Welcome! I'm Sara Ramsey, a novelist and former/future tech worker who recently moved back to rural Iowa. I write about the wild and weird magic of my rural life, as well as anything else that strikes my fancy. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please join me!
Hi friend,
I usually don’t send a newsletter on Sunday. But I missed my usual Thursday post because I had some mildly stressful (but mostly good) things happening (yes, there is stress even in #smalltownlife).
I’ve also been wanting to experiment with writing the occasional note about something I’ve seen — something that isn’t exactly a story, but that I want to show you anyway.
No guarantees that you’ll get more Sunday Snippets — but if you like this, please tell me that you want more of these vignettes!
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When my friend Veronica was here, I introduced her to my parents over steaks at the local tavern. It was supposed to be a meeting over prime rib — everyone knows Saturday is prime rib night — but there’d been a rush, and they were somehow out of prime rib, which was a tragedy.
The “local” tavern is actually in a town fifteen miles away. But it’s in my county, so it counts as local to me. The tavern is one of the last businesses left on that old town square. The town’s population was 2290 in 1910, when it was a coal mining town (yes, there was coal in Iowa). It’s 634 now, making it the second-largest town in the county.
The tavern is a single-story red metal building with two windows and a white door. It’s built like a lean-to, and it feels more like a farm shed than a restaurant. The roof slopes up to meet the middle of the old two-story brick building next to it; one of the tavern’s interior walls is the (formerly) exterior brick wall of that adjacent space.
Inside, the tavern has a ribbed metal ceiling, vinyl floors, and wood panelling halfway up the walls. Above the paneling, there’s a mix of decor — neon beer signs, paintings, mounted deer heads. The tables are formica-topped, either round or rectangle. The black metal chairs have padded vinyl seats and backs.
It’s often hazy with kitchen smoke. Conversations echo against the metal ceiling and paneled walls. It’s poorly insulated and always too hot or too cold.
But it’s one of only two “steakhouses” within twenty miles of my house, so it counts as local fine dining.
It’s way more freewheeling than dinners in the city. People join each other’s tables, or conversations, like it’s a potluck instead of a paid meal. I said hi to an old high school friend on the way in; his mom used to be the bank teller, and she hugged my mom as they passed each other.
After we sat down, the guy at the table next to us said he’d seen in the newspaper that I’d moved back. He asked me about my move, where I’d been, and what I was doing now. We talked about the mural festival I’m working on (more on that in a future post). I had no idea who he was, but I was able to fake it until I could ask my parents for his name after we left. It turns out my dad gave him a speeding ticket thirty-five years ago, which may be why he talked to me instead of my dad, but who knows?
The waitress brought our appetizers — the truly excellent onion rings my dad ordered, plus the free loaf of bread and the little complimentary ‘relish plate’ with four baby carrots, two dill pickle spears, and two small containers of ham salad. She erased the white board of the night’s specials, since they were out of everything. We ordered ribeyes off the single-sheet laminated menu.
I grabbed my salad from the salad bar — iceberg lettuce, bacon bits, cherry tomatoes, thousand island dressing, and cottage cheese. I skipped the chocolate pudding and the macaroni salad. As I walked back, someone pulled up a chair to talk to my dad. It was one of the Amish guys who built my parents’ house. He was a teenager when he worked on our house, but now he has five or six kids. He and my dad exchanged gossip about construction and other local happenings.
Our steaks came. We regaled Veronica with local stories. Another guy I’d never seen said hi to my dad as he walked past us toward the salad bar. He had an incredible amount of back and chest hair under his stretched-out tank top. When he clapped my dad’s shoulder with a quick hello, the dirt under his nails made me glad I’d gone to the salad bar before him.
My dad paid in cash, sneaking it under Veronica’s nose before she knew what was happening, much to her chagrin. Prices have gone up here like they have everywhere, but it was still less than $100 for the four of us before the tip.
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When I’ve gone to cities recently, I’ve often found myself disappointed by the meals. Are my hopes and expectations too high? Or are the experiences just never as good as what Instagram and Yelp would make you believe they should be?
My expectations when I go to the tavern are, at this point, well-calibrated. It’s something I do to get out of cooking, not to try something new. Sometimes it’s excellent. Sometimes the owner is too busy and overcooks your steak, or you get unlucky with a tougher cut of meat. But it just…is what it is. It’s not seasonal or artisanal. It’s a steak on a plate, with a potato of your choice, and an old-school plastic restaurant glass filled with iced tea.
Sometimes I’d love to have a poke bowl, or burrata with a perfect drizzle of olive oil, or a seasonal cocktail at the latest buzzy bar. And sometimes, frankly, I’d like the anonymity of eating without a rotating cast of characters passing through the meal.
But sometimes it’s nice to have zero expectations and a lot of people who know your name.
Cheers,
Sara
More, please.