Tuesday, January 3, 2012.
All Head Home, Separately. Dinner In The Diner With A Chalmatian.
Down to the hotel's restaurant for fruit, juice, coffee, and breads, keeping quiet so the others could sleep. Mary Ann was the first and only one to join me. She is on the downward mood swing she feels when Jude is soon to depart her aura. He has been with us for twelve days--the longest visit in a couple of years. And as family vacations go, this one went perfectly by her standards. Lots of time spent together doing happy things.
Jude lived in Washington D.C. for three years, in a critical time of life--his last three years of high school. The place is nostalgic for him. He had a great time revisiting old haunts last night, but one more spot was on his list. Noodles & Co. is a chain of quick-service pasta restaurants where he and his friends used to gorge themselves. Pick your pasta, your sauce, your meat or veggies, your garnish, and they throw it together for you. The results span the range from Italian to Chinese to American. I had a bowl of Thai yellow curry with vegetables. Usual convenience-food problems: not much flavor, not quite hot enough. But the portion was big and the prices were low. And the 75%ers were happy.
That place is in a large mall with a Nordstrom's. MA would once again look for the boots she wants, but no dice. I remember this store as the site of an emotional moment between MA and me during the weeks right after Katrina. I also recall buying a big black coat from this store. I never need it in New Orleans, but I'm happy to have it here. While waiting for the girls to return, I watched the snow kick up again outside the store's front doors.
We ferried Jude to Dulles International, where he finagled a change from his original flight to Los Angeles with a stop in San Francisco to a nonstop. That got him home four hours earlier. Jude magic again. It's a wonder he didn't get upgraded to first.
The girls dropped me off a couple of hours early at Washington's grandiose, enormous Union Station. They hit the road for. . . well, they weren't quite sure where they would wind up to spend the night. Mary Ann would use her own magic in that regard.
I got my train ticket from one of the machines, then returned to the echoing main concourse, a classic from the golden age of train travel. A café's tables and chairs spread out from the center of the big floor. Not many people there. A food court deeper in the facility got most of the business.
I had a martini and an order of clams casino. It's a good dish, common in the Northeast, not often seen back in New Orleans. The shells and the clams in them are covered with a dry sauce bread crumbs, garlic, butter, herbs, and bacon. The flavor is in the direction of Italian oysters. I was surprised by how good these were.
When it got too dark to read in the concourse, I moved to the Metropolitan Lounge, where sleeping car passengers and those ticketed on the high-speed Acela trains may escape from the rabble.
I wrote for about an hour before we boarded the Crescent, which left on time at six-thirty. I settled into my roomette, tipped the attendant, gave a reservation for eight-thirty to the dining car manager when she came by, and stared out the window watching Alexandria, Manassas, and Culpeper go by. All of them had neat little stations.
In the diner, I sat across from a fellow countryman whose name also is Tom. He lives in Chalmette. We had a lot to talk about--most of it Katrina stuff.
Dinner was half a roast chicken with rice and green beans. Not brilliant, but good enough, with a glass of Virginia red wine. The salad--which on our trip to Chicago in August had been removed from the dinner deal—was back, and I'm happy it is. Pecan pie for dessert.
Back in the roomette, my computer played a few radio shows from the 1940s, but I only heard the first few minutes before falling into the deep sleep I always have in the sleeping car of a train. I awakened only once, very briefly, during the long stop in Charlotte. We were still right on time.
