Garnet Took this is for you...

[dreamflower]

garnet_took posted this very cute little ficlet The Road Trip
for slightlytookish, and in my comments I made reference back to a very fun story grey_wonderer wrote back in the summer of 2005--The Pepsi Saga. I thought that GW had taken down "The Pepsi Saga", but it's still there in my Memories! Anyway, Garnet thought she'd like to see the one little chapter I'd written for it, so here it is, reposted.

All of this was written *before* Hurricane Katrina, when we still lived in Mississippi. Barnhill's is the name of a popular "all-you-can-eat-buffet" franchise in the US Deep South. Marigold is marigoldg and Nina is coneygoil James is my DH. The hobbits are...the hobbits. If you haven't read "The Pepsi Saga", they came to pay us a visit, under very complicated circumstances...

NIGHT OUT AT BARNHILL’S


James goes to take the dogs out through the back door, while Marigold, Nina and I settle the hobbits in the living room. After a bit of discussion, Marigold and I decide that watching themselves relive the Quest might be too traumatic for them--not to mention causing them outrage at the deviations from the true course of events--and so instead, we put Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the DVD player.

The lads have all settled themselves on the floor to watch the TV, amazed at this unusual way of having a story told, and Nina and Marigold sit on the couch watching their reactions in amusement.

I have other concerns on my mind.

I hear James bring the dogs back in and put them up; he comes into the living room, and his eyes twinkle at the sight of the hobbits watching television. I gesture to him that I wish to speak with him privately, and we go back to our room.

As we walk down the hallway, I hear Pippin saying incredulously “How can his cousin treat him like that? That’s just not right! Merry, you’d never act like that--that’s as bad as Lotho…”

I shut the door apprehensively.

“What’s the matter?” he asks. “Is something wrong?”

“I am wondering what we are going to do about supper,” I say. “There’s not much left in the house to eat. I did not get to the grocery store today after all, and the hobbits--”

“Were being hobbits,” he finishes. “I think we should probably go out for supper tonight.”

I wince. “I don’t know how we are going to do that. After paying for the pizzas at lunch, we don’t have any cash left in the house. I’m sorry, hon,” I add, for I know this visit has put a big hole in our budget.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “It’s not like you planned it.”

“That’s true,” I say. This has been a very strange day, and one I could never have planned myself. I find myself feeling as though I have been picked up by someone and plunked down in the middle of a story.

“Anyway, I would say this constitutes an emergency.” He takes out the little square of plastic, that we have vowed to use only in dire circumstances, and I nod in agreement. Feeding hobbits is definitely an emergency.

We have a brief discussion on *where* we should go, and settle on a local buffet as the most practical and economical place. We head back down to the living room.

“A school for wizards!” I hear Sam saying “I never heard tell of such a thing. Do you think Mr. Gandalf had to go to school to be a wizard?”

Merry snorts skeptically. “I can’t imagine Gandalf ever being a lad!” he says.

“I think,” says Frodo “that these must be altogether different sorts of wizards than Gandalf.”

James picks up the remote, and puts the DVD on pause. Four heads snap around, and Pippin starts to protest, until he mentions the magic word “supper”.

“We are going to an eating place to have supper,” my husband says, “so we need to get started.”

The hobbits get even more excited when they realize that we will be driving, especially Pippin. “Oh, I say! That sounds splendid! Do you suppose *I* could run the cart--er--I mean ‘car‘?”

My husband looks at me in alarm, but Marigold thinks quickly. “No, Pippin,” she says. “There are special laws about who can drive. You must take a test and have a special license before you can do that.”

“Oh,” he sounds so disappointed.

Nina borrows the phone to call her father and tells him that it will be very late before she is ready to go home.

Since there are eight of us, we decide to take both the vehicles. James would drive his Explorer, with Nina, Frodo and Sam; Marigold and I will take my truck along with Pippin and Merry. It takes a while to get everyone loaded in and strapped down. Pippin and Merry are not very happy with the idea of seat belts, until they see that Marigold and I put them on as well. I glance out the rearview mirror, and see that it’s taking a while to get Frodo and Sam strapped in as well, but finally James gets in, and so does Nina, and he pulls out of the driveway. I pull out and follow.

I glance in my mirror to the back seat. Pippin’s chatter ceases, as he stares out the window, his green eyes as big as saucers. Merry is also watching, and I hear an occasional gasp, as we pull out into traffic, and the other cars go whizzing by in both directions.

After a short while, he says “When those lights hanging across the roadway turn red you stop.”

“That’s right, Merry,” I add. “And when they turn green, it is my turn to go.”

“I understand. And when they turn yellow, you are supposed to speed up.” He sounds very pleased at this bit of deduction.

I blush. Marigold snickers.

I’m not too worried about following the other car. I know where we are going, but it doesn’t matter, for I pull into the parking lot right behind James. We are lucky. It is a weeknight, and they are not particularly crowded, so we are able to find two parking spaces side by side. We all pile out.

I think that I’d better make a few things straight before we go in. “All right, fellows,” I say, “this is a kind of restaurant called a buffet. Here are the rules: we pay for the meal when we go in--” I stop for an instant, as I see Frodo start to fumble in a pouch at his side.

James smiles, and says “It’s okay, Frodo, it’s our treat.”

The hobbit looks up gratefully, and I continue. “They will show us to a table, and then we can go and fetch our own food as we please. We are allowed to get as many servings as we want to, the only rule is that we must get a new plate every time.”

Four pairs of eye light up when I say “as many servings as we want” and I begin to feel a bit sorry for the establishment we are going into. I am glad that it does not appear to be very crowded tonight. I wonder if there will be enough food.

We enter and approach the cash register. The cashier glances at us briefly, and says “Four adults and four children?”

James shakes his head. “No, eight adults.”

She looks surprised, and then, taking a closer look at the hobbits, she gasps. I find myself wanting to giggle at her reaction. She rings us up and takes my husband’s credit card. “What you do want to drink?” she asks.

My husband answers “Unsweetened tea,” and I respond with “Sweet tea, no lemon,” Marigold orders a water with lemon, and Nina orders sweet tea as well. We look at the hobbits. Frodo and Merry both order sweet tea, and Sam orders water. Pippin looks hopeful. “Do they have any Pepsi?”

“No, but we have Coca-cola,” says the cashier. Pippin looks doubtful.

“It’s okay, Pippin,” I say. “That’s like Pepsi, only better.”

“Oh, all right, then,” he says, “I will have that.”

I notice that all the hobbits’ noses are twitching, as they smell the food on the buffets, and grin. This should prove very interesting.

The waitress shows us to where two tables have been shoved together to accommodate the eight of us. “My name is Shirley,” she says, “I’ll be your waitress tonight. If you want to go ahead and start, I will bring your drinks in just a few minutes.”

Since it’s clear the hobbits will have a difficult time reaching everything on the buffets, we split up. James takes Sam, Marigold takes Pippin, Nina takes Frodo, and I take Merry.

Pippin starts immediately towards the dessert bar, but clever Marigold diverts him by pointing out the sliced mushrooms on the salad bar. As she loads her plate with salad, he piles his own with nothing but mushrooms.

Merry, at my side, has taken a few other vegetables, and impatiently waits his turn at the mushrooms. “Oi, Pip! Leave a few for someone else!” Aside from some cherry tomatoes, baby carrots and celery sticks, he also piles the rest of his plate with mushrooms.

Sam has taken quite a few vegetables and then helps himself to some of the other offerings there of fruit and cheese. But he doesn’t miss his chance at the mushrooms either.

Nina has helped Frodo to put together a more or less normal salad of lettuce and other veggies, though it too, has more than its share of mushrooms. One of the attendants comes out and takes note of the depleted mushroom container, and hurries to replace it.

I finish putting my own salad together and Merry and I head back to the table. James and Sam are there already, and we are soon joined by the others.

We all finish the salads more or less together, and now we head for the entrees. James and Sam are at one of the steam tables, and Sam is looking curiously at one of the offerings.

“Mr. James, no offense, but them things don’t look like nothing anyone would want to eat. They look like some kind of big bug.” Sam looks more than a little dubious.

Merry looks at them. “If they were smaller and another color, I’d say they were crayfish, such as we sometimes find in the River. They can be good to eat.”

James nods. “That’s just what they are, Merry. Down here we call them crawfish, and they grow a bit larger in the warmer water. The red color though is from all the spices they are cooked in. They are very, very spicy,” he warns. I know this to be true. I myself never touch anything with Cajun spices. I prefer my taste buds unsinged.

Sam decides against getting any, and instead helps himself to some fried catfish, as well as several vegetables. Merry decides to be adventurous, and puts a couple of crawfish on his plate, before adding some mashed potatoes, some corn on the cob, some cooked greens, and a bread roll.

We head back to the table after I get my own food. I glance back and watch Frodo and Pippin. Pippin seems fascinated by the baked potatoes in aluminum foil, and he has also achieved a mighty pile of macaroni and cheese and some fried chicken. I notice no vegetables at all on his plate this time. Frodo seems content to politely follow Nina’s suggestions as to what to try. I notice, though, that he does take one of the crawfish.

We continue in this manner for a while. Soon James, Marigold, Nina and I are full and finished, but we watch the hobbits get plate after plate. It’s very interesting to watch.

Frodo goes back after more of the entrée offerings, trying some of everything, eventually. Sam just gets more of the same, and the catfish bin soon has to be replaced with more. Merry is very methodical. As soon as he finishes his entrée, I escort him to the dessert bar and reach down a slice of pecan pie for him. He finishes the pie, and then, on his own goes back for another salad. He repeats the sequence of the meal, going back for another entrée, and then another dessert--bread pudding this time. Then he starts over again with another salad…

Pippin finishes his plate, and then goes back for more fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, and then discovers a vat of cooked mushrooms has been put out, so he ladles a pile of those on top of everything. But when he finishes that, he goes straight to the dessert bar, and comes back with a dish of cherry cobbler in one hand and a dish of soft ice cream in the other, while Marigold follows him with two slices of apple pie--one of them for herself. When he finishes all that, he heads back to the dessert bar.

Merry glares at his younger cousin, and mutters darkly to Frodo “You know what he’s going to be like after eating that many sweets?”

Frodo just shrugs. “Let him be, Merry. It’s not often he can eat as many desserts as he wants.”

Sam rolls his eyes.

The stack of dirty plates on our table mounts up alarmingly. Shirley comes by to top off our drinks, and takes some of them away, but soon there is another pile just as large. I catch myself looking at my watch. The restaurant is supposed to close at ten.

The four of us Big Folk are beginning to get tired; we slump at the table and just watch as the hobbits continue to go back for more food. I notice some of the staff are staring and watching them. I can just imagine what they are thinking.

Finally Frodo, Merry and Sam start to slow down a bit; they come back with some cubed cheese and some crackers from the salad bar, ready I am supposing, to fill up the corners. Pippin, who has already devoured a dish of banana pudding and a slice of coconut pie from his latest trip to the dessert bar, comes back with a dish of Jell-O and a slice of chocolate cake.

I notice the staff standing about talking in a clump. I realize that we are the only patrons left in the restaurant. The staff are prodding Shirley, and she finally comes over to the table.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but we are closing now, and we have to start taking in the steam tables.”

James nods, and we herd the hobbits out, Pippin protesting that there was still one kind of pie he had not yet had a chance to try.

We step out into the fresh air of the parking lot, and everyone piles back into the vehicles. As we drive home, Merry is soon snoring softly. But Pippin is bouncing in his seat and singing “One hundred apple pies cooling on the sill…”

Marigold and I look at one another in resignation. This has been a very long day.

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

Had to read this too. What great fun! It has made me hungry. The Hobbits would love the chapel party I posted about a week or so ago!

[dreamflower]

Oh I'm so glad you liked it. I can just imagine them at a church potluck!