I recently spent a week on Jekyll Island, Georgia with my buddy Pat. The condo complex we stayed in is right on the ocean. It wasn’t warm enough to swim, but it was sunny most days and plenty warm enough to walk the beach or sit outside and read.
There was a little restaurant within the complex called the Driftwood Bistro. We could easily walk to it, the food was good and reasonably priced, and as long as you ordered an entrée you could get a bottle of wine for $10. Needless to say, we ate most of our evening meals there. There was usually a 15 to 20 minute wait for a table, so we waited in the bar. If we got there before six, it was happy hour which meant $3.50 gin & tonics. What a happy little place.
One evening we went into the bar to wait and there was only one bar stool open, with men sitting on either side of the empty seat. Upon seeing us, the man to the right immediately jumped up and offered us his chair. The three of us chatted a bit with none of us sitting down, then another seat opened up so we officially bellied up to the bar: Pat, me and Jim.
Pat started chatting with the folks to her left, and I kept chatting with Jim. He was probably 40, a hippie throw-back with face stubble and a long ponytail streaked with grey. He was very friendly, absolutely non-threatening (like any good hippie), and a little bit goofy, maybe stoned (like any good hippie). He lived on the island and it was his night off from working in a different restaurant.
Our conversation was pleasant enough, but sometimes very disjointed. For example:
Jim: (after we'd talked about where I'm from): See her? (He points to a bartender) She lives down the street from Mary.
Me: Oh? Who's Mary?
Jim: (incredulous) You don't know Mary?
Me: Jim, I don't know ANYONE.
Jim: Oh yeah. Right.
Like I said, kind of rambling but not uninteresting. Anyway, at one point, Jim looked at me and said - and this is a direct quote:
“I'm not trying to pick you up or anything, ma'am, but do you want to go out and party?”
Oh Jim. Seriously? “Ma'am” and “do you want to go out and party” do not belong in the same sentence.
I politely declined and we continued to chat until Pat’s and my table was ready.
Maybe that was a bad decision. It could have been a vacation highlight.
By the way, our waitress that night was Mary. THE Mary. I mentioned meeting Jim in the bar and she said “Oh, you mean Jimmy? He’s what we call a local character.”
He’s been known to us as Jimmy the Local ever since.
