Monday. La Crosse.
This morning we got up all dry-throated from the hot room and cut up fruit for breakfast. The weather was very foggy and gray out, but still fairly warm. As we loaded up the car it was raining lightly. I went through a whole roll of film trying to get the perfect shot of China House next to Dairy Queen, and then we left town, driving through more rolling farmland in the dreamy mist.
We crossed into the next county and stopped at the ubiquitous Frozen Custard ButterBurger franchise to ask for directions to the Chinese restaurant. Of course they were very helpful in this latest installment of “Help the poor little lost Chinese girls find the Chinese restaurant” which is a board game concept we’ve developed. We followed their kindly directions up to the Great Wall, which like some other Great Walls involved a long horizontal building necessitating Irene’s wide-angle lens. These things always crack me up. We actually ate there. It was a modest-sized buffet with pretty high turnover; they kept coming out with a small saucepan and dumping more food in. I was kind of impressed that they were making it in such small quantities, like a regular serving amount, instead of big vats. Irene decided to get one of everything, which was certainly her undoing because she didn’t feel great all the rest of the day. I was more cautious, but included crab rangoon and the eternal General Tso’s Chicken along with my decent broccoli, noodles, &c.
Dig in, Irene!
The crab rangoons were sweet! They reminded me more of a cheese danish than anything else. So freakin weird. Or maybe a wannabe blintz. And then people dip it in that syrupy red sauce? Bleah! Anyway, after eating we talked to the manager, a sweet-faced young guy who had the most remarkable nose hairs I’ve ever seen. They were long, luxurious, thick and black and they stuck way out of his nose! Both Irene and I had a hard time trying not to look at his nosehairs while talking to him. He was very nice and told us about how his whole family all owns restaurants, about fifteen of them including a few in Virginia and the rest all around here. He gave us a discount on our lunches for being Chinese. When I came out of the bathroom Irene was talking to him again. In the car she told me that he had asked what she does and when she said she is a teacher he said he wished he could have a job like that. She said it was heartbreaking, how he said that with such sincerity and no malice or resentment or anything. We talked about how lucky we are and have no right to complain about anything in our lives.
In Onalaska we optimistically went into the Hong Kong Buffet all ready to speak Cantonese, only to find that, just like most places on this trip, nobody there speaks it. Irene was indignant: “Why do they name it Hong Kong then?!” Eventually someone who spoke some English translated for us and they let us photograph. They had decorated the place with those old-school pre-fab bows that you stick on top of presents; they were stuck all along the borders of walls and things. They had sushi there and we were mystified because we thought they must be getting it flown in or something. Irene saw the manager sitting down to eat with a plate from the buffet: half of it was watermelon, and the other half was plain white rice. That kinda says a lot.
I couldn’t make this stuff up.