The familiarity was killing me. This certainly had to have been a street I had driven down before. There was the Publix where I had been to buy gum. There was the Hops where I ordered the Salmon. There was the street name I had never seen before. No, I hadn’t been here before, but yet so many places had such familiarity. Even stepping out into the warm, damp air, I can feel a sense of home in my bones. This was a street I had never driven down, yet this was a city, although three hours away, had all the comforts of my first, and longest-to-date, home.
Only knowing one BBQ places in the whole city, outside of carbon copied BBQ that can only be found at the happiest place on earth, my friend brian chose a new BBQ place for me. Seeing that I am a rather husky guy, he had to have known my affection for the food. As we drove past all these florida stores that strangled me with deja vu, we arrived at the little stand, limited parking, with a red and white plaid overhang. This must be the joint. The air was thick with warmed brown sugar, tomotoes, and smoke, but the smoke that can only bring comfort instead of coughs. The menu was stardard: various meat options, on bread or not, with the staple sides of slaw or baked beans. The letters were arranged on the type of board that old roller skating rinks have to give their prices of rentals, where letters that ran out were replaced with similar looking letters, such as a captial “I” for a lowecase “l”. “Pork sandwich please, with a sweet tea.” Sweet tea in Orlando is a precious commodity. Once seated at my indoor picnic table, my sauce options included the mild, sweet, hot, and the one that I was to prideful not to try, the “Killer.” Well, to my suprise, the killer was quite hot, been mixed with an equal portion of the sweet sauce, “magnifique!”
After gorging ourselves, the initial inclination was not a direct path home. I had recalled my friends inkling to play skeeball, a much underrated game today in the world of Madden and Halo. Having already satisfied my pride, we made our way to a favorite childhood hangout before we even knew what a hangout was, chuck e. cheese’s. We recognized the strangeness of two grown men walking into the place and playing games, but if i was ever an employee in an establishment like that, guys like us would brighten up a full day of dealing with children. Anyone know why Chuck E Cheese closes at 10? What kid is up that late? We found the skee ball, though only 1/2 the size of “regulation” skeeball, and proceed to win ourselves some tickets for the fabulous prizes of plastic heart rings and colored pencils for small ticket numbers all the way up to clock radios and football shaped telephones for thousands of tickets. We played out hearts out on the skeeball, even employing basketball techniques of just shooting it at the upper corners for the 1000 point slots. We also journeyed around and played the child games that somehow give you amazing amounts of tickets for doing little to nothing. One game involved catching floating ping-pong balls in a basket and putting them into a jar. Ironically, one of the most difficult games in the place. The real kick to the evening came at the moment we resolved to cash in our tickets for our hard earned prize. We came to the conclusion that combining our tickets would allow us to trade for something better, an amazing thought for two college grads. Our ticket total came out to be a little over 200. Upon arrival at the fingerprint smudged glass case, I was annitially struck with the high ticket prices. The prizes started at 50, then went to 100, then to 250. We certainly did not want any of the 100 ticket prizes with our 200+ tickets, nor two of those prizes. Being the cheap bastards we were, we asked the wonderful teenage employee if we could possibly strike a deal for a 250 ticket prize. We had our eye on the Sidewalk Chalk, and we wanted it! She shyly giggled and asked us not to tell any of the other kids. Our initially response was to grab the chalk, run over, and say, “Hey kids, you wouldn’t believe this. The lady of the is giving out stuff for free. You don’t even need all your tickets! Go now!” We politely thanked her for making such a deal with us. Somehow we give her worthless pieces of paper in exchange for the precious sidewalk chalk. Sucker! Proud of our new gain, we drove home, with ideas of grandeur of the many masterpieces, our sidewalk Sistine Chapels, that we were going to make with our chalk. One day… one day.
