Alabama Jack’s (Sometime in December, 2002)
With a Christmas palm in the back seat, my friend April and I thought we might drive to Alabama Jack’s for sweet conch fritters.
The sun was warm, the sky clear blue. We sat on stools at a table for 2 next to the dock, where we saw snapper and snook swim below us. The band played “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” This was the place.
April smiled, checked out two young Latin waiters, dark hair, wrap-around sunglasses, clean white smiles, and tight jeans. She was for it. I gazed at the mangroves along Card Sound and waved at a passing
boat.
We ordered grilled Mahi-Mahi platters with seasoned fries. A plump blondie in a tight, red pants-suit sang Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” What she lacked in talent, she made up in moxie. I smiled at her, but she was feeling the music.
I learned something that day: If you hold a seasoned french fry out over the railing at Alabama Jack’s, a sea gull will pluck it from you.
Without the young latin waiter in tight jeans, without the plump blondie who sang Patsy Cline music, April and I headed north, back to Miami. But Jimmy, we had a palm tree in the back seat of my car. And we had a moment with each other on a sunny December afternoon, eating conch fritters and Mahi-Mahi at Alabama Jack’s.