Sometimes reality slams you in the face.

When I went to Lafayette College in the 1960s I longed to eat at the Black Bass Hotel in Lumberville, Pennsylvania. It’s in a gorgeous old building on the Delaware River, and I used to drive past it on my way to Philly. I never could afford to eat at the Black Bass but told myself I would some day when I was grown up and had money. Last week, I was visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Bucks County Pa., not far from Lumberville, and I treated them to dinner at the Black Bass. I thought it would be a dream come true.

We eagerly walked into the place, walked over to the hostess who was behind a desk.

“You can’t eat outside, she declared as an opening gambit.

This was a stunner as I didn’t know there was an outside. I also thought she might have said something radical like hello before telling us what we could not do.

“May I give you my name?” I said. I had, after all, made a reservation on OpenTable.

“You can’t sit outside,” she repeated.

I looked outside. I saw a beautiful deck overlooking the lazy wooded bucolic Delaware. My past flooded back to me.

“I have a reservation,” I said.

“Oh, I thought you were a walk-in,” she said.

Why did she think that? We all had showered. We were neatly dressed. How does a walk-in look?

She stared at her computer screen. She found my name where it was supposed to be.

“You can’t sit outside,” she said. “You reserved inside.”

I didn’t recall OpenTable giving me a choice between outside and inside.

“Can we sit at the window?” my sister asked.

“Oh, sure,” the hostess said, suddenly becoming polite. “Anyone with a reservation gets the window.”

Well, hallelujah.

The food was OK. The waitress was good. The view was the best.

I won’t be going back to the Black Bass. I’ve done the Black Bass. And I never got to sit outside.

 

 

 

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