The Intersection of Destiny

Newsletter 2024-10-21

I’ve been driving through a certain intersection for my entire adult life. That statement is true in the most literal sense. My wife and I met at college in the fall of our freshman year. She had been eighteen for all of a month, while I had been that age for most of the summer. Because I was older and more worldly, she found me wildly attractive. That sentence is not true in any sense. But it is a fact that, a few months after we became a couple, I drove to her house to meet her parents for the first time. They lived an hour south of campus in the outskirts of Indianapolis. To get there, I had to pass through a traffic light in the middle of what was once a quaint downtown but was now a rapidly growing suburb. I went through that same intersection when I started from my parents’ house in Illinois, or, later, from my own house after Lola and I got married. In the two plus decades I’d been stopping at that spot for the length of a red light, I’d never once pondered parking and visiting the businesses in the ancient brick buildings on all sides of it. That changed this week. Friday, I pulled off what was an expedition to lands unknown for me and a long overdue homecoming for Lola. What I discovered is that some experiences are best left unexplored. There’s a reason most people keep driving.

I didn’t start out the day seeking geographic closure. I actually just wanted to spend some time with Lola. We both ended up off work on the same Friday, which is a rarity for us. Lola matters at her company and is sorely missed on her well-deserved vacation days. I, on the other hand, could be one of those guys who dies at his desk but goes unnoticed for a week or two. It’s in the best interests of safety and hygiene that my employer now lets me work from home. Friday was all the sweeter because the kids had school. Lola and I were free to be our true, wild selves. We spent half the day watching The Great British Baking Show on a laptop while I played Xbox and Lola cross-stitched. We remained, as ever, party animals to our core.

Mid-afternoon, our board game friends, Peter and Delilah got off work. They drove to my house, where we all clambered into my minivan. Our destination was a cidery a few miles from the Intersection of Destiny. I love driving on these sorts of outings because it gives me an excuse not to pay seven dollars per drink all afternoon. The high prices are the entire point. If I told you I went with my wife and our friends to a dive bar at 3 p.m. on a Friday, you’d think we were social deviants. But if I tell you we went to an orchard that makes its own craft hard ciders, we sound cultured and urbane. That’s the business model for every microbrewery in the country. You pay a premium for the lack of stigma. We were surrounded by stay-at-home moms with infants in baby carriers and dads watching their kids play catch next to the patio. It was good, wholesome fun that didn’t in any way indicate any of us might have a drinking problem.

The only hint we were in dangerous territory was the biker gang that sat down at the next picnic table over. They wore black shirts with black pants and matching black leather jackets and rode blacked-out Harleys. It was hard to take them too seriously, though, as they sipped fruity, brightly colored liquids from tiny four-ounce glasses they held by the stem. Instead of Satan, I think their mascot was Bluey. The cidery was fine, but it didn’t hold our attention for long. We needed a rival biker crew with Paw Patrol logos to liven things up. Plus the only food on the menu was appetizers. Yearning for entrees and gang warfare, we decided to check out a newish brewery a few miles away. It just so happened to be a block from a certain stoplight of note.

Photo by Nomad Bikers on Unsplash

I say the brewery is newish, but it might have been there for ten years by now. Time moves a lot faster these days. No matter when it was actually built, I had never visited it before. It was new to me, which made it new, period. That’s one perk of always telling the story from my point of view. Outside of the old brick buildings right next to the Intersection of Destiny, most of the downtown is new. My wife’s family moved to the suburb when she was in middle school. At the time, the city’s boundaries only encompassed about three thousand people. Since then, the population has increased twenty-fold. That’s led to a few changes. Reconstruction has been so complete that I can’t even remember what I’m supposed to feel nostalgic about. I was about to find out what that blend of new and old had to offer. If only I could find a place to park.

Selfishly claiming the steering wheel on all these adventures has done nothing to improve my driving skills. On my first attempt to reach the brewery, I couldn’t find the entrance. The most likely stretch of pavement was exit-only. I did a u-turn and tried from a cross street. That side said “exit only,” too. I went back to the first road. There was a small, poorly marked entrance next to the exit-only outlet on that side. I pulled in. The building was huge. Including the outdoor space, it could probably seat a hundred people. There were exactly seven parking spots. Two were handicap, one was for carryout orders only, and two were taken. We claimed one of the remaining two spots. It was a tight fit. There was no street parking anywhere around, with aggressive signs on every nearby curb warning that vehicles left there would be crushed by Truckzilla. I have no idea where the brewery thought a hundred simultaneous customers would park. A few hours later, we saw hot air balloons in the sky. Perhaps the brewery expected people to repel down from above. That was far more reasonable than asking them to walk from their homes. In the suburbs, pedestrians are automatically arrested and beaten with sticks. Whatever the intended solution, that wasn’t our problem anymore. We had personally claimed half of all remaining parking. We walked inside, ready to eat. If we expected food, we had come to the wrong restaurant.

They were out of everything. Two of the four items printed on the Post-It Note sized list of specials were out of stock. They weren’t even that special to begin with. One of the items they couldn’t serve was a turkey sub. They were out of turkey. They didn’t have two of the beers we ordered. They were also missing half the items from their one-page regular menu. All of this information was relayed to us piecemeal by the most unenthusiastic waiter in the history of customer service. If you’ve seen the movie Inside Out 2, you might remember an emotion named Ennui. This waiter could sue Pixar for stealing his image and likeness to make that character. The ordering system at the brewery worked like this: We would ask Ennui for something. He would disappear for two minutes, then come back and tell us they didn’t have it. We would ask him for something else. He would vanish for two more minutes, then return to tell us they didn’t have that, either. After a few rounds of not getting any rounds, we realized that eating there was futile. Maybe there had never been any meals available in the first place. Perhaps the real meal was the friends we made along the way. After multiple failed requests, we finally managed to get one drink each. We cut our losses and moved on. There were other options just a block away at the Intersection of Destiny.

To get there, we had to drive. I couldn’t in good faith take up one of the brewery’s only four usable parking spaces—even if they didn’t have enough food on hand to feed four people. All old downtown buildings follow the same lifetime trajectory. The next bar-restaurant combo was previously a butcher shop. And a general store. And a Civil War hospital. And a RadioShack. The final stage is being turned into condos or a parking lot. Consequently, there was a makeshift lot behind this restaurant where something else historic probably used to be. Progress sounds a lot like crunching gravel. As I pulled up to the restaurant, I had two parking options. I could settle for a spot in the big, empty lot out back that used to be Lincoln’s childhood home, or I could go for glory and parallel park in a tight spot on the street out front. All of my passengers insisted there was plenty of room beside the curb. I chickened out and parked behind the restaurant. Non-van drivers don’t realize what a challenge these majestic vehicles are to maneuver. I was basically driving a charter bus. On my walk of shame from the back lot, I watched a minivan of the same make, model, and color as mine pulled into the spot I said was too small. I was so completely devastated that I broke my rule of not talking to strangers and introduced myself to congratulate him. Thankfully, there was more to swallow than just my pride. This restaurant actually had food.

After we were seated, the bar’s owner came to our table to give us an expansive explanation of his exotic menu options. He claimed his traditional bar foods had a spicy foreign flair inspired by his beloved wife. I ordered a chicken sandwich. It tasted like every other chicken sandwich I’ve had. I’m the wrong person to appreciate subtle cultural nuances that come with a three dollar up-charge. Lola ordered a mixed drink. I didn’t notice until it was in front of her that the menu didn’t list a price for it. I was suddenly terrified. What if the waitress told us at the end of the meal that it cost forty thousand dollars? I’d say there have to be consumer protection laws against that sort of thing, but this is Indiana, the home of deregulation. It was my fault for not reading the fine print on the non-existent contract. When the bill finally came, I was relieved to see that the drink was only twelve dollars. That would have seemed like an exorbitant sum under any other circumstances. Once again, we weren’t paying for the alcohol; we were paying to drink it guilt-free. I know how trashy I am, but everybody else doesn’t. If I want to keep it that way, it will cost me.

After our third establishment of the afternoon and early evening, I was ready to call it a day. To my surprise, Lola wanted to keep going. Even though I had racked up a list of complaints long enough to fill a newsletter, she was having a blast. I had accidentally succeeded as a husband. Wanting to milk that rare occurrence for all it was worth, I picked another spot within walking distance and sallied forth on foot, carefully avoiding police officers with sticks. To my shock, there were dozens of hip, trendy restaurants just one street south of the intersection I had been taking for granted for all those years. Never once had I wondered what I might find if I turned in one direction or the other. We picked a restaurant shaped like a barn that made the fanciest cocktails I’ve ever seen. I knew they were better than the ones at the last place because they cost fifteen dollars instead of twelve. The higher price meant they absolved thirty percent more shame.

As the rest of my crew finished their last drinks of the night and I sipped my water, we looked around. We had pushed too far. We were now surrounded by guys in full-length button-up shirts. My pullover had zero buttons and three snaps. It was time to go. We walked back to my van—still timidly parked in the rear gravel lot near the Intersection of Destiny—and headed home. I’m glad I finally saw what the intersection had to offer, but I’m also grateful I waited twenty-one years. Otherwise I couldn’t have afforded it. If I had stopped there when I was eighteen, I would have had to choose between paying for one exotic appetizer or all of college. Those South American cheese curds were not worth it.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James