The Wabasso Triangle
Carmichael Hoagies
Anthony Chianti, Licensed Private Eye and Indian River Community Pasta Detective, reporting:
It was another mundane Monday, and by late afternoon that was it, I’d had enough. My preliminary inspection of the new Italian in Vero was so depressing that I called in the Serious Pasta Crimes Squad and let them do the cleaning up. Even so, it wasted a whole day. This restaurant was another one of those dreadful cookie-cutter franchises – no local color, no passion for food and soggy pasta. Whatever happened to the good old days of the Mom and Pop corner café?
This whole pasta detective business is starting to get me down – I’ve seen nothing but noodle abuse for years. It feels like I’ve been married to pasta for way too long and it’s high time for the big D or at least a little diversion. Maybe even time for a mind meld with an apple fritter.
I fired up the faithful Buick Testudo, wound down the windows and struck out north for some edible elucidation. There was no point in going home as the cockroaches were dying of starvation, and me too. Fortunately, there on the corner was a convenience store – I remember grabbing a few things, and then going for a walk on the beach to clear my head and try to find the answer to life’s important questions. Questions like: who was the platinum blonde during Paul Gonsalves’ set at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival? That, plus I was stuck on 17 Down: ’First Lady?’ – but it was only three spaces, so Laura Bush wasn’t going to fit.
And that was about it, until the next morning when I woke up on the beach with an empty bottle in my hand. I stared at the label, which wandered in and out of focus, and, yes, it was a bottle of the ’87. That’s right, 1987, the year that the dry summer and early frost devastated the vineyards of the lower Rhine, destroying the entire crop of Trockenbeerenauslesen. And it obviously didn’t do much for 20/20 either, although it is much easier to spell.
At least I had an apple fritter left, I noticed as I blinked in the bright light. It was probably just an early morning mist, but the fog seemed to be getting worse. Something was wrong somewhere, and for once it wasn’t Detective Inspector “Raving” Ravioli of the Serious Pasta Crimes Squad getting all bent out of shape at the wrong time of the month.
Ahead, there were strange sounds in the surf. I tried to focus, peering into the fog, the objective observer squinting until I felt like Owen Barfield’s ‘Camera Man’. Except, in my case, I’d left the lens cap on.
I sat up and brushed off the sand. Didn’t Kierkegaard say something about beaches? Or maybe that was Einstein. Or Bette Midler. Who cares, my head hurt – hardly a surprise after an intimate night with a pint of paint stripper.
“Hulloo der!” said a broad Irish accent. A tall man stepped out of the surf, “Sure, and if it isn’t himself, Bejaysus. Lookee, lads, look who’s beaten us here to Mericky, it be none other than Christopher Columbus himself and he be getting here before us.”
A dozen strangely-dressed and heavily-armed men stepped out of a large wooden rowing boat and strode up the beach. With all those knives it looked like a dress rehearsal for Sabatier Meets The Pirates of Penzance. That, or the monthly outing from an institution, so I hid the crossword.
“Oi be Captain O’Polo, Mark O’Polo of the good ship Dublin Up.” He shook my hand with a grimy paw, “Lookee here, lads, it be the man himself: Christopher Columbus, meet our able Bosun, Jerry “Rigged” O’Springer.”
Jerry’s hand was, if it was possible, even dirtier, and he struck me as hardly officer material, but what really caught my attention was his nose – a broken Romanesque monster that brought a whole new meaning to the term ‘racial profiling’. And if he didn’t channel Hulk Hogan for a ladies’ spiritualist circle he was missing a great opportunity.
After being introduced to the entire crew it was too late to do anything about the Captain’s little misapprehension. Then, my years of experience as a Community Pasta Detective kicked in and I had a hunch: Judging by the lack of oral hygiene, pre K-Mart clothes and the medieval speech impediment, I had been catapulted into non-Euclidian space-time, and without my apple fritter. I should be home polishing the aspidistra by now, but it looks as if I’m AWOL in the Middle Ages and the Wabasso Triangle has struck again!
As the psychically gifted already know, the Wabasso Triangle is a magnetic anomaly so intense that during every washload one sock is transported through a wormhole in space. As there’s always one sock left over, you can never tell if one went missing or an extra one came in. That’s just one of the many unsolved mysteries that abound in the mysterious area we know as The Wabasso Triangle.
“See, and we’re none of us being Pirates, to be sure, are we lads?” Mark O’Polo looked around and they all moved their heads, some nodding and some shaking: “Aye, it’s that we’re not.”
“So, yer see, as we’re, like, honest explorers, just like yerself, does ‘ee think ye could be finding a way to be telling us whereabouts be the lost treasure of the Wabasso natives – the Seminole mine? Or, as some folk calls it, the Semolina mine? “
Seminoles? Semolina? Things started to make sense – a minor etymological corruption, one of those little dyslexic verbal typos a few hundred years ago…
“Sure, and it be that way,” I said, pointing south down the beach, “…about five miles as the crow be flying.”
“Tank ‘ee, tank ‘ee...” They ran, laughing, through the surf to their skiff and clambered in. I breathed a sigh of relief – that was pretty scary, but I knew they’d be going back. Schooner or later. The last two pushed off, and, when they were a few yards from shore, the fog cleared and, suddenly, they were gone.
I looked around – Ruddy Turnstones were busy in the surf, their little clockwork legs working overtime under a perfect Florida sky of powder-blue suede. It was beautiful and timeless, and, as if to complement the perfection of this tropical paradise, there on the sand was the screwed-up paper bag with my apple fritter.
Never mind the lost treasure, the Semolina tribe and one miserable apple fritter, I’d had quite enough of the Good Old Days – what about breakfast?
I fired up the trusty Testudo and turned north, but, hang on, there on the corner was a new diner – Carmichael Hoagies – they’d franchised my neighborhood Mom and Pop eatery from up North. This was more like it! After all those adventures I was starving. And no wonder – I hadn’t eaten since 1622.
I practically ran inside, found a seat and looked around – it was decorated with pictures from my favorite old TV shows, I Love Lucy, Bilko, and they even had Teenage Mutant Ninja Rabbis. In the corner sat a jukebox belting out old Klesmer favorites: ‘I got you, Abe…’.
I poured over the menu, which had hardly changed in all these years. They still had the Aloha Oy Hawaiian Bagel – matzorella, salt beef and pineapple – my childhood favorite. The waitress slowly wandered over, positively oozing New York hospitality:
“Do you think it’s fun being a waitress?” she glared at me, “Do you care, already? Do you even remotely know what bussing tables is all about?”
“Sure,” I replied, “ …it’s when they pick up all the black tables and take them to exclusive restaurants with white tables in other parts of town…”
I landed headfirst. I’ve never tasted paydirt, but if it’s anything like Carmichael Hoagies’ parking lot, then I’m not interested. Yesterday’s apple fritter was starting to sound like a good idea. I brushed the dust off me and the sand off the apple fritter, stuffing my face as I headed home.
Well, amazing but true, and it can only have happened here. That’s about it for this month’s little update from the Wabasso Triangle.
Anthony Chianti, Indian River Community Pasta Detective, signing off.
© 2002 Pastarology