Leading Off

First and foremost, Frankie Davie professed to be a diehard sports fan. He lived his whole life a baseball fan with blinders to his moderate mental retardation. He always played favorites and seemed to prefer teams over individual people. I tried to play more of the field working in developmental disability yet I privately considered Frankie one of my favorite clients.

I last parted company with Frankie when he dwelled in a behaviorally challenging cottage in a government run institution nestled in the Pinelands. Not as I would have hoped, Frankie’s last words to me did not resemble a classic goodbye. Instead, he whined why the box score in the sports section showed his favorite team losing by five runs to an underdog. While some people are not good at goodbyes, what I did not understand back then is that Frankie could not comprehend finality because he perpetually lived in the moment.

Proving that time waits for no one, our quirky sendoff occurred a quarter century ago. Turn the page to 2010. While recently entering a community based day program, an older man wearing a ragged baseball cap tapped me on the shoulder.

“Joe, why did the Milwaukee Brewers lose last night?”

"What?" I turned to address the speaker then screamed surprise. “Frankie Davie!”

His hair needed reseeding and it had turned a battleship gray. I put my arm around him but he returned no affection, no obvious sign of attachment. He had uncannily remembered my name and recalled that baseball was a frequent conversation but the human connection escaped him. The only emotion that he showed was to his bad news boys of summer.

He added, “Why do the Brewers have a bad team?”

The beleaguered Milwaukee Brewers franchise must have lost 2,000 games since I last saw Frankie but he began right where he left off. He remained stuck in the moment. Clinicians keeping score might call that symptomatically retarded. I considered it the top of the first inning again. Leading off with a proper hello...Frankie Davie.

Wristband to Waistband

Trapper's Smokehouse

Our family just finished vacationing in Williamsburg, Virginia where we enjoyed a weeklong bounce ticket at Busch Gardens, Water Country USA and Colonial Williamsburg. Forget about the sweltering heat, the staple of any vacation is the bread I break. A notorious overeater, I often consume food by bulk using discriminating taste. To my doctor’s chagrin, I do not eat for sustenance as much as for pastime.

With that being said, I highly recommend the food pass at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA. A few restrictions to the food plan exist but it basically permits eating entrees and drinking from a bottomless cup during normal park operation. On this particular day, the all-you-can-eat setup offered me more amusement than its rides. My idea of an amusement park ride is boarding the tram car from the parking lot anyway so it was no great sacrifice to donate a day’s vacation to the gusto of overeating.

This particular amusement park features native food from six different countries. The long park hours are convenient for an all-you-can eat setup. It’s like a long buffet lineup that requires walking to your next meal. Staring at the penned sheep in the park somewhere between Ireland and France, this type of eating reminded me of grazing. With a map in hand, my food quest began by circling participating vendors and charting a course. I ate and drank for five straight hours in seven different locations in each of its countries:

A delightful Mediterranean Salad of fresh fruit and chesses from Squire’s Grille in England

A well-tended beef stew in an Irish soda bread bowl from Grogan’s Grill in Ireland

Grilled sausage links covered in sauerkraut from Germany’s Das Festhaus

Two tasty corndogs from Kilts in a Blanket in Scotland

Pepperoni Pizza and French Fries from Das Festhaus in Germany

Eggplant parmagian with a side of gravied spaghetti at Italy’s Ristorante Della Piazza.

A savory ½ rack of barbecue spare ribs with sides from Trappers Smokehouse in France

Trapper's Smokehouse is where the walking buffet came to a screeching halt. Alas, after eating my way acrooss Europe, checkpoint eight turned out to be a wayside bathroom south of France. I had consumed so much rich food that I paid for in the end. Even though my black wristband screamed of priviledge, I couldn’t eat another morsel for the next seven hours.