Well, recently I sort of trashed Facebook (maybe deservedly
so), but in all fairness (as I always am) I have to give some credit to a useful
feature. There are more and more
restaurants and chefs that have pages on FB, so I am attracted to those. So, mostly I scroll past all the pictures of kittens,
dogs, grandchildren, selfies, cartoons of the crabby old women to get to the food related postings. I don’t really mind people posting their favorite shots of pets and kids, I just don’t look at them. Anyway,
I had a very interesting experience yesterday through FB.
There is a page or group called “You know you’re from St.
Mary’s County if….” People use it to post a lot of historical pictures of
buildings, stores, houses, and county inhabitants.
People seem to have a lot of fun responding with comments like “I had my
first job there!” or “that's where i met my husbad..”. Not long ago there was a
thread about the first (?) local fast food place, I believe a Hardee’s. So, it's kind of an interesting page.
Well. yesterday or the day before somebody posted a photo taken
from the bridge of the farm on the Calvert side of the Solomon’s Bridge. I don’t really know the demographic of the
folks who follow that page, but a few people had no idea where it was. Quite far down the list of comments was a
posting that said “saw it every day as I went to work at the Dry Dock”. Huh? Dry Dock? Did not recognize the name of
the lady but boldly sent her a PM asking about it, which resulted in some great exchanges, and found out she was one of the first chefs to work there in
the early 80’s. How neat was that? So an innocent Facebook posting of a farm,
got me in a conversation with somebody in Florida who chefed at the (original
location) Dry Dock. Social Media works some good..
Back before MFO
joined me out here, my normal Saturday night routine was to get home from work
(we mostly worked six ten hour days back then on the Super Hornet flight test
program), change clothes (DFD before I knew it!) and go over to the Dry Dock
for some good food and company. Over the
ensuing years I got to know most of the staff, at least in the front of the
house. When the Dry Dock “moved” over to
the newer (present) location, some of the same folks went, but over the years
they have drifted away for the most part.
Most of the Chefs have stayed in the area, although they may be in
different kitchens or catering operations. The current chef, Ben has been there
quite a while.
Through one of the friendships we have maintained, MFO and I were invited to a “reunion”
of the Dry Dock people last night over on the Solomons, and we stopped in
for a while. What a treat it was to see people we haven’t seen for many years, and what was really nice was that they
were all delighted to see each other again.
There was a real sense of family.
Restaurant employees seem to form bonds that way. I
would suspect (and bet a fair amount of money) you won’t see love like that
from Olive Garden.. we then moved over
to the… duh…. Dry Dock and had a very nice dinner from Ben, who of course
couldn’t attend the party because he was doing what he loves, cook. Nice.
The Dry Dock remains one of the nicer places to get a good meal, but I also have high hopes for the recently opened Elements.
Brackets, again.
Well, having just watched the Connecticut women destroy
Texas (105 to 54), I was going to launch into a rant about the uneven quality
of women’s basketball. But then, I recalled
that Kentucky (men) laid a similar rout on West Virginia, perhaps spurred on by
some rather unthinking comments from a Mountaineer freshman. I am looking forward to seeing my Spartans go
up against Louisville tonight. Of course
my bracket is destroyed, especially because I tried to go with my head and took
Virginia over MSU. Being punished, but I
don’t mind..
One thing I can
almost rant about (besides Bill Raftery) without fear is the “media” roles in the
basketball games. I suppose the NCAA
agreed to and mandated it, but it really makes me mad when some “side line
reporter” (almost invariably a woman) sticks a microphone in a coach’s face trying
to get his team into the half time locker room and comes up with penetrating
questions like: “how are you going to be able to stop making turnovers”; or “what
was going through your mind when you saw dunk over your big man”. Two questions, and both pull away. I must say the coaches seem to go along with
it, but I keep hoping somebody like Bob Huggins would say “that’s a stupid
question” and walk away. Probably would
get fined.
Today I actually saw Holly Rowe talk to a coach DURING the
game. What the heck…? Shut up and sit down, Holly…
Okay, enough.
Staying in tonight, but will be pretty much
DFD
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