noodle bowl with his paws and teeth. I stand and wave my arms. He almost shrugs, drops the bowl and ambles away. I see him enter the bamboo patch near my garage and vanish.
On the kitchen counter, the Roborovski hamsters are dancing a caged fandango. There are two of them, tiny little furry creatures full of curiosity. I watch as both of them climb aboard their exercise wheel and start running in tandem. Is this collaboration or competition?
The raccoon returns. I get a handful of nuts and toss them in the driveway. He eats most of them save for the coconut-flavored cashews from Trader Joe’s , which is a shame because I don’t like the cashews either and I have two bagfuls I would have gladly sacrificed
The sky is turning pink. I don’t much care for Sunday mornings. I miss the Sunday intimacy of bed and breakfast as a couple. Sunday morning may be a bountiful time for the raccoon but it is not a good time to be single. I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on August 07, 2016 09:31
August 4, 2016
On Hold
I have been talking to people and on hold this morning for a total of 57 minutes and 32 seconds. My upper back is beginning to ache from cradling the phone between my neck and shoulder.
I have just spelled the word ‘barf’ on WordTower for forty-three points which brings my total to 2537. This is an all-time high, so I suppose I cannot classify this as wasted time. Earlier today I also waited a much shorter time to make sure I was indeed scheduled for some workshops at the Writers’ Center. That was resolved in a matter of minutes.
At issue on this latest call is a recently received bill for $5,670 from my healthcare provider. I suspect this is for three five-minute chemotherapy sessions made as a follow-up to my most recent cancer surgery. This is not right.
This morning has been devoted to spending money on things that are not in the least fun—Verizon, Virginia Power, Kaiser Permanente, etc. There’s a mysterious charge for a couple of hundred dollars that I identify by going through past payment vouchers—yes, I do owe that sum—but so far the biggie is the $5,670.
I spell the word ‘mucus’ for thirty-eight points.
I have spoken with three different people regarding the provider bill, and each has—very politely, I must say—shuttled me off to someone else. I am now back to Person Number One, whose name may be Serafina or Jo. I don’t remember.
I spell ‘boob’ for next to nothing in points, but the total score is climbing steadily. Since English is not my native language, I am feeling prouder by the moment at my mastery of complex vocabulary. I am sure I would be prouder still if I weren’t on hold, but then again if I weren’t on hold I would not be playing WordTower and spelling out ‘shit’ which, to my amazement, the game accepts.
I discover that it is neither Jo nor Serafina but Mavis to whom I am now talking, and she says, “Let me look into this.”
“Please,” I say.
I am topped out on WordTower and wonder if there’s anyone out there playing Words With Friends. My regular WWF partner is at a brand new job, so she can’t play; her employer might frown at such behavior. It appears no one within my tiny Facebook world is available today save a guy I worked with decades ago who now lives in Jamaica. I didn’t like him then and probably wouldn’t care for him now, so I decline his invitation. Plus, he’s a Brit and would probably trounce me.
We are now at 69 minutes and 22 seconds. As I am starting a new WordTower challenge, Mavis returns to the phone to tell me I will have to speak to her supervisor who is at lunch. Can I call back?
I sigh. I say, “Yes, of course,” and spell Jeezus on WordTower, but it is not accepted.
I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on August 04, 2016 10:13
August 2, 2016
Cataracts
Excuse the typos. I can’t see well as my eyes are dilated from today’s ophthalmic exam. I have bilateral cataracts, it turns out, as well as something that causes drooping of the left eyelid. I couldn’t resist the internet and found there are four possibilities for the latter: third cranial nerve palsy, Horner's syndrome, myasthenia gravis, and musculotendinous disorder of the levator. You got all that?
The eyesight in my left eye started getting a mite strange about two months ago but I put it down to stress and post-chemo reaction. It hasn’t gotten better and a couple of days ago I noticed a definite worsening blurring.
I mentioned it to Arielle, whose father is a pediatric ophthalmologist and who herself has had vision issues. She suggested I get the condition looked at. Suggested is a polite word.
This morning a very nice nurse put a variety of drops in my eyes that stung, burned, and dyed the whites of my eyes yellow for that elegant jaundiced look. He explained to me that he washed his hands about 200 times a day, which is more than me from August to December. He recommended Shea Butter Hasnd Cream, which is slightly more expensive but well worth it.
The doctor I saw reminded me that I had been her patient after what I will refer to as the gardening incident, during which I lacerated a retina by injudicious use of a hedge trimmer. She remembered me, she said, because hedge trimmer mishaps are rather rare in the ophthalmic trade. She also put drops in my eyes, made me read letters on a faraway wall, hmmed a couple of times and told me there was a slight chance of the aforementioned odd eyelid disease. She explained that though the surgery to correct that situation was not complex, the paperwork involved was. My provider does not do elective facial surgery to make a patient look better, and the eyelid procedure is just that unless it can be categorically diagnosed as a disease or injury. She gave me disposable sunglasses that I am told are very dashing.
The cataract surgery is simple. I’d get both eyes done in one procedure and would be well on my way to recovery within a day or two. It’s one of the most commonly done procedures world-wide. Still, the idea of someone cutting away part of my eyes and implanting little plastic lenses is horrifying. I’m going to do it of course, but I can’t say I’m elated. More than anything, I am getting terminally tired of clinics and doctors and nurses, even very pleasant ones who wash their hands 200 times a day.I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on August 02, 2016 11:42
July 31, 2016
Angelico
Four days ago, two p.m., Arielle and I have been working for about three hours on the L’Amérique rewrite. We are hungry, and over the last three weeks we’ve eaten at every franchise restaurant in a five-mile radius.
Arielle says, “There’s a place called Angelico Pizza. I’ve ordered out, and it was pretty good.” She checks her phone. There’s one not two miles from my house on Lee Highway near Route 66. We drive there and it’s a typical storefront pizza place, with five parking spaces out front. It is now 2:30. We walk in. The small restaurant is totally, irremediably empty.
We order from a pleasant young man with heavily tattooed arms. Arielle gets a sandwich; I go for a bowl of spaghetti marinara with extra meatballs. We sit and wait. There are a couple of posters on the wall, five or six tables, a glass-front refrigerated case for drinks.
The food comes and it’s good; my spaghetti arrives with a large slice of excellent pizza and Arielle’s sandwich looks pretty decent as well. The price is more than fair, a tad less than twenty bucks for the both of us. We eat. We remain the only customers. We leave.
Two days later we return. We are still the only customers and the tattooed young man behind the counter exactly remembers our orders. Arielle says, “I don’t think anyone’s been here since we came two days ago.” I think she may be right.
We discuss grammar, a recurrent theme in our editing of L’Amérique. Arielle says mine is atrocious. I maintain it is actually inventive. We segue to the use of semi-colons, which I have a tendency to throw in whenever I am confused about using a comma or a period. Arielle says it is obvious semi-colons do not exist in France. I argue that they do, and they are called point virgule, which translates to period comma, and makes a lot more sense than calling something a half-something-or-other.
We eat. It is, once again, good. We are, once again, the only customers.
According to Google, there are six Angelico pizza places in the area. Four are in Washington and two are in Northern Virginia on Lee Highway. I don’t know if there is a real Angelico or if this is a low-end franchise, but both Arielle and I thought the food was excellent and the price a bargain. A bonus: We could hear each other talk. No loud music or clatter from the kitchen.
So you should go there. I am all in favor of patronizing small businesses, and this was a whole lot better than any Pizza Hut, Domino’s or Papa John’s.
Oh. Neither Arielle nor I were paid for this endorsement. Really. I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no hat.
Published on July 31, 2016 15:06