Dinner at the Clarksville Beach

 

Tuesday is our Monday this week, which may mean that some of you will be rising, bleary-eyed, just in time to throw on some clothes and leave the house. I salute those who can spring from their beds, bright-eyed, no matter what the day. I was in the middle of a dream about a children’s birthday party which involved holding a scavenger hunt at the grocery.

When the alarm went off on my iPad I might as well have been on Mars.

Did you manage to get away for the holiday weekend? I did, in a way.

Sunday evening my family had a hankering to get out of the house and we all piled in the car and headed to Pepperjacks in Scaggsville. Visions of a root beer float danced in my head.

There’s something about the food and the atmosphere of Pepperjacks that makes you feel like you are eating out at the beach - - especially if you are sitting outside with a root beer float on a warm day. I haven’t been to the beach since the Before Times. I was up for a little first-class pretending. 

Alas, the sign at the door informed us that Pepperjacks is closed on Sundays. That hadn’t even occurred to us. (We should have checked before we left.)

Now what?

There was some discussion of Dairy Queen. We always visit the Dairy Queen in Lewes when we’re at the beach. But there’s no Dairy Queen in Howard County where you can eat outside (and pretend you are at the beach.) 

This was how we ended up at Clarksville Commons on Sunday night. The three of us split up at the entrance to seek sustenance and regrouped at a table outside with tacos, steamed dumplings, and a barbecued pork banh mi. Not an overstuffed American sub with a cup overflowing with fries. Not a root beer float. There was a mango lassi and a Fanta orange soda in a glass bottle, though.

It wasn’t at all what we had in mind and yet it was truly wonderful, nonetheless. The evening was mild. The food was good. We were surrounded by the visually interesting plaza at Clarksville Commons, ringed by public art and filled with a steady stream of subjects for benign people-watching. (Oh, please don’t let your kid climb that pole!)

We discussed the changes at Clarksville Commons and in the Common Kitchen itself. The Szechuan Chinese Restaurant is now a Thai restaurant. You Pizza is transforming into something else related called Genova. Koshary has moved to R. House in Baltimore, there’s a new stall: GuiGui’s Kreyol Flavors, which is Haitian food, and I don’t know what happened to Scoop and Paddle.

Oh no! Ice cream! 

There would be no ice cream to top off my dinner “at the beach.” I tried to put on a brave face. There would be other evenings. The world did not owe me ice cream for dessert.

It turns out that a Mochi Mochi donut made a perfectly good dessert for one of us, while my husband emerged with two frozen, fruity, creamy confections-on-a-stick: one melon, one mango. Again, not what I expected, and also: delicious.

We all have certain foods we associate with trips to the beach. A friend once told me that the only time her mother would buy Tasty Cakes was when they went to the Jersey Shore. My nephews recalled the joy of being able to buy Lucky Charms Cereal for the long car rides of family vacations - - a food otherwise shunned by health conscious parents. For me there’s the delicious memory of eating vacation food outside - - chili dogs, maybe, or pizza, fries, soft-serve ice cream…with the sound of the water not too far away and with the scent of the ocean, sun tan lotion, and caramel corn wafting through the air. 

More than anything, there’s a particular way that the air feels on your skin and a sense that everything is unwound and you have nothing that must be done, nothing that needs to be accomplished. Is it any wonder that I was out on a gently warm Sunday evening yearning to recreate that feeling?

Thank goodness we were all flexible enough to have that experience in a new way. And I learned that there’s another reason to appreciate Clarksville Commons and the Common Kitchen. All of those possibilities gave me the wiggle room to indulge in some imaginary travel.

I wonder if they could replace the parking lot with a pool with a wave machine?