Fancy BBQ
I wasn’t sure what the cutie from NCR liked to eat. With a few good restaurants in mind, I called Linda to firm up our date.
She surprised me by selecting a fancy BBQ joint on Peachtree Road in Midtown Atlanta. I told her a couple of friends told me it was good. That was a lie. The two-friend recommendation came from my roommate and me from a lunch we'd enjoyed there a few weeks earlier.
Determined to remove the stench of my fashion degradation at our first meeting, I wore my best pants and shirt. My 1984 VW GTI was sparkling clean. I'd recently invested ten percent of the car’s value in a fancy audio system.
I arrived at her rental house on time. She climbed into my VW and flashed her huge blue eyes. I had mood music playing, but she asked me to turn it off. Linda commented on the car’s shiny exterior and spotless interior, then asked how I paid for it. I enjoyed the question. It allowed me to show off—my financial prowess.
I’d paid $9,000 with a $2,000 down payment, financing the balance due at an attractive rate. Yes, you could buy a brand new car in the early 1980s for under $10,000. Delivering those numbers like an analytical wizard, I demonstrated an attention to detail absent from the transaction the day we met. Dan, with the dorky, flood-style hippie pants, who doesn’t read purchase order details, guy.
At dinner, I suggested the half-rack of BBQ ribs that my friends told me was excellent. The only caveat: the sauce on the ribs could be messy. We both ordered the rib-rack. One minute into the meal, Linda managed to cut into the ribs and send them flipping spectacularly off her plate. The rack landed sauce-down on the restaurant's white carpet. I called the waiter to clean the mess and get her a new plate of ribs.
Selecting white shag carpet was a poor choice for a BBQ restaurant. Fancy or otherwise. The restaurant closed later that year.
I shared half of my rack with her while we waited for them to deliver her replacement rack. This provided a gap for conversation, which turned to politics. The political discourse of the 1980s wasn’t as heated as in the age of Donald Trump. It was clear we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a few topics.
I describe myself as an Independent Libertarian, Left-of-center on social issues, and right-of-center on fiscal policy. Linda was to the right on all issues and was less concerned about numbers. We actually got into an argument over something I don’t remember. I liked her scrappy disposition. She wasn’t going to take shit from anyone, including me.
We did get along regarding many other things. She was frugal. She liked that I had saved $2,000 for my car down payment, even though she thought it would have been smarter to buy a used car. I agreed with her, but told her a story about my first car. It was a used car, purchased for $500-an old yellow station wagon with a propensity to catch on fire when it started. I had a procedure that enabled me to put out the engine fire before I started driving. This story amused her. She asked me why I didn’t get a mechanic to fix it. I suggested the fix would cost more than I paid for the car. She nodded in agreement.
When I dropped her off at the end of our date, things went well enough that she suggested a second date at her house. Linda would make me dinner. If we did it the next weekend, her (landlord-roommate) was traveling. The house would be ours. She said this was a good idea because he had strange rules for the house.
Linda didn't mention this until after I arrived for our second date. I was not to use the toilet unless necessary. Weird. Also, I was not to flush the toilet until several deposits were made. Weirder.
More on that next time.