What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?
My latest random conversation was with Lindsay and Adam, over breakfast on Sunday morning. At this time of year, it is still around 80F at breakfast time, and so I’d chosen to sit outside what is St. Peterburg’s closest approximation to a classic Mid-Atlantic diner. Lindsay and Adam were seated about 5 minutes after me, and as usual, Wolfie was the spark that triggered us to start talking.
At some point, I mentioned that we’d traveled down from Delaware in my bright red campervan (Robert’s Red Ford – thank you, Lisa!). It turned out that Adam had used to live in Wilmington with his ex-wife, and when I told him that I lived in the city, he got more specific and said that he’d lived in Trolley Square. When I told him that I lived in the neighborhood between Trolley Square and the city (Happy Valley), he looked at me a little quizzically, and said that is where his ex-wife lives now. “You might know her”, he said. After the briefest of pauses, he added “she’s a bit of a cat lady”. I started to rack my brain, and asked “how many cats does she have?” His all too quick response was “none… now that they’ve all died”, and there was an element of bitterness that spoke to unresolved pain and bitterness. “She’s called Natalie”, he added, and again, I felt that there was more that he was only too eager to tell me.
I thought about my own relationship with my ex-wife, who I still think of as family, and the following chorus from Nick Lowe popped into my head… “what’s so funny ‘bout peace, love, and understanding?” I felt sorry for Adam, and seeing her response to his words (she seemed all too familiar with the fact that he still had issues), I felt sorry for Lindsay, too.
They were an interesting couple. Both were relatively recent transplants to St. Petersburg, and while she seemed to have fully embraced all the opportunities that a booming city can provide, he seemed hung up on what it didn’t provide, or what was inferior to the Northeast. A great example was when I asked them about other restaurants that I should try. When she started to tell me about a place near the USF campus, he cut her off, and went into a vent about how crazy it was that a simple egg breakfast sandwich could cost $14. Clearly, this was not their first rodeo, and with practiced timing, she immediately responded that the sandwich was $11, not $14, and then, in what was almost a conspiratorial aside to me, she whispered “it really is a good sandwich”.
In addition to missing diners, and finding egg sandwiches too pricey, Adam also shared his concerns about the price of coffee (“who wants to pay six bucks for a coffee?”), and how adding alcoholic beverages to an all-night diner’s menu, both brings down the quality, and brings in the wrong sort of clientele. I told him that there seemed to be a Wilmington connection, as the woman who cut my hair and trimmed my beard had also lived in Troilley Square. When I told him the name of the salon, he said that was where he went too, and he seemed to be disgruntled, at what he thought to be their excessively high price. I was temped to point out that it did come with complimentary access to their well-stocked beer fridge, but I thought better of it.
They told me how they’d been happily renting for a number of years, but that their condo had been sold from underneath them. They’d now bought a place of their own, “at a price that they couldn’t afford not to, but that they couldn’t afford to”, pausing before adding “if you know what I mean?”. I nodded that I did, but I didn’t really.