A Town I'd Never Heard Of

My daughters first day at her new school.  This morning we walked up to the top of the driveway and waited.  Sooner than expected the bus turned the corner and pulled up.  “There are people on it.”  My daughter commented, with despair.  The door swang open the way yellow school bus doors have always flung open and the driver greeted us with a rather genuine “good morning.”  I checked and fortunately for my daughter, no one of the bus seemed to acknowledge us.

Now my mom and step dad are over.  We’re all waiting for her return.  I check the driveway once and then again.  No sign of her.  And then I get the wechat message that says I’m supposed to pick her up at the high school.  We all grab our things and pile into cars as to go and meet her.  We’ll be doing some driving this evening, over to a town I’d never heard of called Pine Bush. 

It was my idea.  Celebrate her first evening with something that would make her happy:  Korean food.  There are no Korean restaurants in our town.  There aren’t any nearby either.  Thirty minutes though, in one direction and then another there are two different places that serve hermit kingdom chow.   “Oriental House” has a reasonable write up and when I explain to my daughter where we’re going it has the desired effect. 

Soon we’re filed in to a six-seater and it’s all “Annyeonghaseyo” and ““Gam sa hamnida” with a lovely older woman who, it would appear, runs the place with her husband who has maned the place behind the counter with a sushi chef-like outfit on.  The mandoo dumplings are good and though the haemool jun pancakes don’t have big fat oysters the way I seem to remember, it tastes just fine the way they are. My daughter reminds me that masitda is the way you say “delicious” and I say this over and over, every time the proprietor returns.  Korean culinary soft power in full bloom here in small-town New York state but the other currency of Korean international might, K-Pop is no where to be heard.  This couple have decided that some rather tuneless organ tracks are the atmosphere they want to invoke here, at their ‘oriental house.’

Monday, 09/9/19