There’s not much to do in St. George at 7:30 on a Friday Night. Being one of the largest towns in Dorchester County doesn’t really help. After finding a place to stay, I went in search of food. My choices seemed to be either fast food, Italian, or Grady’s Country Cafe. Then there was Skynyrd’s.
Skynyrd’s worried me at first because it had such a high PTF (Pickup Truck Factor.) Since I myself was in a truck, I figured I’d be OK. However, my little Toyota still didn’t seem to fit in with all of the other huge rigs.
The fact that the front plate on the truck next to mine read, “If you value your life as much as I value this truck, you won’t mess with it” was not reassuring. But, hey, driving a truck, even if it’s just a little one, gives me at least a bit of confidence.
Inside everyone seemed to know everyone else. There were at least three plasma TVs showing NASCAR in high definition. The smaller ones were relegated to golf and baseball. The sounds of Jimmy Buffett wafted overhead, and it looked like a band was getting set up for a later performance.
I wasn’t sure that ordering a martini instead of a beer was a safe thing to do in a place like this. But, hey, I was driving a truck. I guess that rather than giving me confidence it should have steered me toward the beer, but it didn’t. The did a passable job on the martini, and scored extra points by loading it up with more olives. I think the olive-to-gin ratio was high enough to negate any effects from the booze – more like an olive salad with a bit of marinade. That was fine with me.
I ordered jalapeno poppers to start, and a mushroom swiss burger for the main course. The poppers were just as good as one would expect from a frozen food service product. Fine, but not spectacular. The burger with home-made fries, on the other hand, was excellent. By this time I had switched to diet Coke, drawing another glare from my waitress.
A large birthday party was forming up right next to me. These folks said hello to all of the wait staff, and it was clear they were regulars. The place actually seemed quite friendly, and the strains of the Coral Reefers gave way to Jackson Brown and Van Morrison. Can’t fault the music there. It looked like this was indeed the place for late 20, early 30+ year olds to hang out in St. George, and these people seemed to be having fun doing just that.
The waitress said that the band would start at 9:00. By this time, Skynyrd’s had me swayed toward actually liking the place. The thought of staying was tempting, but I had an early morning date with the Edisto river.