**Disclaimer: This is NOT a political post.

Dad was in Lexington on business last week and sent me pics of the Red Hen, which – ICYMI – was the site of a huge political controversy recently and has shut down indefinitely.* Visitors were placing flowers on the front step like a memorial.

 

Dad: Protestors tonite.

It’s getting ugly here…Trumpsters everywhere

Me: Be careful.

D: U know me, I’m lookin for a fight {toothy smile emoji}

M: Don’t. You can’t reason with them.

D: I’m just finishing dinner and will walk over to stir things up

M: Dad, I’m recovering from surgery. I’m not feeling well. Don’t make me come down there.  But, at least get some footage.

D: Everyone is gone.

D: Not to worry…tomorrow is another day.

 

The next day around 6:30 p.m. he sends me a video I can’t open.

M: Idk what that was

D: Party time

D: I recorded that country band while I was eating my bah b que

 

Twenty-four hours later he sends me another video with the caption, “How’s this for a view while drinking a craft brew?” The video was 23 seconds of his knee and a topsy-turvy view of a stone wall, and I was about to question his sobriety when he followed up with another video and “sent the wrong video before” {grinning emoji}. This one was a panoramic of his view from the patio he was drinking his craft brew on, of road, parking lot, mountains, and sky. Ending with the topsy-turvy upside-down view of his hairy leg.

M: Yeah, I guess when you’re drunk…

M: Nice hairy knee

D: Hah

D: I just sat down

M: What is the view? A parking lot?

D: This is the Shenandoah Valley… beautiful

 

Several hours later…

D: I’m at the restaurant now and the conversation is so slanted towards the extreme right.

M: Oh lord. Try to stay out of it.

D: You know I can’t

M: You have to. There’s no one to bail you out.

D: Haha

M: Find another restaurant

Now to say my dad does not have strong political opinions presently, would be a gross falsehood, but he also wouldn’t get himself into a heated discussion with strangers. But – beer muscles are a thing. I just don’t believe my dad has any. Until –

D: Are you sayin you wouldn’t drive here to bail out your wife’s father?

M: My wife’s father? Dad, how much have you had?

D: Oops! My bad

D: I was talking to you and Todd at the same time

 

The next morning I received another video – this one was a nighttime video of flashing red lights and firetrucks, captioned: “You can always count on Dominoes to arrive on time.” And sure enough, if you look closely, you can see a car with a Dominoes sign on the roof passing between the firetrucks.

 

D: Fire alarm evacuated hotel around midnight

M: OMG. You really should be blogging. Your life is way more interesting than mine.

M: It’s 8:57 and the highlight of my day so far is that I finally went to the bathroom.

D: Just got the details during my coffee run…someone in the hotel tried to smoke in their shower (there are no exhaust fans in this old hotel)

 At this point I plead an empty case for him to guest write a post. If he had been blogging over the last 10 years or so, he’d have thousands of followers and he wouldn’t have to work. Truth is by far, waaaay better than fiction.

 

Miscellaneous tidbits:

*One news outlet stated The Red Hen was expected to stay closed until July 5^th.

There are other “Red Hen” restaurants that have been confused with The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia. Restaurants around the world bearing any part of the name Red Hen have been targeted by haters – including The Little Red Hen, a restaurant located IN THE PHILLIPINES, where someone trashed them for refusing “to serve one of the finest woman in the country. You should be ashamed of yourself!” (Grammar geeks – I spelled the quote exactly as it was written.)

It has even gone as far as people contacting the Health Department that serves Lexington, KENTUCKY – imploring them to “shut the [expletive] down.”

There’s actually a Red Hen in D.C. that received so many threats they had to post a police officer outside, and was egged late at night.

A man whose restaurant by the same name in Georgia closed nearly 10 years ago, received a 700-word post on his not-updated-page-since-2010 from a “ ‘tourist to Lexington,’ who swears to never eat there again.” His friends have since made comical reviews about his restaurant being a “Communist front” and that “its food tasted several years old.”

Meanwhile, a man was arrested for throwing chicken poop at #TheRealRedHen.

Moral of the story tibits: There’s a lesson to be learned from all this, and it’s not political.

***Sources: http://www.theverge.com and The Washington Post.