As you recall, it is...Noon-thirty.

I stand there baking in the hot sun, sweat dripping down my neck. Delivery trucks roar by as I wait for my mark. A lively joe blows past, a porkpie hat sliding off the back of his pate--not him. I'm watching a dame sashe up the bricks toward the jail, and I feel that feeling. Hairs standing up on my neck, sorta cold like when Sam the barber splashes me with witch hazel. I ease my eyes around, and there's a big jamoke standing there. Tall, six-footer. Hair that used to be brown. I says to him, "Hey mack, you oughtn't sneak up on a fish like that--you wouldn't happen to be Anderson, would you?" "Yeah, I'm Anderson. And you...?" "Yeah, it's me. Come on."

I pushed open the heavy door and we walked into the cool air of the museum. The taps on my heels echoed off the hoity-toity marble walls, "Art-shmart, eh?" I motioned toward the junk on the wall. He kept his pipe shut.

Lunch With Larry!

What a fun time! Larry Anderson, famous Kudzu Patch dweller and boon companion to William J. Roberts, had driven down to B'ham today to attend some SBA meetings over at the Sheraton. Obviously, any of you who come to town must have lunch with me, but since Larry and I have never laid eyes on each other, we were forced to devise an elaborate, 1930s film-noir role-playing game in order to identify each other. Everything went fine until he cracked my skull open with a blackjack...

I got to the museum at exactly 12:29 (1229 for you military sorts) and stood there with my very loud Mondrian-inspired tie waiting for him to show up. Unbeknownst to me, I was late. Oops. I happened to look through the doors to the lobby and saw some guy motioning with his hands--I walked in, "Are you Terry?" I am, and according to his name badge, he was Larry. Tall, distinguished-looking fellow, and both exactly- and nothing like I had pictured him.

"I'm sorry, Larry, I thought you were going to meet me up front, but you must have come through the back!" "No, actually I've been here waiting for you--I was out front earlier, but didn't see you." ::blush:: Again, oops.

We were seated at a table by the big window and both of us got the Thursday special, crab cake on a bed of mixed bitter weeds. Which was awfully pricey, but pretty good. Not the best crab cake in the world, but I wasn't there for the cholesterol and carbs, I was there to blabber with Larry.

I think we covered it all--work, bureaucracies, pointless meetings, growing up, reading, writing, rocket science, Cletus, dealing with Uncle Sugar, dangerous things to do with chemicals, stupid people, riding the Iron Butt, good employers, bad employers, blogging, newspaper reporters (actually a subset of the stupid people part of the conversation), children, barbecue, wives, baby eclectus parrots, our new book publishing venture (Boll Weevil Press--we are looking for Other People's Money™ right now, but in the mean time, we have each advanced the other five genuine dollars against future sales). You know, the stuff everyone talks about.

OH, and Road & Track magazines!! Larry brought a stack with him, and again I was embarrassed; this time because I had nothing to give him in return. So while he wasn't looking, I slipped a set of silverware and an ashtray off the table into his briefcase. It's not much, but it's all I had.

It got time to go, so we went to the cashier, where we were charged an astronomical pile of money for our lunch. We paid, turned, and started walking away, and with no small amount of pain I mentioned that I had never eaten such expensive crabmeat (especially considering all the other entrees on the menu were about half the price of what we were charged). Larry, who is my hero, thought it was a mite too much too, and bravely taking charge, went back looking for an explanation. We got to the cashier and she was already shaking her head in self-loathing, realizing she had made a mistake adding up our bill on her handheld calculator. She apologized profusely and gave us back a 25% rebate. That made it better, but that was still one expensive hunk of crustacean and undergrowth.

I thought Larry might get to come back and explore the ever-so-lovely Possumblog Work Environment, but he had other things to go do, so we had to make do with a quicky point-to-the-landmark exercise--"...that's Linn Park, that's the Courthouse, that's City Hall, that's the jail, that's Boutwell Auditorium..." Couple of more handshakes, and it was time to get back to work.

That Larry is a pretty good guy.
posted by Terry at 12:25:00 PM