In Memorium

So many of the things we had planned to do on our two trips to the Teton and Yellowstone country this month went exactly according to plan. Or were even better than we had hoped.

This one did not.

The Lame Duck is no more.

The wife and eldest son were visibly depressed when they gave me the news. After they had scouted the place out while I was in the first day of the lion workshop. Some other type of restaurant is there now. Although I'll be darned if I can remember if it was Mexican, Italian or even Jamaican.

The Lame Duck is gone.

No more mocktails in tall polynesian glasses with paper umbrellas and plastic monkeys or mermaids hanging on the side. With names like Blue Lightning. No more sitting in one of the small rooms, so neatly partitioned by Japanese walls and wonderfully, almost tackily decorated, and passing dishes around the table. Chopsticks in hand.

No more Lame Duck cashew chicken, or plum pork, beef and broccoli, egg drop soup, wontons, dimsum, or mussel soup. Yeah, you can order those things at other places, but it's not the same.

No more of the old chinese dinnerware, with the long dragons snaking around the border of the plates. Nor the fish aquarium between two rooms. The tiny, tiny restrooms past the cash register. The outdoor patio that we never got to use.

No more of the young, boisterous local crowd. Heelers barking at everybody who walked past the car to wend through the lilacs that surrounded the place on two sides.

It was probably our first trip to the Teton country as a family of four. It was late in the evening, but I wanted Chinese for dinner. Three or four chinese restaurants in the phone book. Wisdom says you should call them from the motel to see if they're open.

I hate using the phone. This one had an address way off the beaten tourist path. The northeast edge of town, across the road and a high fence from the Elk Refuge. We went to check it out. And got lost. Finally stumbling up a narrow lane to find a small parking lot and the streetside full of cars.

Local cars. All 22-county plates.

This was it.

Heaven of a meal experience. One where you are scared to go back, lest the next occasion disappoint.

It never did.

'Til this month.

Now, no more 150-mile detours from either Billings or Pocatello just so we could enjoy the Lame Duck. No more chuckling at the flustered, over-worked waiters who could not understand that we didn't care if service was slow. We were in no hurry to leave, no hurry to have the experience end.

We were at The Lame Duck.