For nearly twenty years now, my wife and I have regularly attended our favorite restaurant not far from our home in the lakeside community of False River in South Louisiana – “Ma Mama’s Kitchen”.
During that time, we’ve become prone to get to know, get involved with, joke, laugh, gossip, horseplay, and sometimes even fall in love with, members of the ever rotating wait-staff.
We do love them all, but for the purposes of this short story, I’m gonna focus on one in-particular - Abigail.
“Ma Mama’s” is a small restaurant, situated in a charming old building with historical significance, and bad acoustics.
In many small spaces, the sound of euphoric conversation can become unbearable in a big hurry.
In, “Ma Mama’s” though, with the house barely halfway full, the volume does increase, but as it does, also rises just above your head, so you can somehow still carry-on a conversation with someone right in front of you.
This is particularly important to me, because I’m pretty hard of hearing, as I likewise believe is Abigail – which is a fitting segue in to our story:
To be sure, Abigail is among the most polite, intelligent, witty, and beautiful personalities my wife and I have ever had the pleasure of meeting.
It's not an exaggeration to say we truly love Abigail.
On this particular occasion, after just being seated and exhausting the usual gratuitous greeting chit-chat, Abigail takes our drink order, and leaves us alone to retrieve it.
Returning empty-handed about two-minutes later, Abigail looks my wife directly in the eye, leans-in and says, “I’m sorry Ms. Wendy, I looked, but I don’t think we have any, “Old Chuck”.
Confused, my wife looked at me only to find shrugged-shoulders and a likewise confused disposition.
Turning back to Abigail, my wife asks, “what is Old Chuck?”
Abigail replies, “I asked you what you wanted to drink, and you said an Old Chuck, but we don’t carry that brand”.
My wife and I now realizing what happened, turn to Abigail and say in unison, “ULTRA! - as in Michelob”.
All three of us, now realizing together what had happened, shared a good belly-laugh, after which my wife and I knew to a certainty we would forevermore refer to Michelob Ultra as, “Old Chuck”, and Abigail as an all-time favorite.
Cut to about a month later, same place, same time and circumstance.
But on this particular occasion, my wife already having consumed a few, “Old Chuck’s”, we’re done eating, and preparing for our final order.
Now, at this point, it’s important to note that while Abigail and my wife have developed a mother/daughter type relationship, *me* and Abigail have developed more of a faux-advsarial-brother/sister relationship, where sarcasm is taken to an artistic-level, and part of every exchange.
For example, if I ask Abigail for an iced-tea, she’s likely to say dryly, “we don’t have iced-tea”, then just walk away, only to return shortly with an iced-tea, that I will then deny ever having ordered in the first place.
Now what comes next requires a little backstory:
I’m somebody who occasionally enjoys a cup of coffee after a meal, and no place that I know has a better cup of coffee than Ma’ Mama’s.
However, not long ago, there was an event that didn’t so much end my tendency to have post-meal coffee, as alter my procedure for ordering it.
Without getting into a whole thing, we all know about coffees’ ability to inspire, “mother nature”.
Well consider this, combined with an aversion to public bathrooms, and maybe you can see where we’re headed.
Let’s just say for whatever reason, on a particular night, after about half a cup, Mother Nature called collect, and I was forced to refuse the charges.
It eventually worked-out, but not without undue-drama.
Accordingly, I made the decision that from then on, I can still have coffee after a public meal, but will need to get the check at the same time as an exit-strategy, as-it-were.
So on this occasion, for the first time, I order a cup of coffee and the check at the same time.
Abigail’s not thrown by the curveball, but does give me a hard time just because.
So we go back-and-forth a few times, and at one point I say in jest, “I’ll tell you what, how ‘bout you get my coffee and check right now, or else?”.
To which Abigail predictably replies, “how ‘bout you don’t get coffee *or* a check, cuz you gave me an ultimatum?”.
Instantly seeing the Old-Chuck-like opportunity to make a similar play on her use of the word, “ultimatum”, I say, acting as if I genuinely misunderstood what she said, “actually, an old tomato does sound good, I think I’ll have one”.
It took her a second, and the best double-take I’ve ever seen to realize I had duped her, and once again, the three of us erupted in laughter.
Fully accepting the loss of that particular battle, Abigail slowly retreated from the table, and from that moment on, the combination of a cup of coffee and the check, became known as an, “old tomato”.
So even though you won’t find them on the menu, thanks to Abigail, no matter which delectable dish or other delightful treats we may enjoy in between, all of our meals at the ever-fantastic Ma Mama’s Kitchen, begin with an, “Old Chuck”, and end with an, “Old Tomato”.
- BD
