Peculiar Stranger at 93 Townsend
A true story about an unexpected encounter that taught me a lesson worth learning.
A couple years ago, during summer vacation, Melissa and I visited one of our favorite restaurants in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. The place was named 93 Townsend for its address on Townsend Avenue, and we went there for our anniversary dinner.
We stumbled upon the restaurant the prior year when we instantly fell in love with its food and atmosphere. It has an old-fashioned, handcrafted bar that seats up to 20 people and about 15 tables sprawled around an L-shaped interior. This particular year we were pleased to snag one of the two tables beside the front window and adjacent to the bar, just as we had the year before.
In a classy joint like 93 Townsend, you’d never expect a patron would need to consider seating strategies away from the bar. It didn’t occur to us even when the man seated alone at the end of the bar started talking to us.
The hostess had just seated us and mentioned something about turning down the lights to set the mood for our anniversary dinner. I hadn’t noticed, but I guess they were a tad on the bright side. Ten seconds later, the lights dimmed and the atmosphere grew warmer.
“Wow, you two have some pull around here,” said the man seated at the bar. He was only three feet away from me. “You walk in and the lights go down. Must be important people.”
“We’re not important,” I responded, “just distant relatives of Moses. He could part the Red Sea. We can dim lights.”
The man laughed. “What other abilities do you have?”
This story is no longer available. It has been published in a new book titled: Insight from Hindsight: Stories that reveal what life is trying to teach you
Insight from Hindsight will be available September 2024 on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook!
