Dinner at the Fishmarket Restaurant

It is Saturday 12/18, the last weekend before Christmas and my yard is calling me. After a morning shift and taking care of mom, I scurry, not the shopping mall, but to home and my yard. Karen hears me come in and I am shedding clothes as I go through the hall to the bedroom. "Whatz Up?", was the call from the living room. The yard, the yard, gotta go!

Whew! 2 1/2 hours of raking, cleaning under shrubbery, blowing down the yard and 5 trips to my compost pile with leaves galore. But the trees are now bare and this is that finally pickup, or hopefully so, before the cold, rain and possibly snow sets in for winter fast approaching.

I am tired, looking forward to that hot shower and relaxing in my recliner. Karen opens the back door onto the deck as I am finishing up. "Francis just called and invited us to join them at the Fishmarket Restaurant for supper (southern for dinner). And I told her YES before I asked you, are you OK with this". I am an ex-jogger and have that high gear most folks don't have and I sprint through my shower and soon into gray slacks, a blue gray long sleeve sweater, black shoes, and gray herringbone sports jacket. Karen said "Where did that burst of energy come from?"

5:30pm, we get to the restaurant just as our friends arrive, Francis and Herb, Ted and JoAnne, and Karen and me. We have a great meal together and Ted said grace. The food was great, snapper grilled cajun style, salmon, trout, and flounder. I think the 6 of us all got different dishes. We talked and laughed and told winter stories of power outages, ice storms, closed interstates, and home without heat. Funny now, but the storms of '83 and '93 were no jokes. A good evening of commardary. JoAnne and Ted invited us to their home for coffee and we all sat in their new addition to the back of their home, a deck with double glass panes reaching from the floor to the ceiling. New furniture and a 37" hi definition Sony TV that looks like a theater screen. We sat and talked and laughed until almost 8:30pm but we all go to SS and Church Sunday so it soon goodbye.

PS. Ted said when Francis called, JoAnne was lying on the sofa complaining about the pain in her legs and back after they had worked the yard. When Ted told her about the invitation to dinner, she bounded off that sofa and showered and dressed in no time. He told that story at dinner with us and I sure would like to be a fly on the wall after all of us left....Poor Ted.

 Evan Jones

Dear Jeff,
You have a real talent for holding the zinger until the last line. What a delightful story. We wake up every day wondering what you've written.