You want to go where everybody knows your fame

A waitress approached me as I had lunch today while I was about mid-way through a delicious turkey and jack cheese sandwich called “The Pilgrim.” She asked me if I owned a Toyota Tacoma pickup. I answered “yes,” with some dread that it had been demolished by a hit-and-run driver as it sat in the parking lot of Goode’s Armadillo Palace on Kirby Drive in Houston.

I had eaten at the Armadillo Palace, a bar and grill filled with all kinds of dead animal heads (was that a stuffed pair of bear cubs on the wall? Ewww!) and other crapola, last week when I was last in town for a viscosupplementation injection in my allegedly arthritic knee at the DeBakey Veterans Affairs Hospital. I had to have what was my third and final shot this afternoon, this round at least. The Pilgrim is quite a delight as turkey sandwiches go. In addition to the mesquite-smoked turkey and the jack cheese, is what the menu says is ” … homegrown tomatoes with and baby spinach on a fresh baked wheat bread with chipotle mayonnaise.” I had the fries as a side last time this time I went with the potato chips which appeared to be some type made with cracked pepper and was quite spicy hot.

The waitress said I had parked in a space not meant for parking and was blocking someone’s way to get out. When I went to my truck, it appeared the driver seeking a mean’s of egress had figured out he could exit at the other end of the parking lot. I moved my truck, although there were clearly yellow stripes that had once marked where I had parked as a legitimate parking place. That is why I parked there in the first place.

As I moved my truck into “an approved” parking place a big black SUV with tinted windows pulled up in front of me followed by a black limo. Out of the SUV came a rather menacing man in a dark suit wearing one of those squiggly-wired earpiece radios of the type you see used by the Secret Service agents guarding the president. Having seen the battle tank-like Suburban with the monster bulletproof glass the former president used, I didn’t harbor any ideas that this was the president or even the first lady. Plus I think I saw both of them on TV this morning and they were in Washington or someplace other than Houston. I have seen our illustrious governor, Rick “Goodhair” Perry, in a similar-sized SUV with plainclothes Texas state troopers. However, when this driver opened the door of the utility vehicle and the other driver opened the limo doors, out came what was mostly a crew of seemingly college-aged men and women dressed in very casual attire. One or two of the guys and gals were dressed in Baltimore Ravens shirts and one young man even sported a Ravens jersey.

Now knowing that the Ravens were in Houston last night where they beat by a pick-six in overtime the Charlie Brown-like, hapless Texans, I figured this might be some of the Ravens players and their entourage. I don’t know because I sure didn’t recognize any of them. A couple of guys sitting near me and I talked about the crew that came in who in total seemed to be about a dozen.

“It must really suck to be famous and have no one know who the hell you are,” I remarked to one of the guys, figuring the bodyguarded bunch would probably have to be at least semi-famous to warrant such attention unless they were just incredibly narcissistic. The guy at the end of the bar agreed.

Speaking of narcissistic, as I got up to leave I noticed that a very attractive young lady sitting with the entourage was giving me the “eye.” I know this from my younger days when I got the eye, or perhaps, both of them, much more. The thing was, I couldn’t figure out why. I know I hadn’t spilled my iced tea onto my seat leaving my shorts wet at the butt. Or I hadn’t had a sign stuck on my back that said: “If you see this old man, please have him returned to his family.” So it beats me, but danged if I don’t remember what “the eye” looked like, so that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Having had my brush with fame for the day, I headed down Kirby for the Texas Medical Center and the DeBakey VA Hospital. Having gone to VA clinics and hospitals for more than a decade I can now say that the VA is a collection place for some pretty eccentric  characters. I use that terminology not wishing to cast any aspersions on my fellow veterans, plus I’m sure some of my fellow vets may have thought at some points  in my life that I was pretty weird myself. Perhaps some still do.

One has to be a little bent to tolerate what many feel is a repeat of military service’s “hurry up and wait” routine. But the VA goes beyond even the worse of what I ever experienced in the service in that respect. As is the case at every large VA hospital I have ever visited, parking is always a nightmare. That is still true at DeBakey even though they’ve added new lots and have valet parking, perhaps easing the bad dream at least a bit.

The surgery clinic I visited for the past three weeks — I suppose it’s called that because they either prep you or try to prevent you from having to go through surgery — was crowded. A white board listed each of the clinics with a time written beside it. For instance the injection clinic I came for had “11:00” written on on the board when I arrived meaning they were seeing 11 a.m. patients. This was at 1:30 p.m. It was during my wait here that I heard the best line of the day.

A doctor had come into the waiting room to call her next patient and greeted the man warmly. “How are you doing?” said the female doctor. “You look so great!”

“I’ve tried so hard not to,” the veteran said.

I finally got through and got my shot, which hurt more than the others I had. It also had swollen around the site, which concerned me a bit because the nurses had warned us to stay in the hospital for at least 30 minutes after receiving the shot in case we had a reaction “like falling out,” as one nurse said. No one said anything about that after I had my previous two injections in the past two weeks, so I suppose someone had recently had a reaction. I figured it would take me at least 30 minutes to walk to my truck, although even walking slowly and stopping to take some photos, it still took only 10 minutes or so.

Luckily, I didn’t pass out while driving back the 80  miles to Beaumont, which is a good thing since I had my brush with fame and had a chance to check out my fellow eccentrics (no I’m not rich, just being nice) at the VA.