Yeah, it’s tournament season. As in, BOWLING tournament. He had one last weekend in Lancaster at Dutch Lanes on Sunday. We left the house at 10:30 a.m. because he wanted plenty of time to drive and “assess” the “lane conditions” before it started … at 1:00. One should know that Lancaster is a mere 45-50 minutes from us, closer than my mom and dad are, but I was along for ride and therefore not in a position for questioning his reasoning.

We arrived at Dutch Lanes, early. Empty parking lot. Odd. Turns out it wasn’t at Dutch Lanes. The tournament was the Dutchman tournament, which was in Palmyra. I had no idea where Palmyra, Pennsylvania was until we turned a very familiar corner and I realized we were driving straight into Annville, where Lebanon Valley College is (where Owen started college and is literally 5-10 minutes from the bowling alley).

I had feelings. BUT. The feelings were good, because I ended up texting him about it and asking him questions about the lovely little town that I hadn’t seen before and he was immediately responsive and I don’t have to tell ya’ll that my heart was full.

Last night was another tournament in a small PA town firehouse I’m not only very familiar with but is also the site of an annual tournament he has gone to for a couple of years. I happen to really enjoy this tournament because it’s like a family reunion – so many old bowling friends we no longer see since the original alley was demolished and the teams scattered to two different alleys. This location is in a firehouse that has bowling lanes and a very mouthy bartender named Tammy that I have all the respect for.

She was gonna throw some smart-mouthed kid out and I was there for it. Our friend Eddie bought the Duck Fart shots and a handful of us downed them and went back to bowling. Me, I sat at the bar the whole night, people watching and having the time of my life. (Okay, maybe not the time of my life but it was most certainly entertaining.)

I’m on a serious health journey and so I’m eating a lot of plants and protein, fiber, and fruits. But in “East Jahbip” you eat as the locals do, so hot dog and fries it was. Then I moved on to Tito’s and club, and…. Duck Farts.

The first order of Duck Farts was greeted by the bartender with, “no! No fucking Duck Farts! I’ve got food cooking!” But she did it anyway. Another guy said to her, where’s my fucking beer?! And she got him a beer and I said, “wait, that’s not a Fucking Beer, that’s a Lager.”

The place was a smoke factory. As a kid growing up in the 70s where smoking was everywhere, there’s a weird feeling about being in a room where the only scent assaulting your nostrils is cigarettes. Neither one of my parents smoked but my stepdad did and I can’t recall if he smoked in the house. They smoked pot everywhere so there’s that. My Nana belonged to a CB club and there were CB club parties at the local firehouse (different firehouse but not too far away) that operated under a cloud of smoke and it never occurred to me that it was a problem. First serious boyfriend (Todd) smoked. I worked for several years in mom’s restaurant bartending when smoking was still allowed in bars/restaurants in PA.

Now, I am like a puppet juxtaposed between the nostalgic, loving the smell of cigarettes and also knowing the health risks. I hold my breath sometimes. But last night I just sat in it. Until I got home and had to strip down to nothing and take a shower and wash every part of me before climbing into bed.

*****

Niecey had a birthday recently and, after discovering that she’d never been to the Shangri-la of shopping – King of Prussia – I decided to take her there on my day off. It was… interesting. The last time I was in the vicinity was Halloween day the year O was still on his permit and he wanted a “personal day”* so he drove me to my GYN appointment and we drove through the complex and I was all, wow. Wow. Wow. The exterior on its own looks so starkly different than the last time I went.

Sidebar: the King of Prussia mall of my youth was a smallish mall that became known as the Plaza. Later, The Court was built adjacent to it. Between the two was a large parking lot (this is the one Mom always insisted on circling for the closest spot, as I wrote in a previous post) through which was a long, covered sidewalk one could walk between the two malls.

In high school we referred to the Plaza as the “poor man’s mall” for the types of stores it housed, and the Court was known as the “rich man’s mall” for the high-end department and catalogue stores it held. In those early days, I only went to the Plaza for Gene’s Books, a beloved independent (before independent was a thing) bookstore that won three Best of Philly awards. Otherwise, all the shopping we did was in The Court.

In the early 90s when I worked at Macy’s I occasionally would cross the great sidewalk over to the Plaza to visit the Food Court. In those days the mall was clearly either running into the ground or under construction/upgrades. By the mid 90s the Plaza became THE Plaza, flanked by several great restaurants of the time, parking garages, and filled with designer stores (Hugo Boss, Versace), Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus. Sears was still in business at the opposite end. Suddenly, the Court was a little less alluring.

Today there is an overhead structure with stores that connects the two malls.

Anyway, we arrived around 10:30 a.m. and I was newly stunned by the all the changes since that drive-by with O. I parked in a spacious parking garage on the second level and we entered The Plaza (I don’t know if they even call them by those names anymore and hold on, I’m going to tell you why in a minute) through a short hall with Versace on the right and Tiffany on the left.

I spent the majority of the afternoon trying to keep my jaw off the floor – not for the excess of high-end stores but for the complete disconnect from my memories. The designer stores, many of them, had gorgeous entries and often one would have to open a heavy glass door to enter. Security guards stood sentinel at many of them. But the thing for me was a constant grasping for my bearings. I couldn’t get my bearings. This store used to be here. That store was there.

And then there were the corridors that dropped off onto an escalator that led to the Court in both fluid and unimaginative byways that felt more like an airport than a premier East Coast shopping destination.  Don’t get me wrong, the mall was optically impressive, but I was “over it” pretty quickly. We both bought some things at several different stores and there really is no substitute for touching and trying on clothes versus gambling with online purchases.

Niecey picked North Italia, a mid-range chain restaurant offering homemade pastas and pizza. The waitress, roughly my age, introduced herself and asked the question that always elicits a moment’s hesitation – have we ever been there before?* (We hadn’t.)

So she explained the open kitchen in the back, pointing at the pizza station and the pasta station where, as if on cue, a woman in a white chef coat was pulling long lengths of pappardelle. The waitress then pointed to the Small Plates on our menus and explained that – I shit you not – “small plates are appetizers.” She returned with our drinks and asked what appetizers we’d like to order. Ahhh, trying to upsell, eh?

Niecey ordered the Tortelloni al Pomodoro, hesitating on the word as she looked at me, so I repeated it and the waitress then asked me if I was Italian, because I knew how to pronounce it. Now, I could have seen this as somehow patronizing but I truly thought this woman must be dumb.

Anyhoo, I ordered the Bolognese, their house specialty (with the homemade pappardelle), and it was delicious. She loved her tortelloni too. The waitress offered us “pepper flakes and cheese” (yes, please) and then brought out a plate with two small dishes on it: one with the pepper flakes and the other with parmesan cheese. I stared at this clearly-from-a-green-Kraft-can parmesan cheese with a mixture of humor and incredulity. They are literally serving fresh, homemade pasta with Kraft grated cheese. Lesson: good food, BYO-cheese.

Miscellaneous:

*The last restaurant I went to where we were asked if we had been there before, it was Bucca di Beppo and – because we said no – the host took us THROUGH THE KITCHEN, ostensibly to show where the magic happens because doesn’t everybody want to see a real commercial kitchen? No. The answer is NO. Not when I literally grew up in one.

*I don’t really think the waitress is dumb. I think they are trained to do the schtick, without considering whether the person in front of them may or may not have ever dined in a real restaurant before. Or, in my case, was raised in two over my lifetime and I am subsequently well-traveled in that department and not a little bit of a snob about it. Which is why you serve fresh homemade pasta with freshly grated Romano or asiago. Sorry, not sorry.

*Personal days. I used to give Owen personal days when he was in school. It was his choice and sometimes he’d go anyway, he was a straight-A student, but I was keenly aware of his need to have a nothing-day. I believe in mental health days and I wanted him to appreciate the value of them.