Southern Comfort

The night before our departure, 31 OCT, eight of us, primarily from my barracks, grabbed a cab and went to the Tombo Grille in Columbia for dinner. The restaurant featured a “Spook Easy” in honor of Halloween -- all of the waitress were dressed in coordinated 1920s flapper dresses. A jazz guitarist/vocalist played in the lobby next to an ornate (and fully stocked) bar. We ordered entrees that cost between $20 and $30 plus two bottles of California wine (Benzinger Cabernet and Coppola Claret) and desserts (real Key Lime pie, for me).

Midway through dinner two ladies came to our table, introducing themselves as Louann and Rita. Louann was dressed as a witch and Rita as a flapper. They asked what eight men were doing dining alone at Halloween and we told them it was our celebratory, pre-deployment dinner before flying to Iraq. They were instantly very concerned and wonderfully respectful -- a marked and welcome difference from the average person in northern California where I reside. They thanked us for our service and asked us to join them at the bar after dinner.

At the end of our meal, our waitress announced that we didn’t have a bill; Rita and Louann had taken care of it. Our waitress began to tear up and thanked us for our service. We were, to a man, shocked; an informal calculation of bill should have been upwards of $350 for the eight of us. We lamely went to the bar, where we were applauded by the people there, cheered on by Rita and Louann. We immediately bought a round of Kalua shooters for them and our waitress as another waitress sang “Ain’t Misbehavin’” in our honor, accompanied by the jazz guitarist. We stayed on for two more rounds. When we left, Rita and Louann hugged and kissed every one of us.

Never, in my seventeen plus years of military service, was I treated so well by perfect strangers. We love you, Rita and Louann, and the good people of South Carolina.